Plain Truth: Insist on premarital counselling

Date: 20 September 2013   Read: 803

Pastors and churches must insist on premarital counseling before they marry couples. This will go a long way to curb one of the identified factors with regard to the divorce rate, which is on the rise in our country.

We should also insist that those who had married without premarital counselling should seriously consider taking marriage counselling to orientate themselves regarding the institution of marriage – the ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ involved. I recently made a shocking discovery when working with married young urbanites. Most of them are going through rough times – facing storms in their marriage. Most of them would have just moved in and stayed together as husband and wife, in what is commonly known as ‘vat-en-sit’ (cohabitation), or moved in after paying ‘lobola’ under the pretext of ‘customary marriage’. Even those who were married in the church pointedly revealed to me that they were married without proper counselling having been conducted. What is it that they have missed in premarital counselling?

Premarital counselling provides couples with the opportunity to get to know one another better than when one engages in a courtship without proper counselling. One gets to know one’s faith, character and aspirations with regard to the future, and indeed one’s strong points and weaknesses. This helps one to determine the question of compatibility. It is very difficult to be in a marriage context with someone one is not compatible with in many respects. Love alone is not enough when one is in a marriage with someone one cannot easily communicate with. By this I mean real communication, where one does not just greet each other but also share everything. Why do you want to be in a marriage with someone who will only greet you or only talk to you when he or she wants sex behind a closed door in the dark? I also find it hard to provide counselling to two different people – one talkative and one who will talk (giving brief and direct answers) only when prompted to do so. I will come back to the communication issue in the future.

Premarital counseling provides space to determine one’s readiness. There are people who get married whilst they are not yet ready or ripe for such a commitment. A person who gets married must, for instance, show maturity in terms of his or her understanding of marriage, including one’s understanding that marriage as a life-long institution – "until death do us part".  Marriage is not a trial and error thing where you can decide to take a break to create space for one another or try and find one another in the process of taking a break. Once you make a choice and commit by tying the knot, you need to know that there is no return. The only exception is in the case of persistent adultery – Matthew 19 only allows divorce to take place in the case of adultery, especially when reconciliation is impossible.

Premarital counselling provides space for one to get to understand the basics of marriage, in line with God’s will as revealed in the Scriptures. I will deal with this comprehensively in the next article, when reflecting on the issue of ‘marrying for the wrong reasons’. Premarital counselling does not only offer one space to learn more about the basic principles regarding marriage, but also on the issues involved, such as developing a common philosophy with regard to love, marriage, sex, children, communication, problem solving, friends, parental involvement, finances and so on.

Some of these issues sound very minor in terms of trying to spend time in premarital counselling to understand them, but I see them as the key to unlocking the riddle behind divorce. They are like small foxes; if left unattended, they can spoil the blossoming vineyard, thereby ensuring bad harvest. Take for instance the example of a true African man who last told his wife that he loved her the day that he proposed to her. It is critical in premarital counselling to engage on this issue and encourage him to use ‘love language’ regularly to spice things up and to safeguard his marriage.

I know of people who are being called ‘honey’, ‘sweetie’, ‘babes’ and so on out there, whilst they have never heard these words from their spouse. It is therefore my contention in this article that premarital counseling can go a long way in providing us with a lasting solution in our efforts to curb the high rate of divorce in our times. The struggle to save marriages continues, until next week! - Prof Derrick Mashau, Department of Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology, UNISA. ([email protected].)