Neil Power from Before You Say I Do reached out to me recently to share his approach to pre-marriage education, and I thought it might be useful to share with all of you too! This is one of those tricky things that we are legally required to raise with our couples, but it can feel hard to do. Here’s Neil’s thoughts.
Authorised Celebrants in Australia are of course obliged by the Marriage Act to share the Happily Ever… Before and After document and inform couples about relationship services available to them. But how does one introduce the topic of pre-marriage education into the picture without sucking all the joy and love out of the room? This is a conundrum that keeps us at Before You Say I Do on our toes.
The future for couples in the period before the wedding is bright. These are genuinely exciting times, the sort of times they will look back on and remember fondly for the rest of their lives. Their whole lives together are ahead of them, optimism abounds, and let’s be honest, planning a wedding is fun. They are unlikely to spend money with such wild abandon again in their lives.
So how do we bring a small dose of reality to the situation? The reality that not all marriages thrive. In fact, most will struggle at some point and of course without bringing statistics into the discussion, many will simply fail.
At Before You Say I Do we know this firsthand because for the last 10 years we have worked as family mediators, helping couples work out their co-parenting and financial settlements when they are separating.
We always ask our clients what went wrong and where they started to struggle and the responses for the most part fall into the same categories: we grew apart, we were unable to have constructive conversations when the going got tough, and particularly for younger couples, our expectations for our shared lives ahead were not aligned from the get-go. The same patterns repeat time and again.
So, in the spirit of ‘forewarned is forearmed’ we saw an opportunity to put old heads on young shoulders and use the pre-marriage education process to invite couples to sit down and have some real conversations. These include the big topics they may face together in their marriage: money, careers, kids… or the in laws, and many more.
The goal is not necessarily for a couple to agree on every aspect of their lives ahead, but to at least have the conversation so each of them knows where they stand on these issues so they can avoid any surprises after they tie the knot if possible.
We also see this as an opportunity to give the couples the skills to raise and discuss any concerns that may arise through life. And, equally importantly, how to receive and hear that concern and hold a constructive and rewarding conversation.
Giving couples at the start of their journey the awareness and tools to identify and address an issue before it festers and becomes a problem, and then potentially conflict, is arguably one of the most valuable gifts they can receive.
Remember, no topic can be off-limits for discussion. If that happens, as we have seen, distrust and resentment will surely follow.
The reality is that having these serious conversations at the outset of the marriage is actually the most romantic thing a couple can do before the wedding. We know they love each other. Encourage them to put some effort in now and set themselves up for success to have the marriage they always dreamed of.
Download the Before You Say I Do brochure to send to your clients.
