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How many hours have been spent organising your wedding so far? A day? A week? Altogether too long? Well, the man with the clipboard says you'll spend 250 hours planning your perfect day. 250 hours seems rather miserly to me - but then, I was always did enjoy the details.
"So, how much time have you invested in preparing for your job?" Dr Roger Tirabassi purposefully asked when I began working with him. "Well," I answered, "I'm doing my MA, so technically, I'm still preparing...maybe six years?" "And how much time have you consciously invested in your marriage?" he quietly challenged. "I don't mean snuggling and watching a movie together, or a romantic weekend in the mountains. What I mean is actually investing in the reality of who you are together?" Being British, I was quite taken aback by his rather personal question, but it came as a timely jolt to my leisurely approach to marriage.
Kirstin Prisk
Dr Tirabassi knows what he's talking about. Sitting comfortably in his office in Newport, California, this quiet man with twinkling eyes has worked with well over 5000 couples in the past 29 years. Marriage prep is vitally important to him. "We've found that 15 hours of conscious premarital work reduces the divorce rate by 35%." That's a breathtaking statistic, especially when faced with the apparent lottery of our 50/50 success rate.
"It's not a lottery," said Dr Tirabassi, smiling. "It's a commitment thing. We live in a society of instant gratification that kills marriage. There's no instant gratification in marriage - it's all about the long-term result. It's not one 'I do'; it's a hundred thousand 'I dos', even when we don't feel like it."
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It's 18 years since my walk down the aisle, and I know he's spot on. When I ask why half of us aren't going the distance, his reply is coloured by the wisdom of a lifetime of consultations. "We come to marriage with the belief that it will be summer all year round. Then we get disillusioned when autumn appears, and we begin to think we've fallen out of love. We haven't, it's just we're not riding high on hormones any more. Primarily, love turns out to be a choice, one that has the most intense emotional side effects. Funny thing is, the harvest after winter seems to be the sweetest."
So what exactly is marriage prep and why should you consider it? Well, most often, premarital work happens with groups of couples over a period of six-eight weekly sessions, focusing on relational fundamentals: subjects such as how our families have influenced us, the value of money, how we fight, resolving conflict, what roles we expect to play, how we will make decisions, where sex fits in, and the matter of children. Each area gets addressed at varying levels, shedding light on our (often unspoken) relational expectations. Admit it, we expect each other to be mind readers - and that's never going to result in a win win!
Keith Riley
Ultimately, the purpose of marriage prep is to help us become conscious of our relationship, our patterns, and our impact on each other. We gain knowledge from a different perspective, develop skills at a deeper level and get to make decisions about how our relationship works. Only when we're conscious, we get to make choices about our marriage, learning strategies to avoid our particular relational pitfalls and make the very best of each other. Rather than believing marriage just, sort of, happens, we understand each other better, and co-create the marriage we both want. Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? It is!
Dr Tirabassi is not the only one who's championing marriage prep. This side of the Atlantic, the wisdom and benefits of consciously investing in our relationships before marriage are being experienced. Charities, community minded organisations and churches are throwing their resources into enhancing and supporting healthy relationships, alongside therapeutic agencies.
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This is no bad thing. In an effort to support healthy relationships, marriage prep is now offered by various organisations across the UK. You can choose to attend a group (where you will never be asked to share with anyone other than your partner - gosh, what a relief!), see someone privately, jump all-in to a two-day relationship boot camp (intense, immersive and highly informational), do an online couple check-up, read a book together, or even download an app which you can whip out mid-rant to help you take steps out of conflict.
I asked Dr Tirabassi, "What is the feedback you most often receive from couples who have done marriage prep?" Without hesitation, he replied, "What I hear all the time is 'I didn't feel we needed the class, I just came because she wanted me to. I thought we knew each other, that we had a really intimate relationship, but the class has forced us to go deeper than we ever thought possible. Now I feel really prepared for marriage'." I ask if it makes a difference if the couple has been together for years. "No. I just had a couple who have been together for seven years, with three children, who loved each other and stayed together but were constantly fighting. They told me that the conflict resolution tools we worked through have revolutionised how they disagree. Marriage prep gave them the tools to argue healthily. Now they're so excited to get married and stay married!"
Ben Selway
Looking at our foundational relational building blocks before marriage makes sense. When we buy a house, we pay to get a survey done; we want to check it out, look in all the nooks and crannies, in order that we can begin to address the creaks and leaks to make our lives together all the more enjoyable.
Perhaps on the other side of our 250 hour weddings, our 60 year marriages are as worthy of our time and money as the walls we house them in.
Keith Riley
Ruth and Tom (married November 2013)
"We had friends who got married after seven years together. They were in love and utterly committed to each other. Five months after the wedding, we were totally shocked to find they were divorcing. Why? She had assumed he wanted children. He didn't. It turns out in all their years together they had never discussed being parents. Their divorce had a huge impact on us. It made us really consider if we had 'blind spots' in our relationship, and whether it would be helpful to have a space before our wedding to figure those things out. That's when we decided to intentionally invest time in our relationship. We signed up to do a marriage prep course with 12 other couples. We genuinely had no idea how much we would gain from those sessions. It's possibly the best decision we've ever made."
Travers and Brown
Susannah and Ian (married March 2014)
"Ian had no idea what marriage prep was, but I'd heard about it and wanted to make sure we were stepping into marriage with eyes wide open. I thought we'd benefit from hearing from people who no doubt had experienced their share of issues. No point making all the mistakes ourselves! We were both a bit worried it would be all touchy-feely and naff, but from the first session, it was altogether too useful to be naff. Being quite private people, we arranged to meet 1:1 with a couple who had run marriage prep courses. They walked with us through a range of topics like values, communication, finance, traditions, sex and spirituality. We appreciated their humour, honesty and wisdom. Although we'd talked about a lot of the issues before, it was the depth of conversation that got us to a new level of understanding. We couldn't wriggle out or ignore stuff. Some of it wasn't easy, but it was all good. We're much better at communicating, at dealing with disagreements, and at not letting things fester. Marriage prep grew us stronger as a couple. We rave about it to all our friends, even if they're already married. Everyone should do it!"
Travers and Brown
Taylor & Porter Photographs
COURSES AND RESOURCES
Take a two-day couples workshop, led by relationship consultant Sophie Slade. Getting the Love You Want runs on 3rd-4th May 2015 and 7th-8th November 2015, London. From £500 per couple (contact bryan.greene@tiscali.co.uk)
Complete an online couple check-up (£25), with optional facilitator support, from Prepare-Enrich
www.prepare-enrich.co.uk/couples/cc_checkup.htm
Find a marriage prep course with other engaged couples throughout the UK at
relationshipcentral.org
prepareformarriage.org.uk
marriagecare.org.uk
(£0 - £85 - some organisations require payment and some are run through charitable agencies)
Get a book or app to enhance your relationship
Little Changes Big Results for Crazy Busy Couples by Dr Roger Tirabassi - Amazon
The Marriage Book by Nicki & Sila Lee - Amazon
Cool Tools for Couples app on iTunes
Ross Talling
Alan Law
Nick Walker
words Christine Jensen
Copyright Wed magazine 2015
