I mentioned in a previous post that you ought to take advantage of all the avenues available for pre wedding counseling. Some are cultural, some religious, some are ad hoc quickly put together by well meaning uncles and aunts, and some are private arrangements run by certified counselors.
Since I am neither a certified counselor, nor a religious authority I guess this begs the question,
“what does a wedding photographer have to say about building a marriage?”
The answer is
“nothing much”
But I do have some thoughts from my experience as a newly wed groom myself as well as the experiences I’ve garnered in dealing with couples getting ready to walk down the aisle.
Wedding classes? What for? They are too short to make a difference
This is one of the most common objections I hear to any form of pre wedding counseling. The couple has probably been dating for a while, maybe 2 to 4 years, and so they don’t think there is any benefit a few weeks or months of classes can add to their relationship and their knowledge of each other.
Yes marriage classes are short. Sometimes really short!
For the Catholic Church in my parish the classes run for 6 months once a week while in my wife’s former parish they ran for 3 months with classes occurring twice weekly.
Even though this sounds too short to be of any use over the course of a marriage, they can be extremely useful because they help set the context for a marriage and give simple tips to help smooth things out in troubled times.
The roadmap
The classes provide a roadmap for things we can expect to navigate in this journey called marriage. These are things common to a lot of us and things which don’t depend on how well we knew each other while courting or for how long we courted.
The things that happen to us all include children and family planning, budgeting and family finances, conflict resolution and dealing with the extended family, faith and spiritual growth of the family, sexual intimacy, and so on.
These are the things which are common denominators to us all and recurring issues most of us can expect to face time and time again during the course of our marriages. If you look at this way, it then becomes clear why and how you could learn a thing or two even if you and your partner already know each other like the back of your hand.
How can we be sure the classes will be useful?
Volunteers make up the most of the teaching cadre in these programs especially for churches. These are people who have a “spiritual mission” in being there. They are trying to set lives and mend marriages even before cracks begin to develop. Their reward is in heaven so they expect no other incentive to do their job here on earth. Although one instructor in my parish was a published author. He didn’t ask for any of us to buy the books but he had some copies on hand anyway!
Consciously coupling…
The topics of these courses are usually extensive and make us consciously pay attention to matters we glance over while courting.
While my wife and I were dating we spoke about how we wanted our children to be raised, but didn’t discuss “family planning” per se. Our most memorable argument after our wedding class was on the number of children we’d like to have.
She had a number in mind but I thought that family finances and her health would determine how many kids we’d have. It took the marriage classes to show us how we were moving forward with our assumptions and expectations without filling each other in on them.
Budgeting and prayer life were also issues we spoke about from time to time, but it also took the marriage classes for us to start talking about them in a more conscious and more deliberate manner.
Simple tools… The hidden benefit
Marriage prep classes are famous for the “simple tools” and “silver bullets” that come out of them. We have all heard about the “toothpaste divorce” story and about the “please and sorry” recipe for saving a marriage. Then there are also sermons about “compromise” and other such things to make a marriage go along smoother.
The three fingers test
We were introduced to one of such tools in my marriage prep class. This was the three fingers test.
Members of the class went round talking about three things that they absolutely love about their partners. We had some serious things to say and some trivial but we had to draw up our list nonetheless and work through the more weighty ones.
Why is the exercise important?
The story is tied to the nun who was the facilitator for the retreat and seminar we had during my marriage prep classes. When she was a young sister in Ibadan she witnessed a heart wrenching incident. A woman came into a bus carrying a baby while cursing in Yoruba:
“May he die a painful death!
May his descendants never know peace!!”
An elderly woman tried to intervene:
“Is it the father of this child you are cursing like this? Is this baby not his descendant?
The young mother replied:
“I don’t care, may he get run over by a train and die a painful death!”
Most of the women on the bus tried to get her to calm down while the reverend sisters who were already running late tried to get another vehicle.
They didn’t stay long enough to find out the cause of the rift but it left a strong impression on the young nun. She came from a family where she had witnessed her parents have a similar fight.
How do things go from good to bad?
The young nun always wondered why and how things could get so bad when the chances are that the couple loved each other very much at some point in time before.
She came up with the three fingers test so that when the big misunderstandings come (and they will come) we will remember that he is also kind, caring and supportive before getting that angry with him. And likewise we will remember that our bride was very welcoming of our family, a dedicated mother and a highly motivational spouse.
In either case if those were your three things, it would help to douse tensions if you have them at the tip of your fingers. It would also put the bitter dispute in perspective in the larger scheme of things so we can start narrowing things down while working towards a solution.
Done in a few weeks, crafted for a lifetime
Marriage classes are intended to help us for a lifetime even though they don’t last that long. If we attend them with an open mind we could find tools and insights that will help us through the tough times.
Marriage is a beautiful thing but nothing is perfect. Masterpieces take time and conscious effort to build. The cake, decorations and the photographs are only a testament to what we’re going to strive for a life time to build.
Take the classes and start putting in the work. A poorly planned wedding ceremony can be tolerated and even forgotten with time. But a poorly anticipated, and not so well thought out marriage is another question entirely.
Signing off and signing out
As usual, thanks again for reading and stopping by Iludio. We’ll do our best to bring you the best wedding inspiration we can and make this your definitive online wedding guide. We hope to see you soon again and please be sure to get in touch if you have any questions and comments.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ayede Film & Photography
