Pre-nuptial disagreement

Marriage education may safeguard your heart and your house – but brace yourself for a bumpy ride. “A what!?” said Sam. “A marriage preparation course,” said I. “Why do you want us to do that?” she asked. “I don’t understand. We’re not even married yet and you want counselling? Is there something wrong?”

There was nothing wrong; at least not at that point. I’d got a well-meaning email from my father suggesting he thought it would be sensible if we sought some professional marriage guidance. Dad is a retired vicar who used to spend every Monday night running marriage preparation classes for couples getting wed in his church. Having grown up with the idea, it didn’t seem as weird to me as it evidently did to Sam.

My biggest fear about getting married is getting divorced. So much so, that for several years I considered the sense of not getting married for that precise reason. Well, if it ain’t broke…

The stats are damning. As Darth Vada might say, divorce is strong. Lifelong marriage vows now last just shy of nine years on average, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Roughly half of all marriages end with couples divvying up their home, CD collection and kids. Sam’s parents are divorced; her mum is on marriage number three. So you can appreciate our inherited faith in the institution of marriage is somewhat agnostic.

I want better odds of a happy marriage than 50:50 before I’ll literally bet my house on it. So if there’s a way to improve our chances of marital success by sitting in a room for a few hours with an impartial wise, professionally trained third party, why not take it? In one recent US study, researchers found that couples that attended marriage preparation classes had a divorce rate 50 per cent lower than control couples that did not. My father’s rationale is that you spend all this time and money on preparing for the big day, but absolutely nothing preparing for the years afterwards. Imagine how much pain, heartache and money could be saved.

“Don’t you think it might be fun?” I cajoled unconvincingly. “What harm could it do?” As it turned out, the answers to those questions are respectively: no, and; it very nearly split us up.

So we researched a few courses, chose an agenda-free non-religious one, and paid the $350 for three 90-minute sessions with our very own Dr Melfi called Anna.

After a few getting-to-know-you pleasantries, we spent most of the first session separate tables, independently completing a lengthy questionnaire about our relationship. It was like one big game of Mr and Mrs with questions covering everything from family background to money to religion to domestic arrangements to kids to sex… For each one we had to pick a score on a sliding scale so that our answers could be easily compared and contrasted and the results analysed in detail over the rest of the course.

Having sent the questionnaires off for analysis, session two was designed to look at the strengths of our relationship; then in the third and final session we’d address some areas that we could work on. However, session two didn’t quite go according to the script. And this is where the problems began.

I understand that when there are some impurities beneath the surface, you need to draw them out to that they don’t develop into a cyst or a tumour. That cleansing process can be painful, and it might also produce some unpleasantness. But while discussing the biggest issue of our relationship at that point – namely that Sam wanted to move to another country and I didn’t – I was unfairly typecast by Anna as an impatient, angry, lazy, dictator of a man who was too domineering. I reacted defensively, vehemently standing up for myself, until I realised that by doing so I was proving Anna’s point. And Sam began to cry.

Anna pointed out to us that Sam and I are quite different. I have a Latin temperament: passionate, enthusiastic, up and down. Sam would describe it as typical Gemini: Jekyll and Hyde. Sam, by contrast, has a classic English character: even-tempered, reserved, rational. While I am more than willing to voice my strong opinions, Sam often finds it difficult to express herself or prefers not to in order to avoid confrontation. When I get upset, I am loud; when she gets upset, she is very quiet. As a result, I never get to hear her side.

Ouch. Sometimes when someone holds a magnifying mirror up to your personality – warts and all – you don’t like what you see.

After session two, I felt bruised. I also felt distant and quiet and chastened and reflective and angry and ashamed and strangely relieved and indignant. But mostly I felt bruised. And then I began to have doubts about our whole relationship. Maybe Sam and I weren’t right for each other after all. Anna had pulled at a loose thread and suddenly everything seemed to be unravelling; big holes were appearing.

Just as turkeys don’t volunteer for Thanksgiving, I didn’t fancy facing up to session three – when we were scheduled to address our weaknesses! – for another stuffing and roasting.

That last session had left our relationship wounded, raw and open to infection. So I postponed the appointment. And then I said I didn’t want to go back at all. Nor did Sam. A couple of weeks went by and the distance between us grew. We stopped talking. This was our worst patch in five years together – and we were supposed to be getting married in a few months. It felt somewhat ironic that a course that was designed to reinforce our relationship had ended up undermining it. I began to regret having sent out those wedding save-the-date cards.

I resented Anna. I thought she was a troublemaker. I couldn’t believe we were paying for someone to chip away at the very foundations of our relationship and then point out the resultant cracks. I even wondered whether she was deliberately trying to create more business for herself – like the mechanic who fixes your wing mirror for $50 but then charges you $1050 for a complete overhaul. But as relations deteriorated, I conceded that we needed to return before the wheels completely fell off.

Anna was relieved to see us back. She could see that the last session had been painful because we’d veered away from the planned program to confront the major issue in our relationship. But she now wanted to show us how we could reduce the distance between us by meeting in the middle, and drawing closer. There was room for improvement, mainly on my side it has to be said. I had to shut up and listen occasionally and allow Sam to speak up and not feel that I would shout her down. But our questionnaires had said that we were a great match in many ways; and our differences actually complemented one another.

Anna gave us some helpful practical tips – such as setting aside a date night each week, going to bed at the same time, not turning on the TV as a default, and not letting the sun set on an argument. She also gave us some good reading material. And very quickly, that distance between us closed and we both truly believe that our relationship is stronger now.

Would I recommend marriage preparation? I don’t know. Even though on balance the happier ends justify the unhappy means, it was rough, and for a rocky few weeks there, I almost lost the love of my life. But if it means that I am more likely to keep her forever as a result of having come out the other side, then it will be the best time and money I’ve ever spent.