I just wanted to put it out there, for those who stumble upon this blog and read my bitching and moaning, casually mentioning our marriage counseling, yes, we go to a couples counselor, even though we are Newlyweds.
It’s something we talked about before we got married, while we were in a long distance relationship. We are two progressive people who both like to focus on self- improvement, and believe in constant learning. And isn’t it really a little foolish, perhaps a little ignorant, to enter a lifetime commitment to another human being, especially in our case, having only know each other for two years, without really knowing what to expect, not really having the tools developed by professionals, who are experts on communication and commitment?
We both agreed that learning how to communicate, and mold our daily lives, and cope with arguments in a better way, couldn’t be a bad thing, and it would more likely progress father with a third, neutral person, who also happens to be a expert on marriage. Why wait until things get seriously bad before acquiring help? Why not build our marriage on a strong , informed foundation?
Are we still married..? 
Very, very smart approach! Wish I’d done the same at the start of my now ended 25+ year union…communication and love take a lot of care and tending.
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It definitely does. Thank you !
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It is certainly a smart approach. Will and I did a few months of pre-marital counseling before we began.
To give you the frame of mind that my husband possesses, he reminds me that our grandparents had beautiful marriages (his – 58, mine-65) and neither had needed a third party to counsel them. Regardless, the counseling we started with was good and I still find both of us using some of the tools that we learned all those years ago.
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I do see his point, but at the same time, I think our mind frames and our conditioning nowadays is different from then, resulting in a lot of failing marriages, just because we know that we deserve “better”. Which we do. We want more now. And more of it. I think we should, but I also think we should take wisdom from our grandparents generation, and try HARD.
I don’t see any disadvantage in getting all the tools beforehand, and quicker work out our marriages mechanism. 🙂 I’m sure we could’ve worked most of it out ourselves in time, but this saves time and spares us the agony haha. 🙂
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What I think about is that we tout our culture as being more enlightened than the previous generations. We have sex education being taught in grade 2 (in our district), there are more than counselors, therapists, relationship professionals etc. now than at any time in our history and yet the teen pregnancy rate climbs, STIs are more prevalent, more marriages are failing and mental illness is considerably more rampant.
There’s something to be said for those people in the Depression Era generation and how they rose above, sticking together rather than crumbling like marriages do so easily today over far more petty or less impactful scenarios or events.
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I absolutely agree with the last statement.
But as for teen pregnancy and mental Illness in the past, teenagers got married at a very young age when my grandmother was young, and had children very young too, I think it changed during the time when women demanded more equality and post ww2 etc, but it’s like we have fallen back a little. But teenagers are less equipped for being parents now as our families don’t stick together like they did, just like you said. They used to live together, with grandparents and all, sharing the load.
Mental Illness however has always been there but we didn’t know what it was. I think about how hard it was for people with schizophrenia, PTSD and anxiety back then, they didn’t know what was wrong with them, and we’re treated really poorly.
I think I see your point though, more and more people are diagnosed with depression, and all that… But yeah.
Anywho, I agree with you, we should defiantly learn from them. But I do think it is great that we get sex-Ed, and are informed. Ps. Teen pregnancy where I come from is at its lowest 😉
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