What's your process for premarital counseling? Or what process did someone lead you through? What resources did you use? What would or wouldn't you recommend?
I posted this a while back before anyone was really reading this blog. Now that more people seem to be stopping by, I thought I'd put it out there again with some edits/additons since it's been on my mind again...
Do you find it difficult to have any sort of devotional time? When I was growing up, I was almost compulsive about my personal Bible Study, devotion time, etc. Somewhere along the way, I got more and more sporadic. In part, I found myself frustrated with the devotional books that I considered theologically too conservative. I find it hard to bond with God when you're busy mentally disagreeing with the author of whatever resource you're reading. My habit was broken, and I've never gotten it back for more than a few weeks at a time.
So, a disciplined devotional/prayer/bible-reading life - is it something I should be striving to get back, or something that is filled by other ways I am close to God? This is a debate I have with myself all the time. On the
Comments
I usually run into two types of couples.
#1 - those couples who know everything about marriage and no matter what you say, they have it all figured out anyway.
#2 - people who want to discuss certian relationship issues that they want worked on.
Group #2 are the couples I enjoy talking to and I find couple #1 to be a waste of everyone's time to meet several times.
I saved two articles from the NYTimes that might be of interest two you. I can email them to you.
The surveys each person in the couple takes, shows what they need to work on. It is less dependent on you trying to figure that out. Considering the difficulty of getting couples into counseling at all, this can make a huge difference in keeping sessions to a manageable number.