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+1 to this. I no longer even associate with the religion that required us to do preparation, but still look back with appreciation on this event.

And while I would not be in favor of any state or religious requirement, I still wish it were just more widely done. Call it a marriage mindfulness weekend, make it a social norm as strong as sending "save-the-dates".

It was wild to go to a marriage prep event and see couples right next to us start yelling at each other "what do you mean you want kids?" or "why would I quit my job?" I don't know how you get engaged without knowing these things already.

For us, it led to some really good, deep conversations on what we wanted the future to be like. We were already largely aligned on practical things, but learned even more about some of our deepest dreams. And the style of conversation we practiced is still routinely useful when we get misaligned and need to talk about our hopes before we even start debating some concrete decision.

> It was wild to go to a marriage prep event and see couples right next to us start yelling at each other "what do you mean you want kids?" or "why would I quit my job?" I don't know how you get engaged without knowing these things already.

Put marriage aside, I don't know how couples avoid talking about this in general. I've been with my partner over a decade, not married, and obviously we talked about our feelings about children in the first two years. I don't see how it's possible to have a serious relationship and not do that. The same goes for virtually every other issue. We've had combined finances for most of our relationship now, for example.

If it's awkward or uncomfortable to talk about things like this with your (potential) life partner, that's a feeling it's absolutely vital to work through very early. You don't want to go through life with someone feeling that you can't broach any serious topic.

I know quite a few married couples that will rarely discuss finances with each other, they definitely won't combine money aside from transferring each other payments through Venmo. I've seen one Venmo money for dinner and later that night the other will Venmo money back for ice cream. It's bonkers to me and my wife. Some of them have no idea how much debt/savings each other have. That sounds like one rough patch from a disaster.

> I've been surprised at how many of my peers were not interested in any type of marriage prep program when they were planning their own wedding

There are a lot of lifestyles that don't want or even need that level of planning for marriage.

Some people are just going through the motions blindly either out of guilt, obligation, desperation, or simply because they think their partner is smokin' hot and want to "lock that down". These would generally be less affluent people.

Some others have such strict criteria that they know the planning is pointless if they aren't going to find anyone else. It just has to work and the pressure to make it so is beyond the two of them. Sometimes they also have more than enough resources available that their marriage doesn't need to be built on their own ability to work together or agree on much of anything. These would be very highly affluent people.

Your situation sounds somewhere in between. Not everyone has a life whose success is built on discipline, deliberation, or personal choice.

People also change and making firm decisions upfront is difficult. It's debatable whether they're "not ready for marriage" or if their lives are just so different from the "norm" that it's hard to understand.

People can tell you stuff, but ultimately we learn best from experience. And unfortunately, as much as we want to avoid others making the mistakes we did, experience doesn't work like that.

We had a plan for college. We had a plan for work. We had a plan gor marriage, giving birth, raising the kids, and so on. No plan survives contact with the enemy.

I smile now when pregnant couples tell me how they plan to spend their hobby time after the child is born. No worries, I'll be back in art class after a month. My wife says I'll still play golf on Saturdays. Of course we can raise kids in a house with a clean white carpet.

I could tell you it won't be like that (and, if I'm honest, that you won't -want- it to be like that), but you won't believe me.

Pre-marital planning is helpful (full disclosure, I did a class with my wife before we got married) - if for nothing else than giving us confidence we were on the same page. But we covered all the big topics (finance, kids, communication, conflict) which meant we -knew- we were on the same page.

Other people, with other personalities may or may not find it helpful. I can offer you good advice, but I can't make you take it. Experience doesn't work like that.

(For the record, you won't want to go to evening class, you'll want to sleep. And you won't be playing golf 'cause you, or her, will want to sleep. It's truly amazing how high on the priority list getting sleep will get.)

I think it would be helpful to have programs like this in earlier contexts as well - How to date effectively? How to communicate healthily with friends/family/work/romantic partners. Etc. I spent a lot of years fumbling around with underdeveloped social skills, low awareness of my emotions and needs, etc. I was fortunate that some of the people I dated had better skills in some of those areas and helped me start to level up but it was still a long and painful slog. And while some of the growth I have had took a lot of work, there were some skills that were much more straightforward to learn and develop.

A quick search seems to say most studies agree this type of thing does lower the divorce rate by a significant amount. Out of nothing more than curiosity... One thing I couldn't find was how many people decide to not get married because of that program and decide that marriage wasn't for them? (I assume that has some name I just can't figure out what to search for) I'm just curious if it's common for people to say "Glad we did this, we shouldn't get married"

I would be surprised if there were a significant number of couples who go through this preparation program and then say, "Welp, guess that won't work. Nice to have known you!"

But there are probably an appreciable number of couples who come to realize that they are not quite as prepared as they would like to be and decide to either extend the engagement process or to focus more attention to working these things out before their vows.

There is a potential causation vs. correlation issue here, too.

It may be no so much that people bail out due to the process, but that people who go into the process at all are more committed to the idea of marriage being permanent...

I don't think it is really necessary to do a formal "program", if you can work through all the big topics effectively together. On the other hand, a lot of people probably need help with that so I can see their value.

I suspect that unless you as a couple are already aligned with a religious provider of this counselling (e.g. the same church), a secular service would likely be more effective. Not inherently, just more a fit with the particular couple.

Which does sort of beg the question about why its not a more common discussed option? I mean, for a couple to seek out pre-marriage counselling outside of a religious context? Or even discuss it as an option.

I've known several couples who did such a program but they were all doing it at the request or insistence of their particular church. And I've known several couples who have gone to (secular) marriage counselling, but only after the fact.

> I don't think it is really necessary to do a formal "program", if you can work through all the big topics effectively together.

In theory, yes. But it's surprising how little het. cis couples talk about important stuff before getting married. Like, if/how many many, if they wanna live close to parents or move to another country, etc

> But it's surprising how little het. cis c

Is that true? Anecdotally it doesn't seem to be from my circles of friends. At least those I know well enough for that sort of thing to have come up in conversation...

Do you know of any research in the area suggesting it is uncommon?

I definitely suspect what you say correlates to people who get married young, in my experience.

I'd have associated it with youth more than whether people are het / cis certainly. The "U-Haul Lesbian" cliche isn't about cishet folks, but you can bet the hypothetical "Lesbian on a second date" in the joke is not a 49 year old with kids from a previous marriage.

I think it’s sad that common sense traditions that work for the vast majority of the population are only acceptable in a religious context, lest they be forced to fit the demands and ideology of every small and intolerant minority, or worse, the profit motive of the life dysfunction industry.

It’s like, people have had religious tradition for thousands of years, and the anti-religion cult thinks they’re the first ones to question the magic fairy tales. Like, maybe there’s a reason for giving everybody a common basis of values to relate to one another, and maybe inclusive secular humanism has repeatedly failed for lack of premise. Maybe wise people got tired of the debate. Nope, sorry, can’t do that; god says no.

Secularism worked for me as an independent person, but failed miserably in any instance of disagreement over values that affect more than one person. Turns out that my personal values weren’t much different than those of any major religion, but wow, I didn’t realize how far off it would be from other people without religion. My guess is that the marriage program would do very little for people not in the religion, aside from possibly identifying a lot of reasons not to get married, one of them being that a lack of strong cultural grounding in values, such as religion, is a starting disadvantage to an already difficult problem.

I guess that you are Catholic, isn't?