Why Premarital Counseling Matters to Me

When I think about why I became a relational therapist, I can trace a lot of it back to my first marriage. I certainly didn’t know that at the time.

The truth is, there were signs before we got married. I saw them. I had doubts. But I was young, and I thought things would change. I also thought I could help change them. If I loved him enough, understood him enough, was patient enough, maybe eventually we would get to the relationship I believed we could have.

We didn’t.

The problems I saw before marriage were still there afterward. Of course they were. I understand that now, but at the time I kept looking for answers. I kept thinking about what I could do differently and when things would finally get better.

Eventually, we went to couples therapy. We lasted three sessions.

During one of them, my partner became upset and walked out. We never went back.

What stayed with me wasn’t only that he left. I remember the therapist as cold, almost disinterested. I didn’t feel that she really understood what was happening between us or knew how to keep us engaged enough to continue the work.

Maybe that’s not fair. I was sitting there as a wife in a marriage that was hurting, not as the therapist I am today. But that was my experience of it.

And it left me with questions.

Years later, after becoming a relational therapist myself, I understand how much the relationship between a couple and their therapist matters. Both people need to feel that the therapist understands what’s happening between them, not just who said what. A therapist can’t force someone to stay in therapy, of course. But there has to be enough connection, enough trust, and enough hope that both people are willing to come back.

We didn’t have that.

Research backs this up. A review of 48 studies on couple and family therapy found better outcomes when people felt connected to the therapist, and worse outcomes when that connection was uneven between partners.

The therapist doesn’t have to agree with both partners all the time. Each person just needs to feel respected, understood, and able to stay in a difficult conversation.

And sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we’d gone to couples counseling before marriage, with a good therapist, much earlier.

Maybe we would have learned how to build a different relationship.

Or maybe we would have realized that we shouldn’t get married.

I don’t know.

But either answer would have been important.

I THOUGHT I COULD FIX THE RELATIONSHIP

This is probably the part I understand most differently now. I knew there were problems before we got married, but I thought they were things we could overcome. Or, if I’m being completely truthful, things I could somehow fix.

I don’t think that’s unusual. When we love someone, we don’t necessarily look at a problem and think, This is who this person is and this is what our relationship is.

We think, This is temporary.

Once we’re married…

Once there’s less stress…

Once he understands…

Once I figure out how to talk to him differently…

Once we get through this…

And then years can pass while you’re still waiting for the relationship to become the relationship you thought it was going to be. That’s something I wish I had understood much earlier.

Love matters enormously, but love doesn’t give one person the ability to do two people’s work.

You can look at yourself. You can communicate differently, become more aware of your triggers, learn to listen, apologize, compromise, and change. But you can’t create mutuality by yourself, and you shouldn’t have to become someone else to make a relationship work.

That’s Why I Believe in Couples Counseling Before Marriage

To me, this is what premarital counseling should really be about. Not finding problems where there aren’t any. Not testing whether two people are “compatible enough.” And certainly not making a decision for them about whether they should get married. It’s a chance to slow down and look honestly at what you’re already creating together.

Because we prepare so much for a wedding. The venue, the dress, the guest list, the food, the photographs, the honeymoon. Couples can spend a year or more planning one day. The average couple married in 2025 spent around $34,000 and invited 117 guests.

None of that is wrong. A wedding can be joyful and meaningful. But the questions that will shape the next twenty or forty years aren’t really about that day.

How do we handle conflict?

What happens when one of us needs closeness and the other needs space?

Can I tell you that you’ve hurt me without you hearing it as an attack?

Can you tell me something I don’t want to hear without me shutting down?

What do we think about sex? Children? Careers? Family? Money deserves some very concrete questions too: income and bills, debt, saving, generosity toward family, financial privacy, spending freedom, and what each person believes is “fair.” A long-running study of over 4,500 couples found that financial disagreements were the strongest predictor of divorce among all the common areas couples argue about, stronger than conflict over children, in-laws, or sex.

What happens when your family needs something from you and I need something different?

How much independence do we each need?

What do we expect from each other that we’ve never actually said out loud?

And maybe most importantly: what is already happening between us that we’re quietly hoping marriage will change?

Those are the conversations I wish we’d had.

Premarital Counseling vs Couples Therapy: They Aren’t Really Separate Worlds

Premarital counseling and couples therapy both work on the relationship, but they meet a couple at different points. Couples therapy usually helps repair patterns that have already taken hold. Premarital counseling asks how you want to build those patterns in the first place, before they’ve had years to set.

I believe strongly in couples therapy, even though my own first experience wasn’t good. I’ve now been on both sides of that room. I’ve been the wife wondering why the therapist wasn’t helping us, and I’ve been the therapist sitting with two people who have sometimes been hurting each other for years.

That changes how I see the work.

By the time some couples come to therapy, the thing they’re fighting about isn’t really the thing they’re fighting about anymore. The dishes aren’t about the dishes. The phone isn’t about the phone. The mother-in-law isn’t only about the mother-in-law.

There’s history underneath it.

I don’t feel important to you.

You never hear me.

Nothing I do is enough.

Why should I try?

Couples therapy can help people find their way through that. I’ve seen it happen.

But premarital counseling gives us a chance to meet some of these patterns before they’ve had years to harden. In couples therapy, the question may be, can we repair what has happened between us? In premarital counseling, we have the luxury of asking, how do we want to build this in the first place?

Both matter, and I just wish more couples didn’t wait until they’re in pain to start talking.

Sometimes Premarital Counseling May Help You Decide Not to Get Married

I know that’s not the most obvious thing for a premarital therapist to say, but I believe it. The goal isn’t to get every couple to the wedding. The goal is clarity.

Sometimes premarital counseling makes two people feel even more confident about getting married. Sometimes it shows them where they need to grow. And sometimes it brings something into the room that they’ve both been trying not to look at.

I Also Know What a Good Marriage Feels Like

My first marriage isn’t the whole story. I married again, and my marriage today is very different. I can completely be myself, and that may be one of the simplest ways I can describe it. I don’t feel judged for being who I am, and I’m not constantly trying to figure out who I need to be for the relationship to work.

We enjoy everyday life together. Somehow, after years together, there are still moments when it feels like we’re at the beginning of the relationship.

We laugh a lot, take care of each other, travel and find things to do. Life feels like an adventure, and rarely boring.

Doing something for the other person usually feels like a pleasure, even when the actual thing we’re doing isn’t particularly pleasurable. There’s a difference between “I have to do this for you” and “I want to make your life a little easier.”

Of course we fight. I don’t believe a good marriage is one where people don’t fight. What matters to me is what happens during and after the fight. We’re respectful. Yes, sometimes we say something we shouldn’t have said, but then we come back, often the next day, and talk about it.

And our apologies go past a quick sorry. It’s more likely to be, “You said that and it hurt me, but I also shouldn’t have said this.” Usually we can both see our part. We talk about the things that matter to us. We negotiate. We don’t always get exactly what we want.

But underneath all of it, there is something I didn’t have before: safety.

Neither one of us is wondering if the other person is going to leave because we had a fight. There isn’t stonewalling for days or the fear that one disagreement means something terrible about the relationship.

Nobody is going anywhere.

That changes the experience of conflict completely.

You can be angry and still feel safe.

You can disagree and still know you’re loved.

You can come back tomorrow.

And experiencing that has taught me as much about relationships as my first marriage did. Maybe more.

Because now I know that a good marriage isn’t one where two people never struggle. It’s one where you don’t have to be afraid of the struggle.

Relationships Became Bigger Than Marriage for Me

Somewhere along the way, I also realized that my interest in relationships was never only about romantic relationships. I believe deeply in connection. Friendships matter to me. Family matters, our relationships with parents, siblings, and children matter. Community matters. Having people around us whom we genuinely like and admire matters.

None of those relationships simply maintain themselves. You have to call people, make plans, show up, ask questions, listen, and sometimes apologize. Sometimes forgive. Sometimes set a boundary.

It takes effort to create a life that has good people in it. I think it’s worth it.

And I don’t believe marriage should be expected to provide every kind of connection we need. A partner can be enormously important without being our entire world.

So What Do We Actually Do in Premarital Counseling?

In sessions, we talk through how you communicate under stress, how you handle conflict, and what unspoken expectations each of you is bringing into the marriage. The point is to understand what’s actually happening between you.

I’m not sitting across from a couple trying to decide whether they’re a “good couple.”

I want to understand what happens between them.

How do you communicate when you’re stressed? What happens when one of you is hurt? Can you disagree without turning each other into the enemy? What did love and conflict look like in the families you grew up in? What are you expecting from marriage that you may never have actually said out loud?

We talk about money, sex, children, family, careers, household responsibilities, culture, religion when it’s important, friendships, independence, and boundaries.

We talk about how you fight.

What Both Marriages Taught Me

I’ve been the person in a relationship wondering, when is this going to get better?

I’ve thought I could fix another person. I’ve sat in a couples therapist’s office and left disappointed. I’ve gone through the end of a marriage.

Then I became a relational therapist and spent years sitting with couples trying to understand their own patterns. And I fell in love again.

Today I know what it’s like to be in a marriage where I can completely be myself. Where we laugh, take care of each other, disagree, apologize, negotiate, and keep going. Where conflict doesn’t make either of us question whether the relationship is safe.

Both experiences, the marriage that didn’t work and the marriage that does, come with me into this work. Not because my story is anyone else’s story. It isn’t. But I know what it feels like to wish you had understood something sooner.

Maybe premarital counseling would have changed my first marriage. Maybe it would have helped us realize we shouldn’t get married. I’ll never know. But I wish we’d had those conversations.

And when I look at my marriage today, I know something else.

A good marriage doesn’t require you to spend your life wondering when the relationship is finally going to get better.

You get to live in it.

You get to be yourself in it.

You get to enjoy it.

That’s why I care so much about helping couples look at what they’re building before they promise to build it for a lifetime.

Thinking About Couples Counseling Before Marriage?

If you’re engaged, considering marriage, or beginning to ask serious questions about building a future together, you don’t have to wait until something is wrong to work on your relationship. Sometimes the best time to work on a relationship is while you’re still building it.

I work with couples preparing for marriage at Clarity Therapy NYC, in person in Manhattan and via telehealth across New York State. Schedule a session with me to get started.

Frequently Asked Questions About Premarital Counseling

What is premarital counseling?

Premarital counseling is a structured series of conversations with a therapist before marriage. The goal is to help couples understand their communication patterns, expectations, and points of difference while there’s still time to work through them together, rather than after they’ve hardened into recurring conflict.

What are some premarital counseling questions worth asking?

Good starting points include: How do we handle conflict? What happens when one of us needs closeness and the other needs space? What do we expect from each other that we’ve never said out loud? How do we think about money, career, family, and children? The specific questions matter less than being willing to sit with the answers together.

How does premarital counseling work?

Most premarital counseling happens over several sessions in the months leading up to the wedding, though the timeline varies by couple and therapist. Sessions typically cover communication, conflict, finances, family, and intimacy, often drawing on approaches like Emotion-Focused Therapy or the Gottman Method, through guided conversation rather than a fixed test or checklist.

What are the benefits of premarital counseling?

The biggest benefit is timing. Couples get to surface differences, unspoken assumptions, and communication patterns while there’s still room to work with them, rather than after years of built-up resentment. It won’t guarantee a particular outcome, but it consistently gives couples a more honest picture of what they’re building together.

Is premarital counseling only for couples who have problems?

No. You don’t need serious relationship problems to benefit from premarital counseling. It can help healthy couples understand their communication, expectations, values, and family backgrounds, and surface potential areas of conflict before marriage rather than after.

What’s the difference between premarital counseling and couples therapy?

Premarital counseling typically helps couples understand their patterns and expectations as they prepare for marriage. Couples therapy can happen at any stage of a relationship and often addresses established conflict, disconnection, or trust issues that have already taken hold.

Can premarital counseling prevent divorce?

No therapist can promise that, and premarital counseling shouldn’t be marketed as divorce-proofing a marriage. The research on structured relationship-education programs is encouraging in some settings and mixed in others. One eight-year randomized trial of a well-known program found no overall difference in divorce rates between couples who received it and those who didn’t; the outcome depended on how much negative communication the couple already had before starting. What premarital counseling can reliably offer is earlier, more honest conversation: a place to name differences, notice recurring patterns, and make decisions with fewer unexamined assumptions.

Can premarital counseling help us decide whether we should get married?

Yes. It creates a structured place to look honestly at compatibility, expectations, and relationship patterns. The therapist shouldn’t make the decision for you. The goal is to help you make it with more awareness of what you’re actually choosing.

What if we tried couples therapy before and didn’t like it?

One disappointing experience with one therapist doesn’t define all couples therapy. The relationship between the couple and the therapist matters enormously, which is why finding the right therapist match is worth the extra step. Both partners should feel respected and heard, even in hard conversations. Sometimes finding the right fit takes another try.

About Clarity Therapy NYC

Clarity Therapy NYC is a boutique psychotherapy and psychological testing practice serving clients throughout New York City and New York State. With offices in Midtown Manhattan and virtual care available statewide, the practice provides personalized mental health support for individuals, couples, and families seeking a more thoughtful and specialized therapy experience.

The practice is led by Dr. Logan Jones and includes a multidisciplinary team of licensed psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, and assessment specialists with expertise across trauma, anxiety disorders, ADHD, depression, relationship dynamics, personality patterns, and emotional wellness.

Services include individual therapy, couples therapy, family therapy, EMDR, psychological testing, ADHD evaluations, executive functioning assessments, and medication management. Care is tailored to the individual, with an emphasis on depth, clinical quality, and strong therapeutic fit.

Clarity Therapy NYC is especially known for serving clients looking for a more personalized, high-attention approach to therapy in New York City.