PREMARITAL COUNSELING

With the increasing costs of weddings, premarital counseling is easy for folks to skip. But premarital counseling can help you make sure you are in a good place and have discussed important life decisions and topics before saying "I do." Recognizing a local need for quality premarital counseling, especially among non-heterosexual partnerships, I have developed my own 80 minute, 6 session curriculum that assists couples and partners in having productive and vulnerable conversations with one another. The curriculum is as follows: 

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Session 1: Relationship Formation and History (How have we got to this point and what significant things have happened up until now?) 

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Session 2: Finances. Few people like to openly discuss finances but it is an absolutely essential discussion when pursuing marriage or domestic partnership. 

Session 3: Family. Family helps shape how we see the world and often affects the way we act and respond to situations. Plus, when you get married, you become part of a new family and sometimes these relationships are difficult to navigate. 

Session 4: Sex. Sex is everywhere and yet many people, including couples, have challenges with communicating openly about sex and their sexual needs and desires. We will explore sexual history, infidelity, kinks, monogamy vs non-monogamy and consent. 

Session 5: Combining Lives and Communication. What does this look like to begin to integrate things. What fears do you have? What excites you? How do we ensure that power dynamics and decision making efforts are balanced? 

Session 6:  Putting it all together. Now that we know what we know about our individual and relational feelings surrounding money, sex, family and communication, how do we begin to utilize the strengths of the individuals and the relationship and minimize the weaknesses thereof that will allow the relationship to thrive? 

Homework is given between each session to facilitate thought and processing between sessions.