A specialized type of therapy provided by our marriage and family therapists (MFT), which can benefit to you if you are considering a long-term commitment such as marriage. Typically, the goal of our premarital counseling is to identify and address any potential areas of conflict in a relationship early on, before those issues become serious concerns, and teach you the effective strategies for discussing and resolving conflict.
If you are seeking counseling before marriage, you may also find that premarital counseling can help you better understand your partner’s expectations about marriage and address any significant differences in a safe and neutral environment.
You may have one idea of what marriage looks like and what it means to be a partner yet be blissfully unaware that your soon-to-be spouse feels very differently. In marriage counseling, you'll uncover what you each believe and have experienced about marriage. You'll talk about what each person expects the other to do and be as well as how each of you sees the structure of the marriage.
To some degree, we're all products of our environment and experiences. It is important to talk through your backgrounds because of transference, which is a term that means we transfer qualities and re-create dynamics from old relationships into new ones, and this is usually unconscious.
If a couple cannot freely discuss any subject, no matter how personal or difficult, the marriage is going to be a struggle. In marriage counseling, you'll work with our therapist to foster communication and conflict resolution skills you can carry with you.
Intimacy is highly personal, and most couples run into intimacy issues at some point in the marriage. So while it might be uncomfortable to discuss your sex life in front of a total stranger, helping understand the general physiological and emotional gender differences as well as the ones specific to [you], opens the door to be able to develop a healthy physical relationship.