Five Times When It’s Not a Good Idea to Get Premarital Counseling

If you’re a counselor, therapist, pastor, or church leader, and you read my title and thought of ways to blow off or blow up my lackadaisical attitude toward marriage: Wait! I’m actually all for premarital counseling. I’m a counselor, too. I am all for strong, biblically-based, well-prepared marriages. So why this topic?

I, like you, have seen countless marriages melt down into divorce for all sorts of reasons. Many have admitted that they saw the red flags and warning signs before the wedding, but went through with it. Others were in a dire hurry to get married and didn’t want to wait around for community support or premarital counseling. Several acknowledged that they had neglected their marriages or made something else their priority, and the relationship suffered because of it.

We could all list the various reasons counselees, friends, leaders, and even our souls, gave for dissolving these marriages. Premarital counseling would have helped many of those marriages never happen. These potential marriages would have been exposed as schemes from hell bent on destroying lives. There are very few situations premarital counseling would not have helped.

If you’re engaged, congratulations! I hope you’re going through premarital counseling. I hope you are going because it is evident that the Lord called you two together, you want to face the marriage honestly, learn about your future spouse, and discuss important topics in anticipation of the marriage.

If those aren’t your primary reasons for willingly going through premarital counseling, I hope the following are also not your primary reasons for going through premarital counseling:

 1. When you’re trying to convince yourself to do something you really ought not to go through: this marriage. Cold feet—fear—are very common during an engagement, especially for those getting married for the first time, or after being single for a long time. Love for your girlfriend/boyfriend and commitment to the institution of marriage usually overcome those fears, especially when you talk with others and find out they’ve gone through it, too.

If you have this chronic, nagging doubt that you should not go through with this wedding, heed that nagging. Find out where it’s coming from: family? Friends? Your observation of a character flaw? Different lifestyles, goals, expectations? A sense of not being called together into this union?

If you think something is wrong, even if you can’t understand it now, trying to talk yourself into marrying someone by going through with premarital counseling is not going to help you. It might even hurt you. Watch and pray, and break up if you need to. It’s better to have a broken engagement than a broken marriage. If you think something is wrong, even if you can’t see it now, trying to talk yourself into marrying someone by going through with premarital counseling is not going to help you. It might even hurt you. Click To Tweet

2. Trying to convince your partner that they’re the one with the problem. Sometimes we think that it’s the other person who has a real problem, and that if they’d just get their act together and agree with you, this relationship would be perfect.

I really have met people like that. It’s pretty scary, that level of grandiosity. I can see that easily leading to abuse.

If you think you don’t have any problems and you’re the perfect marriage partner, I’d tell your partner to break it off and run for the hills. Premarital counseling done right reveals flaws and issues with both parties. Don’t think you’re exempt. This leads to the next situation not being good for premarital counseling:

3. If one or both of you are stubborn. Being or marrying a stubborn person is a set-up for failure and a sure way to kill a marriage. That’s because a stubborn person is proud. He/she resists input and brings consequences and discipline upon themselves (Prov. 12:1, 18:12, 28:14).

God resists the proud. You will be trapped, or will create the trap, of continually experiencing consequences and discipline within the marriage. A marriage rife with consequence chaos and the blaming that comes with it will not have any peace, love, or joy in it.

Is that what you want? Do you want to go into premarital counseling—and later, the marriage—being blamed for everything wrong in the relationship? The longer you stay, the worse it will get.

4. When one or both of you is hiding something big and they’re lying about covering it up. *If they (or you) are covering it up, it’s big.

Qualities like dishonesty, which are often evidenced by attitudes like resisting observations or advice, disrespect for the other’s opinions, and lack of grace and understanding for mistakes and flawed humanity, don’t need a professional counselor to diagnose most of the time. They’re evident in just the regular interactions.

I have heard all kinds of crazy and terrible stories: new spouses uncovering six-digit debts, being beaten on the wedding night, finding out their now-spouse was being sued, learning that the previous marriage wasn’t legally ended, that they had an STD or a drug habit or a pornography problem. They were all nightmares hidden by deceitful cover-ups.

Often these perpetrators cover up because they were desperate to get married. They needed to be able to coerce the new spouse into taking responsibility for the problem and relieving them of the consequences. This is unethical, wrong, and sinful.

Without honesty, your relationship will not thrive properly because good relationships can only be built on trust and being trustworthy. If you’re not the one hiding anything, you have a right to know everything.

If you’re the one hiding, you might be surprised by the grace you receive once you disclose your issues. If nothing else, you can find help for your problems so that you can get right with God and with man.

5. When one partner is not a follower of Christ. If one of you is not a Christian, the one relationship that is supposed to be a haven of love and joy will become a place of torment. Your spiritual life together is supposed to be the focus and source of strength, guidance, and rest. If one person is totally not for any of that, how can the believer find strength and peace? What do you have in common that will overcome the biggest deficit in your future marriage?

If they weren’t a believer, you had no business dating them in the first place. Premarital counseling will not turn someone who’s not a Christian into an instant Christian. They may even become bitter and turn away from God. Then where are you? Where will your future marriage be? If they weren’t a believer, you had no business dating them in the first place. Premarital counseling will not turn someone who’s not a Christian into an instant Christian. Click To Tweet

I heard about one person’s negative experience with premarital counseling. Apparently, her spouse-to-be had a religious background and expected her to develop one also. He convinced her to go through religious premarital counseling. Many important differences were ignored in favor of learning religious rituals and forming religion-based goals for marriage and parenting. She resented all of it.

The biggest takeaway the victim had was that she did not want to embrace her now-ex husband’s brand of spirituality. Apparently God was misrepresented to that person, and today, it appears she is not a believer.

If you’re engaged, I hope that you are getting the knowledge and tools you will need to make your future together a success in premarital counseling. May you undergo it with grace and honesty.