That much closer

Well, what a weekend.

As we are obviously being married in a Catholic church, we had to complete a pre-marriage course and recieve a certificate. Without it, no church wedding.

While both of us do want a Catholic church wedding, we want it for partly different reasons and some shared reasons. That being said, niether of us are very religious to begin with so we (ok mostly me) did have some apprehensions about this course.

My worries were that it was going to be a small group and we would all sit around in a circle and chat about our feelings. That was not going to happen with me, let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen. Ok, sure I'm a sensitive and modern man and have no problem doing that with family and close friends, but I wasn't about to discuss things, even generalities, with strangers.

Secondly, I'll admit I was a bit worried it was going to be a bit preachy and they would delve into some potentially sensitive areas of discussion that both of us might have to hold each other back from responding to.

Thirdly, I'll also admit, I was constantly questioning what possible benefit or value this could have to either of us at all. I kept wondering who would be running this thing and what credentials they would have in some of these matters. Surely, they would have none. I was too foccused on what I didn't want to hear from them, that it never occured to me what other things they may have on the agenda.

So in we go and peek our head around the corner and to our delight, we see rows upon rows of presentation style seating. Room at least for 30-40 couples. Then, the presenters turned out to be a married couple belonging to the parish. And she was a marriage counselor! Ah-ha, now I was a bit less skeptical.

So once we got our workbooks and and thumbed through it and looked at the agenda, I was a bit surprised yet interested and excited at the topics. Some of this stuff I never would have thought of. Even if you asked me to list what I thought were the most important topics, I would have missed some of these. Immediatley, I had a different outlook already to the coming two days.

So in the end, there were some main highlights that I'll always remember.

The first main topic we got to dealt with how people like to give and recieve love. Most, if not all people will fall within five categories of how they prefer to show/recieve love. If you and your partner and in different groups and don't know it, you may both feel a bit unloved. Although for us, there were no surprises and we knew each others answers, I still thought this was brilliant. I think it's a great exercise for anyone, no matter how long married.

The next day, somewhat keeping in the same vein, there are different ways that people approach and deal with conflict. Again, if you and your significant other are in two different groups it can be hard to ever resolve anything properly if at all. This was a good experience for us and we learned a lot from it. Again, I think anyone would get benefit from this too.

They also brought in someone to talk about finances. He was primarily a debt counsellor, but still covered all the bases quite well I thought.

The third and final session was with a nun and was about the spiritual aspect of marriage, and what it means within the church and even that wasn't nearly as arduous as I thought it would be.

In all the sessions, they would give you 5 minutes or so to discuss each topic with your partner before moving on. That was great too.

In the end, we were both really impressed and pleased with it. We would now recommend to anyone who didn't even need it to get married. It was well worth it. I think we are both better people individually for it and I think we are better as a couple for it as well.

So, now we're that much closer to the big day which is fast approaching, in more ways than before.