By Crystal King
How many hours did you spend learning to drive a car, practicing a sport, or learning to read? We typically spend hours in training to achieve a certain level of mastery. We may not remember learning to walk, but it took days of persistence, the willingness to fall, and the capacity to get up and try to stand again after the fall. Little ones spend every day working at the skill of walking until they can do it without thinking, but for a while, it looks like they are giving at least 70 percent of their energy to master this skill. That energy we give, pays off. We may not remember learning to walk and the hard work of it, but something made us keep at it. Maybe it was seeing everyone else do it successfully and wanting to join in on the freedoms of the walking world. Maybe it was the fact that any time we fell, we were encouraged to try again rather than criticized for the fall. One step that lasts two seconds is celebrated with emphatic cheering. Maybe getting traction and seeing ourselves stand a little longer each day gave us the motivation needed to put more and more energy into it. We were too young to put all this into words, but our neural pathways responded to the positive reinforcement and we kept up the pattern of falling, getting up, falling, getting up, and falling again. Eventually we all walk without falling. (Minus the occasional biff.) This is what training for mastery at something looks like.
WHY TRAIN FOR MARRIAGE MASTERY?
I do not know the stat, but from looking at the world around me, it seems that 100% of able bodied people who put the training hours into walking, generally succeed. What is the current-day percentage of marriages that succeed? The most recent stat I read was that almost 50% of first marriages will end in divorce. I am sure there is another stat out there about marriages that do not necessarily end in divorce, but they are also NOT thriving. A healthy marriage has been shown to offer support, longevity, and freedoms otherwise unexperienced. Numerous studies have detailed the benefits of a happy marriage. So why is marriage so difficult? Does it have to be this way? What if we dedicated the time and energy into learning how to “marriage” the way we learn other skills like walking, reading, driving? Why do we think that marriage will just be a skill we “get” how to do without any in-depth training? Or, sometimes we go the opposite direction and say we’ll forego marriage completely. We do not see people who do it well, so why try? We see marriage as a ship that gets tossed about and ripped apart and traps people in the middle of an icy, stormy ocean with no recourse or way out. And many times, it DOES become a battered and busted ship trying to survive a messy storm!!! Why would people expose themselves to that? Because, committing oneself to another human can also be the very thing that keeps us afloat in the messy storms of life! Marriage is meant to be a buffer and a safe haven for the storms of life. It offers a context for security and joy and peace at potentially profound levels, yet it is so often the opposite of this because we do not train how to navigate the storms. Things that matter are hard. Things that matter take training. The greater that risk….the greater the reward. For those who have decided that marriage can create security, significance, meaning, purpose, life-giving qualities, and who want to do marriage well, there are measures that can be taken to help build the type of marriage ship that will weather the fiercest of storms. There are trainings that can help individuals navigate the stormy movements of married life.
THE PROS OF PREMARITAL COUNSELING
Premarital counseling offers a chance to take an in-depth crash course on building the marriage ship and becoming a skilled sailor. When people have decided to get in the “marriage boat” and weather the storms of life with another person, they must build a solid mast, particular to their histories. They are about to join lives with, create a home with, make decisions with, create a family/ a life with another person who has an entirely different way of seeing the world. Listening to a podcast one time, the couple being interviewed (Milan and Kay Yerkovich) said that you need a PH.D in your spouse’s history to have a successful and thriving marriage relationship. Makes sense to me. How can you bond deeply and engage compassionately with someone when you only see a piece of them? We are a composite of our stories and our genetics and without digging deeper into our stories, we can be thrown off kilter by every wave in the sea. Premarital counseling focuses on covering topics that tend to throw the marriage ship off course. Topics that are easy to gloss over and not dig into when a couple is still in the euphoria of romance, infatuation, and butterfly love. Topics that create awareness, knowledge, and help each person reveal more sides of their story rather than just a small sliver. Knowledge of one’s story combined with trust and commitment is the ultimate trifecta for security, love, and strong bonding.
I don’t know anyone who said marriage was the easiest thing they ever did, but I do know a lot of people that say it is one of the most worthwhile things they have done. Premarital counseling is the start of the training process to prepare you to be a skilled sailor. It will not take away the rough seas, but “a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.”
Premarital counseling is by no means a guarantee of survival. We train to drive and still have accidents, we make mistakes and are still vulnerable to other drivers on the road who can make mistakes. We are still vulnerable to changing weather patterns that alter the function of our tires and the amount of traction they can sustain. Likewise, life can throw us or our spouse into a changing weather pattern at any time. “You can’t control the wind but you can adjust the sails.” Similarly, premarital counseling will not take away the winds that are going to try and toss your marriage boat about. It will, however, give you some tools to adjust the sails. It will prepare you for some stormy weather. It will start your training. It will reinforce that the marriage boat is a solid way to sail across the sea, and it will remind you that there will be storms; however, “you shall never make a sailor if you can’t face the wind and rain.”
Let’s get equipped to face the storms of marriage, so we can revel in its beauties. I look forward to helping you learn to traverse the possible storms of the unknown in your upcoming seaworthy journey. Rather than be overtaken or submerged by the raging seas, you and your partner can work as a team to circumnavigate the tempests that come your way.
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