What You Get From Online Premarital Counseling

Online premarital counseling can make it simple to work through potential issues before marriage with the help of a licensed mental health professional. Through this type of online counseling, you and your partner may learn the power of effective communication, identify and discuss any issues in your relationship, set goals and determine how to meet each other’s expectations, handle stress and other difficult emotions, learn more about your partner, eliminate the discomfort of discussing challenging topics, decrease the potential for divorce, and promote accountability for both partners.

Learn the power of effective communication

By participating in premarital counseling, you can start your marriage with the knowledge you need to properly and effectively communicate with your significant other. When communication is clear, and both partners actively listen and look to solve their issues, they can reduce the risk of experiencing arguments and other problems stemming from a lack of communication down the road.

Identify and discuss your issues

For some, engagement is a major milestone that occurs years into the relationship, and couples may have learned how to address issues along the way. Others may get engaged soon after meeting each other and may not have had the opportunity to learn from certain issues in their relationship. Regardless of where you are in your relationship, premarital counseling can assist you in identifying some of the current issues in your relationship and issues that may come up during your time married together.

It can also give you the tools necessary to properly talk about these issues honestly and openly so that you can tackle them with ease. If you or your partner tends to avoid conflict or refuses to take responsibility, premarital counseling may help you straighten that out before you get married.

Set goals and meet expectations

Your marriage should generally be treated as a partnership, as it is normally a joint effort. In marriage, two can become one, and you may form an identity as a couple rather than just as two individuals. This joining can mean that you now have goals and expectations for each other that may not have previously existed, which can be both a blessing and a source of stress and conflict, depending on how you and your partner handle them.

A counselor can help you figure out your plans, such as joint finances, family planning, and supporting each other in your individual goals. They can also help you find reasonable ways to divide household and career responsibilities and meet the expectations that you may have for each other if you haven't already discussed these topics together. Once you have a clear picture of what these goals and expectations are, the counselor can then sit down with you and assist you in crafting a list of goals and expectations that you can implement into your daily life for easier success.

Handle stress and other challenging rmotions

Engagement and marriage can be exciting prospects for couples, but the wedding planning phase and life afterward can be a source of stress for many. If this is the case for you and your partner, your counselor can help you remember to keep things in perspective and teach you how to better cope with these feelings. A premarital counselor can be a sounding board for stressful wedding and life-planning moments so that you can vent in a healthy way rather than snapping at your partner.

An online couple counselor can also alleviate stress by not requiring you and your partner to make time for traveling to an office during this busy stage of your life. You can meet up from different computers to chat or have a call together, potentially making the process simpler so that you can focus your time and energy on other things.

Learn more about your partner

Two heads can be better than one, but each head normally comes with a history and perspective that may blind them from certain aspects of the marriage and each other. Up until engagement and marriage, you may not have learned as much about your partner as you believed you had. The therapist's job can be to help you explore yourself and your partner further to improve the therapeutic process and your marriage. Through self-exploration and joint exploration, you may have the opportunity to learn more about your partner and discover ways to strengthen your bond before tying the knot.

Eliminate the discomfort of talking about difficult topics

Despite already having formed a bond with your loved one, not all couples may be adept at discussing difficult issues. Often, some difficult topics may need to be discussed before going into a marriage. You or your partner may find them difficult to talk about or feel afraid that they will cause conflict, but avoidance may only contribute to issues both now and in the future.

It can be better to get these conversations out of the way before you get married, and having a counselor present can help you feel more comfortable and potentially prevent an argument from getting too heated. It can also teach you how to be more vulnerable with your partner and strengthen your existing connection when done right.

Decrease the potential for divorce 

If you and your partner have not properly learned how to interact and communicate with each other early in the marriage, and this leads to unresolved issues that continue to build on each other, would you expect yourselves to try to solve these seemingly impossible issues, or would you immediately look to divorce as a solution? For most couples, the latter can be a simple remedy to their relationship issues, and this may be because they never learned that there was an alternative.

However, those who pursue premarital counseling tend to understand that there can be an alternative to divorce and are often better equipped to manage the many potential struggles of marriage. In fact, research shows that couples who attend counseling are normally 30% less likely to think of divorce as a potential option when they encounter issues in their marriage. 

Promote accountability for both parties

Some people are relatively self-motivated, and others may have trouble following through on what they say they will do without the proper motivation. For example, some may go to the gym regularly and have little to no problem making it happen, and others may say that they are going to go to the gym, only to put it off and resist doing it. However, when you introduce incentives to help someone stay accountable, it can make it much easier to follow through.

A premarital counselor can provide this form of accountability, as you may not only have your partner who is expecting things from you, but also a counselor who can monitor your progress. Some people may need this extra boost to get things done, and there is often no better motivator than another person who expects you to follow through on what you say you are going to do.

Try online premarital counseling

In comparison to in-person premarital counseling, one of the main benefits of online premarital counseling may be its flexibility, as you can attend sessions from anywhere with an internet connection. While counselors’ offices typically have set hours, online counseling often allows you to schedule sessions at nearly anytime, which can be helpful when working with two partners’ differing schedules. Another potential benefit of online premarital counseling is that it can be quite simple to switch counselors as needed until you find one who is a good fit for you and your partner.

This study investigated the efficacy of online couples therapy in comparison to in-person couples therapy and found that it was normally just as effective as the traditional option. If you’re interested in premarital counseling, working with a counselor in person or online can both be valid, beneficial choices.