Marriage preparation courses?

[Knackeredmommy]

Has anyone attended one of these courses? Was it useful?
Thanks

Quite thought provoking. Causes you to actually discuss tricky topics, like
Will we have dc, what if we don’t
How will we approach arguments
How do you imagine chores will be shared
What are my hopes for our sex life together
Try to think about how you can help each other out, when you are both busy and stressed, not think about how unfair it is they are not doing xyz when they are actually doing abc if you stop to think about it.

O.K thanks. Sounds like they're worth a go.

We did it. It was very detailed but good. It asks all the questions which can and will pop up throughout a marriage. All the stuff couples should discuss but may not have spoken about before getting married. In Ireland it is compulsory to complete a pre-marriage course before getting married in the Catholic Church.

Sounds brilliant. If DP and i did one though we may split up. Can long term inhabitants with kids do one even if not marrying?!

I had to in order to get married in an RC church, as PPs have said it gets you discuss important issues before encountering them.
We’re still together after 25 years.

We had to do one so we could get married in a Catholic Church. It was a bit like being on a very tedious management away day.

I enjoyed ours, we have a good relationship with our priest so it was almost fun!
As others have said, we just chatted about various scenarios and our reactions to them.

@Highfever we're a blended family, having a civil ceremony and have booked one. Very interested to see what comes up.

We had one (compulsory at the church we married in). Rather randomly, we had so much fun. Six couples, no one else spike. DH had long debates with the Relate Counsellor in the morning, and the vicar in that afternoon.

At the end, the Relate Counsellor came over to me, pressed her card into my hand, and whispered "just in case you need this in the future ".

Sorry, spoke, not spike. Don't think they'd ever met anyone like DH before.

We did one. We got married in a Church in Wales church, but DH is Catholic and wanted the marriage recognised by the Catholic Church so we involved his priest all the way - had our bans read in both churches etc.

We did, our Church of England vicar insisted on it. It was in a group of 8, facilitated by an elderly couple from the church who'd both had long first marriages, been bereaved and then met and married each other.

We found it helpful, it got us to discuss things like attitudes to money, risk, how you dealt with stress and whether or not you wanted children. It might sound obvious, but we know 2 long term couples who had been together for years and years, got married and suddenly things felt apart. In both cases it's because their attitudes to some of the things above had changed over the years, but they hadn't re-discussed them.

We’re doing one. It’s spread over 8 months, one evening a month. It’s in the function room of a pub, and we pay £5 and get a meal.

We sit at 2 person tables with our partners, and the first half is just a date night where we eat and chat, then they show a DVD Clip, and we discuss the issues and write some things in our workbooks.

I was dreading it, I was imagining us all sitting in a circle, and the leaders being very preachy. But actually, we don’t speak to the other couples at all, and there’s no awkward sharing.

We’ve found it to be really useful at helping us identify issues in our relationship and find solutions before they become problems.

I wish I'd done one with my STBXH. A lot of this issues he would never talk about and I'd let go would have to have been addressed, he'd have kicked off and it would have saved a lot of upset and heartbreak in the long run. I think it's a brilliant idea. They should be compulsory actually. So many people let important things go because their partner is hostile or shuts down when they try to discuss things at home.

We had to as it was compulsory at our church. Both DH and I thought it was going to be tedious but it was actually quite good fun (DH was particularly concerned as I’m the religious one and he’s agnostic so was worried it was going to be very church orientated, which it wasn’t.)

One of the most useful bits was talking about how sometimes you want to share with your partner but don’t need them to argue a counterpoint, you just need support. We both try and remind each other of that sometimes!

Thanks, have persuaded partner to attend one! It's a one day course, I think it's a condensed version of the 6 week one. Just having that space to focus solely on us will be great.

We had to do one because of getting married in a church. I had gone in it worried that I was marrying my OH because it was a natural progression in our relationship and it disproved that as well as sitting in a broken down car for 4hrs

I did one about 20 years ago.....the wedding didn't go ahead. However, DP and I have ours next month. We are both older and wiser and don't expect any shocks. It's not 'compulsory' - but the church would like us to do it.

We just had our compulsory one. It was tedious and didn’t really feel helpful in any way. We’re a very open couple and we’ve talked through pretty much everything they suggested already (how do you get to the point of getting married without already having talked about your stance on kids, or understanding each other’s argument style for example?!) so it just felt like a box ticking exercise. But the vicar wanted us to do it so we did!

How does this work if you've been living together for years? As @lsth has said, we've already discussed or come across most, if not all of these issues.

My fiance and I did one, it was absolutely fantastic

We got paired up with an ''experienced'' couple at the end of the course to have some one on one sessions. We were so perfectly matched with this couple meaning that they had gone through similar issues to us. That couple are now coming to our wedding!

What is interesting is that, I only suggested it because my friend had done it with her fiance the previous year....and ended up breaking up with the issues it threw up! (Obviously good that this happened before marriage)
What I was most surprised at was that, we did ours in Feb/March this year and some of the other couples were getting married within a week or two of the course ending!
We are not getting married until October and it was always in the back of my head, well if something totally serious came up, enough to end the relationship, we would at least have time to cancel the wedding!

Luckily nothing did come up, it has only strengthened our bond (I know, massively corny)

Now I would suggest to everyone getting married they need to do the course no matter what, just choose wisely where you do it. Our church is very contemporary and modern - Hillsong esque - so when we mentioned we lived together already no one fainted however at the more old fashioned churches we may have been made to feel like the devil!