It is our understanding that the Australian, Irish, English and U.S. Bishops insist that couples receive instruction in the following core areas during their Pre-Marriage Courses:
Family of Origin Influences-Our Programme outlines how families can influence the success or failure of your future marriage and offers ideas as to how best to manage your relationships with your in-laws.
Parenting-Any good pre-marriage course needs to offer parents resources for managing the stress the stress that parenting can bring. Our interview with Trish Murphy, parenting expert gives you great advice on how best to raise your children. Also our two radio presenters, Jonathon and Claire speak about their real experiences as new parents. You will really enjoy their lively and witty banter.
Money Matters-Money is the single greatest cause of marriage break-down. Our financial expert gives you great ideas for preventing marital strife caused by money. Also our money worksheet will really get you both to think more clearly about how you really feel about money.
Faith and Spirituality-We have two great resources to help you understand more about your faith. One is the Essence of Catholicism-a PDF explaining the beauty of the Catholic Faith and also a great interview with a retired Moral Theology professor where he outlines the Church’s Teachings on the Sacrament of Marriage.
Fertility-Many couples today experience issues with infertility and this can cause considerable stress in a marriage. Our fertility expert Dr. Philip Boyle, shows couples a revolutionary new approach to improving fertility in a way that is fully in keeping with Church Teaching.
Sex and Sexuality– Many couples tolerate poor sex-lives as they feel uncomfortable challenging their own assumptions about sex. Our expert has some very interesting ideas around this and set within the framework of understanding that our bodies are a gift from God, we can learn more about how better to improve our understanding in this area.
Conflict Management– It is a fact of life that at some point every couple will experience conflict. The key here is to realise that there are certain strategies that couples can use to prevent conflict from damaging your relationship. You will discover more about these in our main programme. We even teach you about the expert who can predict Divorce with 91% accuracy after watching couples argue for just 15 minutes.
Wedding Preparation-No marriage course would be complete without helping couples prepare for the wedding celebration itself. David Kavanagh, our senior consultant shows you how to really personalise your ceremony. We also interview two experienced wedding planners who give you wonderful tips and ideas to help you make your day that extra bit special.
Extra Resources- We have great interviews with a number of other relationship experts exploring how early childhood experiences can affect you in ways that you did not know and we also look at how culture can affect how couples interact. Ideal for couples who marry someone from a different country or faith.
We strongly advise that couples watch all the interviews that we provide in our programme but that you do so in stages. This will allow you to absorb all the information they contain.
We advise you to keep the following three questions in mind as you watch each interview.
Interview checklist
What have I learned from this interview?
How can I apply this learning to my relationship now, or in the future?
What do I need to do differently as a result of the learning I have gained in this interview?
