How To Find A Useful Premarital Counseling Book

Information is overflowing everywhere in this day and age and if you're looking for a premarital counseling book to help start your marriage out on the right path, you may have noticed that there are hundreds of options available, making it much harder to pick out a book that will provide you with true value needed in your premarital counseling journey. 

When there are so many resources out there, how are you supposed to know which marriage counseling book is best for you? If you're currently looking for a guide through the marriage process, here are some helpful tips for finding a useful premarital counseling book.

How to look for a premarital counseling book

Before you set out on the quest for the perfect book and get your hopes up as you prepare to succeed in your mission, remember that there isn't one single book on premarital counseling that has all the answers. There is no perfect choice. Therefore, it is necessary to gather what information you can in a reasonable amount of time and make the best choice you can given the resources available. Many of these books will repeat information, and if you're not happy with the first book, you can always select a different one. Don't settle on one book and expect it to teach you everything. Look for the best books and pull from those.

For those who are now ready to begin this journey, the tips listed below will help when you start scouring the web for a great premarital counseling book.

Determine what it is that you are trying to accomplish with premarital counseling

With that in mind, it is important to ask yourself while searching for a book, are there any specific topics that I am looking for? Are there any topics that you will need additional counseling for a while before and after marriage? Are you a couple that has trouble handling finances? Perhaps you are a couple that has issues resolving conflicts. Whatever the issue may be, you should keep this in the back of your mind as you are shopping for your book. It can be more helpful to have a book that focuses on your major problems rather than having a book that broadly covers all premarital issues and provides you with no valuable information.

Consider books that provide tools

Some books provide only information while others will provide you with tools that can help you make use of the knowledge contained within the book. That's not to say that books without tools aren't helpful, but those that do can reinforce the need to act on what you have learned and will tell how you can go about making sure that you follow through. 

Great premarital counseling books often contain relationship and self-help worksheets, occasional tests and quizzes, and sections where you can write down situations and notes. All these tools will serve to keep you more engaged and involved throughout the entirety of the text.

Check online reviews

In the digital age, there are review sites for almost any product on the market, and those dedicated websites will usually have links to where you can find and purchase the products being reviewed. This includes premarital counseling books as they are products that quite a few people will be searching for at any given time. 

Consider trying out one of the books recommended on a review site. These sites will break down the pros and cons of each of the books they've reviewed, helping you to make a quick decision based on what you are looking for in a premarital counseling book and the real experiences of other couples.

Ask people you know

You may have friends or co-workers who have been married recently or who were recently in the same stage of the counseling resource search as you are. As such, they may have sought out similar premarital advice as they were preparing for marriage. Ask around to see if any of these individuals were able to find a premarital counseling book that proved useful. They can tell you whether the book provided good advice based on personal experience. If you are extremely lucky, they may even have a copy available that you can use!

Take the question to social media

If no one you know has read a book on premarital counseling lately, you can reach out to the millions of people on various social media platforms for advice. These days, it is common and acceptable to use a variety of social media to ask for advice or guidance, and you can accomplish this on almost any platform. 

Simply create a post that features your question and post it online. Make sure that you use appropriate hashtags to attract more attention. Someone may then see your post and provide you with a useful answer or book suggestion. 

Keep in mind that the advice you receive from social media may be biased, factually incorrect, or intentionally misleading; you can’t trust everything you read at face value. Make sure to do your due diligence and follow up recommendations with appropriate research of your own.

Seek out certain authors with the proper credentials

The biggest issue with books that are published in the self-development/self-help area or in a related area is that they don't always have to have a qualified author behind them. Because of simple online publishing platforms and other new developments, almost anyone can have a book published, and they don't have to be someone with multiple degrees or extensive experience in an industry to do so. This can be a major concern when you are seeking out advice for a topic as sensitive and as important as premarital counseling. 

To avoid picking out a book that is written by someone who may not have the knowledge and experience necessary to pen such a text, you should seek out authors who have verifiable credentials so that you can ensure you are receiving a high-quality book.

Other tips

There are plenty of other tips out there that can help you to select a great premarital counseling book that may be beneficial for you. If the above tips helped you to get started, but you need a few more quick pointers to better help you along your journey, here are a few ideas.

• The book you choose should ultimately focus on what you can do rather than on what your partner should be doing. Remember, the only one you can change within your relationship is yourself. If you are attempting to change your partner, you are going to fail down the road.
• The advice in your chosen book should be specific rather than vague ideas. If the book can't give you ideas on what you can do with the knowledge it has given you or explain things clearly, the author is likely not well-versed in the topics given.
• Your success depends entirely on your desire to learn and to implement what you have learned. Choose a book you will read, not something that looks boring or overly complicated. If you are not interested in the book, you are not going to gain anything from it.