A Rational Approach to Premarital Counseling

Abstract

People come for premarital counseling obviously because they have problems; and people with problems, as has been recently stressed by Ellis (1956), Harper ( 1953, 1955), Laidlaw ( 1950), and Lawton ( 1958), can often best be helped by some form of marriage counseling which not only presents a solution to their present circumstances but also goes to the root of their basic problem-creating disturbances. They need, in other words, some type of psychotherapy. Although I see a few clients for premarital counseling who have simple questions to be answered, which can sometimes be resolved in one or rwo sessions, the majority come for deeper and more complicaced reasons. Their typical presenting questions are: Is my fiancee the right person for me? Should I be having premarital sex relations? How can I find a suitable mate? and How can I overcome my sexual incompetence or my homosexual leanings before I marry? These and similar questions usually involve deepseated personality characteristics or long-standing emotional problems of the counselees. When put in more dynamic terms, the real questions most individuals who come for premarital counseling are asking themselves are: Wouldn't it be terrible if I were sexually or amatively rejected? or made a mistake in my sex-love choice? or acted wrongly or wickedly in my premarital affairs? And: Isn't it horribly unfair that the girl or fellow in whom I am interested is unkind? or ununderstanding? or overly-demanding? or too selfish? Stated differently, the vast majority of premarital counselees are needlessly anxious and/or angry. They are woefully afraid of rejection, incompetence, or wrongdoing during courtship or marriage; and they are exceptionally angry or hostile because general or specific members of the other sex do not behave exaccly as they would like them to behave. Since, according to the principles of rational psychotherapy which I and Dr. Robert A. Harper have been developing for the past several years, feelings of anxiety and resentment are almost always needlessly self-created, and inevitably do the individual who experiences them more harm than good, my psychotherapeutic approach to most premarital counselees is to show them, as quickly as possible, how to rid themselves of their fear and hostility and thereby to solve their present and future courtship and marital difficulties.