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By LAUREL SCOTT
Democrat Staff Writer
After the honeymoon’s over, what remains? The job of building a successful marriage takes work, patience, and ideally, a little advance planning.
The best time to start talking about your future together, according to the experts, is well before that stroll down the aisle.
Premarital counseling is a good investment in this day and age when statistics tell us one in two marriages end in divorce.
No doubt by now you feel you are well aware of most of the differences between you and your spouse-to-be.
If you’re lucky, you may even have been able to strike compromises of sorts between the styles of music you listen to, the places you go out to eat, and the friends you surround yourself with.
That’s good. Give and take has got to start somewhere.
Unfortunately, that isn’t enough. The saying “love is blind” applies to more than the lover and his beloved. People in the throes of love somehow forget to ask each other the most important questions of all, preferring instead to avoid dispelling the mood with even a hint of conflict.
Reality will kick in sooner or later.
To prevent discovering incompatibilities the hard way further on down the line, why not bring a capable, unbiased mediator in to monitor your discussions, and to offer counseling as needed ?
If you are to be married in a certain faith, you will no doubt have been approached by a priest, rector or rabbi about counseling sessions of one sort or another as a prerequesife to marriage in that faith.
Take advantage of this, by all means. Don’t be intimidated by the religious tone of such “free advice.”
As the great scholar Joseph Campbell once said, “How many people before marriage receive spiritual instruction as to what the marriage means? You can stand up in front of a judge, and in 10 minutes get married. The marriage ceremony in India lasts three days. That couple is glued.”
However, marriage is more than a spiritual bonding 'til
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