Blog – Should We Go On A Marriage Preparation Course?
Hi Father Robert, my mum has offered to pay for a marriage preparation course for my fiancee and I, but we are a little nervous about it as we don’t go to church very often, and are worried it will be very religious. Can you tell us what to expect and what the benefits are?
The first thing is to say that I’m a massive fan of marriage preparation courses. The second thing to say is that they will vary a lot from place to place, so I can’t guarantee anything.
That said, here are a few reasons why it’s a good idea. Yes, the wedding day’s important: it should be a fantastic celebration for you and your friends and family. So it’s right that you should spend a long time preparing/sending out invitations/working out the flowers etc.etc. But the fact is a wedding day is just that, a day. A marriage is, hopefully, for life.
And the funny thing is, even when people have been going out for years, they often don’t talk about certain things. I’ve run marriage preparation courses for couples who’ve been together for fifteen years and have three kids, and at the end, they’ve said, “That’s the first time we’ve ever discussed…”
It’s amazing how easy it is to love someone, but not to get round to talking about something: maybe subconsciously, we even avoid it. We end up watching TV together for two hours, but not actually talking to each other. A marriage preparation course is designed to give you space to talk to each other about important things in life.
The sorts of things a good marriage preparation course will talk about are: communication and listening, how to express your love, how to deal with conflict, and possibly particular subjects: e.g. money, in-laws, children…
As for not going to church much, I wouldn’t worry. For one thing, there are bound to be other couples in your situation. And to take a church, which is absolutely ‘full-on’, Holy Trinity, Brompton, in London, they do a marriage preparation course which is really popular about people who never dream of going to church: they may never go to church again, but they’ve still appreciated their Marriage Preparation Course.
Clergy aren’t going to make assumptions about where you do/don’t live together; whether you have/haven’t had sex before; your level of faith. They are just keen that you have the most solid foundation for your marriage that’s possible and that it can be a loving relationship that lasts for the rest of your life. It’s a little insight, we’d say, into God’s love for all of us.
I can’t recommend going on a course strongly enough. You should thank your mum for paying for it!
Cheers,
Robert Stanier
Chaplain, Archbishop Tenison’s School, Oval Youth minister, North Lambeth team and St Anne with All Saints, South Lambeth
“When a person is happy, they become kind.”
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