What is Premarital Counseling Like?
Premarital counseling is one of the many services offered by our team at The Counseling Hub! As you may know, we specialize in individual counseling and couples therapy or marriage counseling. Premarital work definitely falls under the couples therapy or marriage counseling umbrella, but it’s slightly unique than other types of couples work that we do, and here’s why.
First of all, when people are seeking out premarital counseling, it’s usually assumed that they don’t have a significantly pressing issues with regard to conflict, affair, or communication. People often seek premarital counseling because, well, they’re getting married. With that said, it frequently does happen that people come in for premarital counseling and end up doing a little bit more than just to premarital work.
Premarital counseling is usually done with a variety of assessments and a pretty structured format. You and your beloved would complete some assessments and then you would go through said assessments with your counselor to see where the two of you differ and overlap. The assessments aren’t designed to be a measure of your relationship health, and they are not designed to predict weather your relationship will succeed or fail (we offer Gottman therapy for that!). The purpose of the premarital assessments are, quite literally, to see where you overlap and differ with your partner on a variety of topics, including but not limited to finances, sex, communication styles, personality traits, kids, and a host more.
It is important that you have some understanding and conversation about these topics with your partner prior to getting married. We see plenty of people for couples counseling down the road who didn’t get clear with one another on basic differences about really important things. The things aren’t important because of anything inherent about the topic - the things are important because they show up so consistently in relationships that we need to make sure that we at least understand where our partner is coming from. So while we would say that talking about these topics doesn’t reduce you’re potential for future problems, it does allow you both to learn how to discuss things you’ll agree and disagree on (the latter being way more important). In other words, it can help you learn to argue effectively with your partner. Ha! Sounds funny, but we’re being serious.
I would also throw in that we are probably a fantastic fit for premarital counseling because not only do we assess those different topic areas, but we are especially skilled at helping people learn how to communicate in ways that are healthy and effective and increase people’s understanding of their partner, as well as increase respect and compassion for their partner. Doing these things from the outset will absolutely set you up for success down the road.
Another bonus to our premarital work is that it’s for both secular and religious counselors. Lots of folks will go through their church (if their religious), which we completely understand, but there are a subset of people who aren’t very religious, but also want premarital counseling. You are for sure in the right place, if that’s you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tara Vossenkemper, PhD, LPC
Tara Vossenkemper earned her PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision from the University of Missouri–Saint Louis (ranked second in the nation for all counselor education programs), and earned her Master of Arts in Counseling from Missouri Baptist University. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Missouri and has presented at regional and national conferences on the topics of ethnic and racial discrimination, sexual minority distress, working with intimate relationships, and spirituality, and is does light business consulting (for practice owners) on the side.
Tara has a diverse set of clinical experiences, working with both adolescents and adults on issues ranging from emotional and behavioral to eating disorders, anxiety, spirituality, and existential crises. However, she specializes (and is most passionate about) couples therapy and marriage counseling. Tara enjoys working with couples who want to decrease toxic conflict and increase the effectiveness and safety within conflict, relearn how to communicate with each other in effective ways (and where each partner feels understood), or who feel very disconnected and want to give their relationship one last shot.
Tara has completed Level 3 training in the highly effective Gottman Method Couples Therapy (Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3). She has also been formally trained as in the Prepare-Enrich Premarital Couples Counseling approach and the PREP Approach for couples counseling. In addition to the formal training, Tara’s dissertation was focused on relationship satisfaction and detracting factors. Tara was a former regular contributor to the American Counseling Association blog (you can read her work here) and is currently serving as the President Elect-Elect for the American Counseling Association of Missouri.
Address
The Counseling Hub, LLC
2804 Forum Blvd., Ste 4
Columbia, MO 65203
Contact Information
p | (573)586-3204
f | (573) 313-3528
e | contact@thecounselinghub.com
Hours
Admin/Ops Team | Monday - Friday: 10a - 3p
*Clinical hours are by appointment only, Sunday - Friday
We have both clinical hours, or the times when our clinical team sees clients, and admin hours, or the times when our admin team is available via call or email.
