The enduring value of insightful marriage-prep questions

By Mark Lombard
Clarion Herald
BRIDAL REGISTRY
 

When I got married four decades ago, I remember the extensive planning that was necessary. Appointments with many banquet facilities, making decisions about dresses and tuxedoes, flowers, musicians for the reception and invitations were only some of the issues needing attention.

There was also the making time for the Pre-Cana classes, very much required if we were going to be married in a Catholic church.

As Christian marriage is a sacrament, the Church encourages couples to be well prepared and offers marriage preparation. In the Archdiocese of New Orleans, there are weekend retreats for couples (Catholic Engaged Encounter, ECHO Retreats for Engaged Couples, Archdiocesan Days for the Engaged), parish-based mentor couple programs and online marriage preparation (including Agape Catholic Ministries’ CatholicMarriagePrep.com). There are also programs for those getting married in the Church who have been married civilly, have been living together or who are seeking remarriage.

The advice that lasted

I find it interesting that as much as I thought at the time there was little to gain from those sessions and that, of course, I felt I was very much ready to get married, the only lasting memory of wedding preparation I have are the issues that were surfaced during those marriage-preparation sessions. My wife-to-be and I had to wrestle with issues like having children, how careers would impact our relationship and potential growing family, and, a subject we didn’t want to ever discuss in a church building, intimacy.

Those conversations we had and shared were foundational in some ways to my experience of marriage.

But, after getting and then being married, there did not seem to be the opportunity to have those important discussions.

Sure, there were and are Marriage Encounter and other marriage renewal programs. But those felt too infrequent to have the regular impact that was needed in our marriage.

Soon after getting married, my wife started lobbying for regular meetings between us, something I avoided. While always ready to get the family together to tackle an issue that came up, I just didn’t understand what was to be gained by the two of us carving out time each week to talk. “I’m too busy,” “I’m on the road” and “There’s nothing to talk about,” were just a few of the choice and regular excuses I made for years.

I’m not sure what my aversion was. But, I do know that the same issues kept coming up, and tripping us up, whether those were household chores that always got kicked to an undetermined time in the future, who was going to do shopping or cooking and on what schedule, and who was going to give rides to our sons, among the very few of the interconnected issues in family and married life.

In our case, these unresolved issues just built tension and led to frustrations, resentments and unrealistic expectations, and not to mention impacted – negatively – feelings of closeness between us. After months would go by of not meeting regularly, we would have a deep heart-to-heart.

Leading a horse to water

Whenever we would have these “summits,” termed after conferences world leaders would hold when relations would get too strained, Mary would again suggest meeting more regularly. Finally, after years of spending enormous energy erecting roadblocks, I came to the realization that there was no real good reason not to meet, at least to give it a try for, say, a month.

That was a number of years ago now, since we began setting aside an hour or so each week, to talk, to listen, to share ideas and, more importantly, feelings and expectations, to better collaborate in this partnership, that is so much more, of marriage. 

And since beginning, something interesting has occurred. Rather than our couple’s meeting being something I dreaded and, as I had in the past quipped, “would prefer to have a root canal,” I, as well as my spouse, look forward to it. To enhance the experience, we always have a special meal we share after our Sunday meeting, and oftentimes we meet in front of a fire blazing in the fireplace.

We now ask each other how were we able to keep our marriage going without meeting all those years. The answer, we both agree: With a lot more discord, resentments, unfulfilled expectations, things unattended to, disconnections and breaks in our intimacy from each other.

Meeting’s agenda

So what are our couple’s meetings like? First, each of us leads every other meeting, so that neither one of us is just along for the ride.

We have developed a structure to it, including discussions about:

• What we each have going individually over the next week, important as each of us is busy with our own work responsibilities;
• Joint activities, such as time to get together with friends and/or family, and to actively plan and find the time to focus on interests we share;
• Household activities, ensuring that the time we each put into those is equally shared, bargaining as to what new projects we should be undertaking and cataloging what chores did not get done or continually get ignored and why;
• Food preparation, another activity that we have agreed should not be the responsibility of one gender, including who is doing the grocery shopping and what are we agreeing will be on the menu for the week;
• What were the successes and real challenges we faced in the previous week, which in the midst of busy schedules often got overlooked and yet has been so revealing about our own life satisfaction;
• Intimacy, maybe the most important time of the meeting, during which we both encourage each other to freely share how we are feeling about life and about each other, whether our life partner has been empathetic and truly present, whether we are living up to the promise we made on our wedding day that the two will become one; and,
• Gratitude to God, prayerfully and thankfully offered for the gift of life and marriage we together share.

It is not always easy, but we do always feel closer after this time.

It is so interesting to me that at the Pre-Cana sessions I attended before marriage, we as a couple were urged to continue those discussions we had then throughout our marriage. I only wish I had listened much sooner, but am appreciative that my spouse continued to raise the importance of meeting and that we can now celebrate “better late than never.”

Mark Lombard is the business manager of the Clarion Herald, who will, next January, be celebrating his and Mary’s 40th anniversary.