Premarital Counselling: Before you tie the Knot!

She suggests counselling; you can identify your weaknesses and start working on them before they create many years of trouble later.

Certified marriage counsellors, like Ritu Singal, have training, tools, and tests to unearth your hidden weaknesses and help you overcome them.

With her premarital counselling services, she helps couples prepare for their marriage. Being a certified life coach helps her because she can help you identify and overcome other weaknesses that affect your work, relationships, and life.

Matchmaking Guidance

When you willingly participate in relationship counselling before your marriage, you can instantly see the profound positive impact even before you are married. Even newlywed couples can ask for marital counselling before it is too late to pre-empt any misunderstandings or misgivings that may creep in later. You can be assured of a healthy and robust relationship where mutual respect and unconditional love for each other is the foundation for the union.

Couples counselling can help teams of diverse regions, multiple caste or race identities, any gender, or believing in any faith. She says with timely counselling, you can prevent trivial issues from escalating into severe problems in the future.

Most importantly, she suggests that premarital counselling helps the couple manage and set their expectations from each other and the relationship to address any fault-lines they might cause.

There are many sensitive topics that we never tend to think of or discuss with our partners until it is too late to understand their point of view. This happens mostly because we don’t think of them ahead, and in some cases, where we do, we don’t bring them up!

This can cause friction and clash of opinion on — joint finances and property, child-rearing manners and ways, career goals vs. family, religious practices & beliefs, routine, habits, etc.

Marriage counselling helps you understand your partner’s beliefs and expectations on these issues and help you draw a plan to address them as they will surface.

Even online marriage counselling is good as there is no need for physical proximity with the relationship counsellor, and she can help you improve your relationship before marriage

Over multiple sessions of premarital counselling, the Life coach will encourage you to discuss:

• Change how you view the relationship – The counselling helps both partners evaluate and see their relationship with more objectivity and help them see their positive interactions.
• Understanding Cultural Differences – The upbringing conditions your mind and clouds your every thought. The family values you grow up with and the environments colour your perspectives about all relationships in your lives. This is equally true for your partner. And when both of you see with the tinted glasses, differences are bound to come in related to work, dressing, cultural festivities, etc. A relationship counsellor can help bridge the gap and train you both in employing the art of concession.
• Corrects Dysfunctional Behavior – Many people are prone to involuntary dysfunctional behaviour such as aggression, depression, dominance, control issues, and addictions. A life coach and marriage counsellor can help you manage these issues before they become a problem.
• Improve communication – The problem starts to creep into any relationship, especially in a marriage, when the communication breaks down. To ensure that you say and listen to each other, whatever you are feeling without hurting in any way requires practice, patience, and useful communication tools. Life Coaches and marriage counsellors help couples with active listening techniques, speaking openly with mutual respect, and learning to “agree to disagree” on important matters.
• Find Positives – With effective marital counselling, can help you both find and appreciate each other’s positive and strengths and the relationship. This will give you reasons to invest your love and trust in the marriage and nurture it well.

Common Issues, Uncommon Solutions

In her offline and online marriage counselling sessions, the counsellor addresses a wide range of problems and flashpoints, such as the following:

• Conflict Resolution – How do you approach and resolve conflicts between you two? Are you able to communicate about it? How do you and your partner approach the issue? What do you think must be done? Who was at fault? These are some of the tough questions that are asked with a given situation, and the answers give insight into how well prepared you are to handle conflicts. She will then provide you with specific tools to strengthen your weak spots.
• Communication – What are the barriers to communication? Are you able to say what you feel without being judged? How do and how often do you communicate? She will find the gaps and will suggest practical ways to encourage communication.
• Manage Expectation – As mentioned in the beginning, unrealistic expectations from a relationship and your partner leads to a broken marriage. That is why many people who enter a relationship with certain expectations are heartbroken when they don’t find what was expected. A couples’ counsellor encourages both partners to chat about their expectations deliberately and suggest ways to manage them.
• Core Beliefs – Certain core beliefs, like one held against the consumption of alcohol or non-vegetarian food, certain religious beliefs, and the priority of certain relations, are non-negotiable for most people. If you have many differences, then a counsellor helps us find common core beliefs in our financial matters and shares values. Couples with shared values are more likely to stay together.
• Finances – Who earns, how much, where to spend and invest, these questions are pertinent to a couple. Money is there to serve us, but many people feel uncomfortable if you talk with them about their finances, they are tight-lipped. Counsellor and Life Coach helps partners find an optimum financial plan that takes care of short-term goals, long-term goals, and medium-term goals.
• Family and Kids – Are you comfortable in a joint family, or do you want to complete independence? Do both of you want children? How many? When do you think you should plan a family? What will happen to the wife’s job/career when she is on maternity leave? Will she be ready to be a stay-at-home mother for long?
• Intimacy – Are you equally comfortable when you discuss sexual relations? How do you want to do it, and is it ok to experiment? Are you able to speak freely about your desires to your partner? Does she/he understand them and act on them? She suggests that couples must talk freely, honestly, and openly about sex. The ability to discuss such issues without misgivings and qualms will result in a successful marriage.
• Roles in marriage – Is the man going to be the sole bread earner and the woman the homemaker? Is the man going to do household chores and bring kids from school? Is the female partner going to pursue her career? What will happen when she earns more than he? The couple played these scenarios in the counselling sessions to make them realize the situation’s idea and gravity.

Why should you opt for Premarital Counselling?  

There are several reasons why pre-marriage counselling is a good idea. If both partners in a relationship have got to the stage when one feels that the other person has lost interest in them, then this is an indication that all is not well in the relationship. The worst thing that one could do in such a situation is to carry on like nothing is wrong. While this may seem like a good idea at the time, it can lead to all kinds of heartache in the long run. Couples who have started with a stable and loving relationship but find themselves falling out of love may find it a better option to opt for premarital counselling than to try and work out the problem by themselves.

A very important reason why you should opt for pre-marriage counselling is that it can give you some much-needed relationships advice and backup if you should end up getting married without the assistance of anyone else. 

Many people end up rushing into a marriage that they might not be ready for. If couples get married before taking some relationship advice, they will likely face troubles and frustration to make the relationship work. 

By having someone by your side, you will be assured that you will not be left hanging when you get married. Relationship education will give you peace of mind, and this will allow you to enjoy the luxury of being able to enjoy the time that you spend together.

Another reason you should opt for matchmaking guidance is that it can help you find a compatible partner. When you take the time to go through the problems with matchmaking guidance, you will be better prepared to deal with your problems when you get married. The more experience you get to handle different situations, the less likely you are to make the same mistakes again. Relationship education is always good and will help you to grow as a better person. 

A relationship counsellor will never tell you what to do; instead, she will help you find your relationship problems and solutions.

They bring objectivity, clarity, and decisiveness to the equation that was missing earlier. They listen intently and objectively without being judgmental.

Any marriage counselling session outcomes will depend on your commitment, level of participation, integrity, and honesty.

The scientific tools, techniques, and exercises are used by Ritu Singal to help you monitor and track your milestones.

Your expectations, circumstances, emotions, desires, and needs all play a role in what you get out of any session and the overall exercise.