Pre-marital Counseling.

I was happy to find out today, in my sociology class, that those who are married and have recieved pre-marital counseling are statistcally show that they are less likely to get divorced.

Hubby and I recieved pre-marital counseling before we got married. It was extremely eye opening and totally applicable. We had our counseling with our Pastor, so we were also provided insight to growing towards God together as a married couple. We also went through really simple things, that actually made living together easier. What I mean by simple things is chores around the house and other roles. First we went through a list of chores by ourselves to see who we expected would do what, as well as other things like, who is the navigater and who is the driver? Who picks up the gifts for the gift occasions? After we checked off who we expected, we went through together and discussed our answers. This may seem like a silly thing to do, but I'm super glad chores around the house are not a stressful thing. We indentified what chores and other stuff we as an individual would do, and now it's hardly a stresser in our marriage. We have only been married for about five months though, so I can imagine that roles and those sorts of things will need to re-evaluated at some point, but right now, there is little stress about it.
We also discussed about finances. Being young and in college, this was an important thing to discuss beforehand. Not only did we figure out who will be taking on the budgeting role moreso, but we started an early budget so we could know what to expect. I never in a million years thought that I would be the one to manage the budget. Hubby of course plays a gigantic role in planning the budget too. He is an overall picture guy and I'm the detailed one. But growing up, my dad is (and still is) the manager of the money, so I kinda expected Hubby to also take the lead. But with our personality types, it works better the other way around haha. But this is something we discovered in our counseling before getting married. If we had waited until afterward, I would have naturally taken the lead on the budgeting and finances, but it would have been reluctantly.

Just because Hubby and I took pre-marital counseling, it's not like we are the perfect spouses. But it definetly allowed us to see married life through each other's eyes. And it helped to have a Pastor that has counseled people and knows his stuff.
One thing that really stuck with me was talking about divorce. Our Pastor told us that if you even let that thought creep BEFORE you are married, in a way like, "I'm going to get divorced if..." or "Let's get a pre-nup", you are already setting yourself up for failure. You are already letting the idea of that MIGHT happening.

Statistics are great to show us overal as a country who is getting divorced and what is it correlated with, but don't set yourself up for failure or success based on the statistics. I think Hubby and I would kinda be in the failure range... hahaha. Love you Hubby. :)