As an engaged couple, it’s difficult to talk about every issue you may face in your marriage. While many people talk about money and sex, they sometimes forget to ask smaller questions like “Where will we spend the holidays?” Community Marriage Builders offers the FOCCUS Inventory, a 100-question form that you and your partner fill out separately to help illuminate potential issues-to-come.
Andrew Gries, the marketing and web administrator at CMB, says that the benefit of both the FOCCUS Inventory and pre-marital counseling is that both services “really get those issues that might come up during the marriage to come out before you get married … maybe you don’t think about, ‘when/if we have kids, how do we do the holidays, do we go on vacation’—sometimes, we gloss over that in the dating period. We don’t think about the things we disagree on, and we don’t think about what we haven’t talked about yet. Going through Community Marriage Builders can help people identify problems and work on them before they get married.”
The CMB counseling process has several phases, beginning with the inventory that predicts what issues couples may disagree about. “They can either take those results to the pastor who will marry them and have them go through it, or we have someone we can refer them to,” says Gries. “Another service is a marriage preparation workshop, which they go to as a couple. It gives them tools for communication and anger management, and offers tips on how to identify and work in each other’s love languages. It gives them tools they can use as issues come up, and helps them solve problems down the road to keep their marriage running smoothly throughout the years.”
CMB doesn’t abandon couples post-marriage—they offer weekend retreats to married couples who are working on improving their marriage, going through a hard time, or just committed to keeping their union strong. These retreats occur four times a year; you can find out dates and sign up on their website, www.makeitlast.org. They also offer marriage enrichment workshops about relationship fitness through the YMCA. These workshops offer tools that can help couples cherish each other on a daily basis and treat each other with respect and dignity even in the heat of an argument.
To start your marriage out on the right foot (and continue in that direction), make sure to visit the Community Marriage Builders website. This year, they’re focusing on learning to date your spouse. You can find their tips online.
— Katie Darby-Mullins
