Ah, Love… What a great thing. With Fall around the corner, the season is ripe for people to fall in love, get cozy with one another and settle in before the Winter comes. We love to celebrate people being in that state of happy, excited, over-the-moon bliss. We know what that feels like an it can be incredible.
As marriage counselors, we feel like it’s our duty to help you pause and see through the excitement and look at the practical elements before you make any big life decisions. Marriage counseling is over half of what we see during the week and some of that is because people rush into things without really knowing what to expect.
While you’re planning the next stages of your life. Let’s talk about the elements that will impact your relationship into the future. Many counselors are using the PREPARE/ENRICH model which looks at multiple factors of your individual traits within the relationship.
Personality Traits
Related to the Big Five model of personality, there are five traits we are looking at in the SCOPE model: Social(extraversion), Change (openness),Organized (conscientiousness), Pleasing (agreeableness), and Emotional Stability (neuroticism). We want to identify where you and your partner fall on these scales because they will indicate some areas of mutual success and some areas that can be addressed in pre-marriage counseling for your growth together.
Bonus Tip: Which one has research shown to be the most related to relationship unhappiness? Neuroticism (Kelly and Conley, 1987).
PREPARE scale
There are 11 other scales that we look at and address
- Realistic Expectations
- Personality Issues
- Communication
- Conflict Resolution
- Financial Management
- Leisure Activity
- Sexual
- Family and Friends
- Egalitarian Roles
- Children and Marriage
- Religious Orientation
We want to enable couples to see how they compare and differ on these results, so, like the personality assessment we can help couples navigate through difficult areas and relish their successes.
It’s important that we take inventory of these differences and similarities in pre-marital counseling so that as you continue to be happy and in love, you can do it in an informed way and with the feelings of confidence that everyone can benefit from as they are moving into the next stage of their lives and relationships.
We would love to help support you and your partner into the next stage of your life with pre-marriage counseling. Give us a call and we’ll get you set up and ready to go.
By Alex Michaud. Supporting Denver for a Better Life through Mental Health Counseling.