Helpfulness of Premarital Counselling in Building a Healthy Couple Relationship in Heterosexual Couple First Marriages
Abstract
A majority of people enter into marriage not prepared, not knowing what marriage entails, and without the skills of staying in marriage. This paper explores the helpfulness of marriage preparation, that is premarital counselling, in terms of building a health couple relationship or preventing later problems in heterosexual couples’ first marriages. The rate of divorce both in Nigeria and elsewhere around the world indicates a need for preventive steps in preparing couples for marriage. The society needs to find solutions to the alarming rate of divorce. It is also important to note here that solutions that work here must be preventive. This paper is motivated by the negative prospect that approximately half of all recent marriages may end in divorce. Research statistics show that research attention has been mainly placed on the statistics of divorce rates, however, the solution that must be sought must concentrate on creating strong marriages even before they start, rather than intervening in struggling ones. Adopting approaches that are textual and contextual, the paper submits that the area of marriage preparation needs more attention in the field of family therapy. There is need to prepare couple to build strong marriages from the onset rather than trying to amend marriages that have gone wrong.