When we met with the pastor who would be marrying us, he let us know that we would be having 2 or 3 sessions with him before getting married, as a kind of "pre-marriage counseling" sort of deal. Since we currently live about 5.5 hours from the pastor, so we can't just pop in anytime. He gave us some homework at the last meeting, which was to answer the following questions individually (and not share answers until we talked to him first):
"1. What do you love most about your partner?
2. Talk about your family.
3. What did you learn from your family about the following:
a. Money
b. Anger
c. God
d. Family
e. Marriage
f. Sex
g. Children
4. What are your five-year goals?"
While I definitely appreciate the counseling that he is offering us, I am one of those people that likes to be prepared and do a LOT of research before I jump into something, so it should come as no surprise that I wanted more than just two or three sessions before getting married. I was tempted to do actual pre-marital counseling, but Thomas was a little wary and wanted to see how we could do on our own first. He told me that I could pick any relationship book I wanted, and we would buy two copies and read through it together.
I already had a book in mind, since Miss Duckling had written a series of recaps on this particular book. So off we went to Barnes & Noble, and since I had received a gift card for graduation we were able to get two copies for free (along with a copy of Dr. Zhivago - my favorite book)!
So which book is it? It's "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work" by John Gottman. Along with hearing about it on Weddingbee, I had also actually heard of Gottman in my AP Psychology class in high school, so I knew that he was legit and I trusted that he was writing from a scientific basis. So far, I've already learned a lot, and I'm only on the second principle!
(source)
(I told you there would still be a picture!)
I'll be sharing more about what the actual principles are in future posts, but I think Miss Duckling did a pretty good job of recapping it herself. I'll focus more on how they affect actual day-to-day interaction between Thomas and I, which hopefully will highlight the books actual practical applications.
Did you prepare for your marriage beyond what was required by the officiant? Would you consider using a book like this (exercises and all) to help get ready for such a big change?
2 comments:
Gottman is great. I read a lot about his work in my Relationship Science class this past year. I actually wrote one of my paper's on the theories or pieces of advise in that book. And the research referred to in the first chapter of Bestseller "blink". He's published a lot on how to read the different positive and negative emotions that might only differ by use of one of the 98 muscles in the face. I think my favorite piece of information is the amazing success he has at predicting the affect that will be present in marriages. The "magic" of healthy ratio is positive: negative, 5:1. For everything 1 negative emotion, facial expression, or comment, there are then five positive to balance it out.
Interesting guy... Kind of want to meet his wife.
To answer your last 2 questions... no and yes.
Love, Mom
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