Couples who come to therapy together before marriage usually present with the same scenario. One party is very much in favor of counseling either because they see issues in the relationship or because their family of origin had issues. The other party is coming to be cooperative-"because they want me to."  What happens in these sessions and why is this process useful.

What happens: When I have a couple in for pre-marital counseling here is my plan. I will spend one or two sessions getting a detailed history of each person's family of origin. In this history I am looking for patterns of communication as well as trying to get a sense for that individual's filter for the world. If they have had a difficult childhood, I want to get a sense of what this means to them now and how their experience has shaped their current life.  Frequently people with difficult childhoods want to form relationships and families that are different from what they grew up with yet without examining old thought patterns and value systems, history frequently repeats. A better approach is to look at your childhood family, decide what you liked, what you didn't and work to make those modifications.

I then do a couple's oriented evaluation that offers a different way of interpreting how childhood experience translates into the conscious and subconsicous hope we have for our spouses. Finally I ask each couple to complete an online marital inventory that highlights areas of agreement and disagreement and is a good basis for discussion.

Why is this useful if we're not having problems:   The couples relationship is the most intimate relationship we will ever engage in next to the relationship with our mom and dad. Most of our hopes and expectations have been shaped by our prior experiences in our family of origin.  Early in our relationships we are on our best behavior and we are trying really hard in the relationship. As the stresses of jobs and children mount, old patterns or old ways of thinking begin to take over as our guard drops. If we can understand the reasons for these old patterns, areas of conflict can be treated with compassion and understanding rather than defensiveness and anger.