Richmond Pre-marital Counseling – Marriage, Couples, Relationships
Let us Help You Plan for a Strong, Healthy, Lifelong Marriage
Taking the time to focus on your relationship is the best way to prepare for your wedding and — most importantly — for your marriage.”
Congratulations! If you have arrived at this page, it is most likely because you are in some stage of planning a wedding. Perhaps the big day is fast approaching. Perhaps you are just contemplating marriage. Whatever your situation, you are wise to consider premarital counseling. Marriage is one of the most important life decisions you will make. It affects every facet of your life and happiness.
It should not be entered into lightly; a lifelong-intended relationship should be approached with deliberation and care.
While it is common in some religions — some officiants even require it — others may even be unaware of what premarital counseling includes or entails.
Most couples that undergo premarital counseling are engaged, but it can also be helpful for those just beginning to consider marriage (in this case, the service is called pre-engagement counseling). It can be difficult to know whether marriage is the best next step. Maybe one partner in the relationship is ready for marriage — the other may be scared or anxious. A skilled premarital counselor can help couples decide for themselves what is best for both individuals through discussion and knowledge sharing. And at Thriveworks Richmond Premarital Counseling, excellent therapists are ready to meet with you this week, if not within 24 hours.
Why Pursue Premarital Counseling?
As with any form or counseling or therapy, there are benefits to the individuals, as well as to the relationship. Getting to know yourself better, as well as understanding your own desires and goals can help you be a better future spouse.
Planning a wedding is stressful for many couples. There are so many tasks to be accomplished, in-laws to meet, friends to wrangle together in some semblance of a wedding party; the list goes on and on. There are so many choices to be made for the actual wedding and reception; couples can disagree about so many different things during this time. If one partner in the relationship is having doubts about the wedding, they may feel very uncomfortable voicing these once the invitations have gone out. However, there is no better time to explore your fears or doubts than before the wedding. Even the happiest and most stable of couples are put under a great deal of stress during wedding planning. Taking the time to focus on your relationship is the best way to prepare for your wedding and — most importantly — for your marriage.
Thriveworks Richmond Premarital Counseling can also help couples understand what marriage is really like in the first to the fiftieth year of marriage.
Premarital counseling will certainly cover the big life choices, including:
- Common interests and leisure activities
- Role expectations
- Communication styles
- Religion and worship attendance
- Household duties and expectations
- Budget and finance
- Children and parenting styles
- Public or private education
- Sexuality and intimacy
- Needs for space and privacy
- Where the family unit will reside
- Finances and debt
- Occupations and careers
- Holiday expectations and travel
- Relationships with extended family and in-laws
You do not have to be worried that if you enter into premarital counseling that you are obligated to get married. The industry-leading therapists at Thriveworks Richmond Premarital Counseling can help you and your partner decide if this is truly the best next step for your relationship. If it is not, we can help coach you through conversations about where the relationship goes from here. The choice will always be up to you; your counselor will simply help you make the process easier to understand by inviting you to engage in judgement-free communication and understanding.
What are the Benefits of Premarital Counseling?
Research has shown that premarital counseling can minimize separation fears and pre-marriage anxieties. At Thriveworks, we also believe that any person that enters into counseling stands to gain a great deal of knowledge and understanding about their goals, dreams, personality and flaws. Better insight into their relationship, and also into one’s self helps improve both members functioning, as well as finding out skills helpful in various other relationships.
As with most types of therapy and counseling, some of the benefits include:
- Confidence and assertiveness
- Patience
- Avoiding dependency and co-dependency
- Having realistic expectations of others
- Contentment
- Developing coping skills
- Establishing goals
You should know that therapy, counseling and coaching do not imply you have a problem. Rather, it indicates that you are conscientious in trying to prevent future problems and create the best relationship possible through self-examination and self-improvement.
Why Choose Thriveworks Richmond Premarital Counseling?
When you choose a premarital counselor, you are trusting one of the most important things in your lives to this person — and let’s be honest — who is a relative stranger. You want to be sure that you are receiving educated, sound advice from someone who cares. The person that you choose will be a major partner in helping your relationship possibly move to it’s next most natural state.
The professionals at Thriveworks Richmond Premarital Counselors are leaders in the mental health field. They have been published in leading publications, such as the Chicago Tribune, Prevention, Psychiatric Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Journal of Mental Health Counseling.
We are ready to put our expertise to work for your relationship.
When you are planning a wedding, you have so much going on, it may seem impossible to make time for premarital counseling. But this is one of the most important steps you can take before the big day (and bigger life). We have all heard the horrible statistics about divorce. Prepare yourself and your relationship for the challenges of marriage.
We respect your decision to seek counseling and know that it is time-sensitive. We do not believe in operating with a waiting list. We want to be ready when you are ready to seek help. For that reason, in most cases, we have appointments available for new clients within 24 hours.
When you conducted the search that brought you to this page, you were most likely inundated with choices. There is a great deal of information available on this topic. It can be difficult to make a choice. You need not look any further. Thriveworks counselors can be your trusted partner in creating the marriage that you know is possible.
