Non-Religious Premarital Counseling

What Is Secular Premarital Counseling Like?

Secular premarital counseling — or non-religious premarital counseling — is a very different experience. The goal of non-religious premarital counseling is not to get a young family back into the pews, it’s to help a couple strengthen their relationship and proactively prevent problems in the future by developing healthy relationship skills.

Non-religious premarital counseling can make or break a marriage. It is far more comprehensive than religious-based premarital counseling. The best premarital counseling is provided by a marriage and family therapist; a true relationship expert with years of experience in helping couples develop healthy, happy relationships.

Premarital counseling with a marriage and family therapist often begins with introductory “assessment” sessions designed to map out the strengths and growth opportunities of your relationship. You might also be asked to take a more formal premarital assessment, all of which will help identify areas of the relationship the two of you will discuss in the following sessions.

You and your partner will be educated on how you can build and maintain strong relationship and develop skills that will help you conquer challenges sure to come about. But more importantly than getting “information” from your premarital counselor, you will have new (sometimes challenging!) conversations about aspects of your relationship you may not yet have explored together. 

Through these new experiences, you will have the opportunity to learn new things about yourself and your partner that contribute to a meaningful growth process (not to mention helping you to avoid a divorce!). Let’s face it: Nobody teaches us how to have healthy relationships. We all just wing it, and do what we know how to do. We also don’t know what we don’t know about how to have a successful marriage, so it’s impossible to prepare unless we have someone helping us anticipate the potential problems. 

Premarital counseling helps you understand what’s working, but also how you can be even better partners for each other and avoid falling into common relationship issues. By the end of it, good premarital counseling will have strengthened your relationship. You’ll have clarity about how to be emotionally supportive of each other, how to communicate with each other, how to establish agreements and healthy boundaries with each other, and you’ll get answers to your premarital counseling questions.

Very little, if any of this happens in religiously focused premarital counseling. Secular premarital counseling is far more pragmatic, meaningful and helpful to couples who are viewing it as an insurance policy for their future marriage.

I’d also like to add that high-quality secular premarital counseling or pre-engagement counseling absolutely can address aspects of your shared spirituality if you’d like it to. For many couples, a shared faith can be a point of strength, and open discussions about how to cultivate that intentionally are useful. While a professional marriage and family therapist would never come at this from a specific religious agenda, we routinely help couples discuss their faith together in order to create shared meaning and vision for their lives.

For other couples, it’s equally important to talk about matters of faith but for different reasons. For example, if one of you is religious and the other is not, or if you each practice a different faith, it will be important to have proactive conversations about it. For example, if you’re Jewish and your partner is Christian, talking about your hopes for the religious education of your children, what religious activities you’re willing to participate in and what you’re not, or what you’d like holidays to look like in your family are integral to creating harmony and avoiding issues in the future.

Is There Non-Religious Premarital Counseling Near Me?

Yes! The miracle of online premarital counseling makes it so. You can certainly look for a licensed marriage and family therapist who provides premarital counseling to meet with locally. (For example, we offer premarital counseling in Denver). But high quality premarital counseling online has made getting involved with a good premarital counseling program more accessible than ever. This is great for couples who live in rural areas, or in instances where one or both members of the couple travel often or are engaged in a long-distance relationship.

If you are seeking secular marriage advice, secular premarital counseling or non-religious marriage preparation courses, your best bet is to look for a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in evidence based couples counseling, and then verify to make sure that they provide premarital counseling services too. The best premarital counselors will always use an evidence based couples counseling strategies such as the Gottman Method or the Prepare Enrich program to guide your sessions.

How Much Does Secular Premarital Counseling Cost?

What a couple might pay for high-quality premarital counseling is dependent upon who you see, how many sessions you require, and the format you choose. Some couples who may have budget concerns and seek some basic skills can seek a premarital course. [Learn more about how much premarital counseling costs.]

We sometimes get calls from couples wondering if premarital counseling is covered by insurance. It is not. Health insurance only pays for medically necessary treatment of psychiatric conditions, and that is not the purpose of premarital counseling.

Smart couples understand that the cost of premarital counseling is negligible compared to the tens of thousands of dollars they’re spending on their wedding — but the most valuable investment they can make in the success of their marriage. Some wise and thoughtful people consider premarital counseling as a wedding present. (Believe it or not, you can gift premarital counseling too.)

Can I Seek Both Secular And Religious-Based Premarital Counseling?

Sure! If the spiritual element of your marriage is important to you, regardless of whether the religious institution you are partnering with requires premarital counseling or not, by all means, seek out religious-based premarital counseling sessions with your wedding official. If you have a strong shared faith, it will help you build your marriage based on those shared values, and that is wonderful.

And even with that, you may also consider doing premarital counseling with a marriage and family therapist too, just to cover your bases in the relationship skills department as well. Doing premarital counseling with a true relationship expert who can help you identify opportunities for growth is a meaningful experience that will be educational and comprehensive, and will provide you with a tool box of skills and strategies to use as you build a marriage that lasts a lifetime together.

Get Started with Premarital Counseling

If you’d like to pursue premarital counseling with one of the relationship experts at Growing Self, the first step in getting started is to request your first, free consultation. During your first meeting, whether in person or online, you can get to know your prospective premarital counselor and discuss your hopes and goals for premarital counseling. If it feels like a good fit on both sides, you can get started with genuinely meaningful, growth-oriented premarital counseling that sets your marriage up for success.

I hope that information and perspective helps you, as you’re considering your options.

Wishing you all the very best,

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

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