Premarital Counseling
Are You Preparing For Forever Together?
- Are you engaged or thinking about marriage?
- Yet before taking this big step, do you and your partner want to ensure you’re on the same page about family, finances, and your future?
- Are there unhealthy relationship patterns or potential concerns you’d like to address before getting married?
If you and your partner are preparing to make a lifelong commitment, you’re likely experiencing a mix of joy, stress, and overwhelm. Aside from the logistical aspects of planning a wedding and making other big decisions, you are on the brink of a whole life together, and it’s important to make sure you’re in sync as you take the plunge.
What Challenges Are You Encountering?
It’s possible that ever since you started discussing marriage or planning a wedding, certain stressors have bubbled up. Maybe you’re not quite sure about the timing of everything or you worry about the juggle of balancing your personal and professional life with this big commitment.
Perhaps you feel pressured by your family or society at large to do things a certain way when it comes to getting engaged or married. As a result, your relationship may be experiencing tension, frustration, and disconnection, despite the excitement you feel about what’s next.
Couples considering marriage benefit greatly from premarital counseling. As an opportunity to come together in a neutral space to address existing issues and plan for future hiccups, premarital therapy can help you gain clarity and confidence about what your relationship needs to sustain a marriage.
Have any questions? Send us a message!
Skills For Maintaining A Lasting Connection Must Be Learned
Let’s face it—no one really teaches us what a healthy relationship should look or feel like. Most of us piece together our understanding of relationships based on what we saw growing up, what we learned from friends, or even from the media. Unfortunately, these sources can often lead to misunderstandings or unrealistic expectations about what a successful partnership truly involves.
The reality is that many couples don’t seek therapy until they’re already struggling. Research shows that the average couple waits six years after the onset of serious relationship problems to seek professional help. [1] By this point, patterns of conflict, disconnection, or mistrust have often become deeply ingrained, making the healing process more challenging.
This is where premarital counseling can make a profound difference. By addressing key areas like communication, conflict resolution, intimacy, and shared values before major issues arise, couples can establish a strong foundation for a long-lasting, fulfilling marriage. Studies have shown that couples who participate in premarital counseling are 30% more likely to experience long-term relationship satisfaction compared to those who don’t. [2]
Therapy Can Help You Create A Plan For Sharing Your Life Together
At Trauma Healing Therapy, our goal in premarital counseling is to help you and your partner identify areas of improvement for your relationship as you understand and harness your strengths—both as individuals and as a couple. The therapeutic process is highly individualized to your unique needs and designed to ensure a smooth transition from engagement to marriage.
What To Expect
Our skilled therapists guide you through a specialized premarital curriculum over a minimum of 12 to 20 sessions. This tailored approach ensures that you and your partner address crucial topics before marriage, including exploring and healing past relationship wounds that might be impacting your current connection. It’s about creating a solid foundation for a healthy and lasting relationship.
Therapy begins with a general intake that will help us understand your relationship history and goals for premarital counseling. Through this process, we will clarify your values and work to understand how to create a cohesive, fulfilling dynamic that honors your goals for yourselves and the relationship.
The tools and curriculum we use in premarital counseling are inspired by the most effective and research-based couples therapy modalities. Emotionally Focused Therapy—or EFT—is helpful for understanding the emotional blueprint that your interactions are based on, while The Gottman Method offers a highly structured approach to cultivating friendship and overcoming gridlock. Additionally, mindfulness and somatic regulation techniques will be incorporated to assist you in having calm, collaborative conversations.
As you learn what it takes to truly hear and see your partner in the relationship, you can feel confident that you are embarking on your marriage with a sense of mutual respect, support, and joy. A strong foundation for forever is possible—all it takes is a few sessions of premarital counseling to prepare your relationship for this next big, exciting step!
Still Unsure If Premarital Counseling Is Right For You?
Premarital therapy won’t even work.
It’s completely normal to feel skeptical about the effectiveness of therapy, especially if this is a new experience for you. However, research consistently shows that EFT and The Gottman Method are highly effective for helping couples navigate and overcome conflict. [3]
Furthermore, we have been working with both married and premarital couples in counseling for a long time (see our testimonials) and have seen firsthand the effect that therapy can have on sustaining healthy relationships—particularly when issues are addressed before they snowball. As long as you and your partner are willing to put in the effort, we are confident this process works!
Discussing our issues in counseling will just make them worse.
While it’s common for couples to worry that counseling will exacerbate existing issues, therapy is about making things better—not worse—between you. Our premarital counseling sessions are designed to provide you with lifelong communication, emotional regulation, and intimacy skills so that you can experience the benefit of therapy long after your sessions are over.
Premarital counseling is one of the most proactive measures you can take before making this commitment, ensuring that you are starting off your marriage on the same page.
My schedule is full enough as is, especially now that we are planning a wedding; I don’t know that we will have time to commit to therapy.
Our therapists understand that scheduling can be tough, particularly for residents in the fast-paced Bay Area. Therefore, we try to make our counseling services as accessible and effective as possible so that sessions don’t feel like a time constraint. Premarital weekend and weekday counseling intensives are available for clients looking for a quicker, more concentrated therapeutic experience. Contact us for more information.
Prepare Your Relationship For A Strong, Healthy Marriage
If you’re engaged or considering marriage, premarital counseling through Trauma Healing Therapy is a great way to get ahead of relationship obstacles before they snowball out of control.
For more information or to schedule an appointment, contact us. In person appointments are available to residents of Cupertino and The Bay Area, while online appointments are available to residents throughout California.
Couples Clash; How Often Should You Fight in a Healthy Relationship?
Fights are a normal part of any relationship, but how often should you argue for a relationship to remain healthy? The truth is, it’s not about how often you fight, but how you handle the disagreements when they happen. Here’s a look at why arguments can happen, how...
Premarital Counseling In Cupertino
21710 Stevens Creek Blvd #222, Cupertino, CA 95014
Premarital Counseling In San Francisco
2211 Post St #300, San Francisco, CA 94115