Are You Getting Married? Know Your Partner First!
The week of “encounter” has just ended and here, going back to the normal student life, our Pastoral counseling class has just started; no holiday for us. If we enjoyed the outing in Subic last weekend, I can say that our first class today was also exciting. We were discussing last meeting about “Am I in Love,” Increasing Intimacy, Love, and Human Sexuality, particularly in pre-marital stage of husband and-wife-to-be. Today, we were talking about Interpersonal Comparison Test. This is for us counselors to learn how to give counsels to engaged-couples who soon to-be-wed and interested to settle down. As a counselor, I have a role to play in determining whether a couple are compatible and can have a great chance of successful marriage
Interpersonal Comparison Tests are as important as any big decisions in life. This would help the couple to know more each other for the better of their future marriage life. This is to measure the couple’s similarities and differences. Answered with privacy, they are asked individually about their background; place where they were born, religious background, about the parents, parent’s income, educational attainment, position in the family and the community where they belong. These are just the first part of the test. There are also questions about their past and present life experiences, expectations and psychological adjustments, future number of children and all about children questions. It is also important to know one’s attitude about the future marriage life. Do they know each partner’s most kept secret? How about his or her favorite movies and games or hobbies? These are simple yet sometimes, neglected to ask while you were still starting to know one another. After they have answered sets of questions individually, the couple will have a conjoint session with the counselor. Remember that the more similarities, the more chances of marriage will succeed.
Another test was the Marriage Expectation Inventory. Similar with Interpersonal comparison, it is to help the engaged couples to be in dialogued about some important aspects of their relationship. What are their love expectations? To whom would they spend more quality time with? What is love? What about quarrels? Who would initiate reconciliation first? How about money expectations? Salaries? Should the wife work? What would it be if the wife has higher salary than the husband? Again, simple questions but also oftentimes neglected to reconcile before marriage. How about the in-laws and religious experiences? Even related to sex questions should be dealt with in the dialog. This test is intended to know the value compatibility of the husband and wife-to-be because we are aware that
Finally, before we ended the class, we had a demonstration 
I was the husband-to-be and a nun as my wife-to-be; our role as engaged couples who soon to be wed! Funny as it was, we were honest 
(I supposed) in answering the questions of our counselor, Fr. Arsie, MSC. I’m not going to tell anything about the whole discussion but a nun from Peru congratulated me after the class saying, “Brother, congratulations! You can be a very good husband to your wife. You have such a good outlook in life, you can be a very faithful husband and a good father to your children!” And I replied to her, “Sister, I can be a very good religious then, for we know that if I can be a very good husband and a father to my children, I can be a very good religious brother who is faithful and committed.” We laughed together, ending the day
If you are interested to have a copy of these sets of questioners, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
On this day..
- True Color: Bloodshed - 2008
