Before “I do” Podcast Episode

You know, if you are single and you are thinking about marriage or beginning to get your mind wrapped around marriage, you can go to our website and search marriage decision making. There will be a series of things pop up there, documents that speak into thinking about marriage. There are reflection guides that encourage you to think about some of the questions of growth that are excellent to walk through with an accountability partner or mentor of some type.  

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Wonderful as always, to have you along. Kaleb and Arlan are with me today. 

Welcome. Good to be with you. Thanks Matt. Our topic today is marriage, but actually, pre-marriage. We’ve got a lot of marital content out there, and it’s very well received too. Our listenership, you can tell by the numbers, has a high view of marriage and I think it’s really exciting. They are really equipping themselves in the way of skills and learning about marriage and how to do marriage well. But I’ve heard both of you talk on a number of different platforms about this pre-marriage preparation, to label it for lack of a better term, both pre-engagement as well as including the engagement phase prior to marriage and how important these phases are. 

And I think it’s a really healthy spot to get into. Arlan and Kaleb both have worked closely on providing resources for our church. Arlan, you can speak to some of that. And so, I invite you to bring those pieces in. Kaleb, as a marriage and family therapist, you have your ear to the ground as it concerns marriage and a lot of what you hear gives you wisdom to say pre-marriage counseling is what needs to take place. And I know you walk with engaged couples as well. So, I really look forward to filling out this space and providing a wonderful resource. 

As we think about what’s important, it all starts with a pre-marriage concept, doesn’t it? Right. So, with that setup, let’s move into that. Kaleb let’s start with you a little bit. You, no doubt, have thought about those benchmarks in terms of the journey into marriage. Maybe sketch some of those out and then let’s elaborate.  

Yeah, so we would begin with their own walk with the Lord and the relationship with the Lord. And it is a phase that takes a lot of consideration and reflection of how I am doing and engaging also people around the individual. And so, there’s the spiritual walk, but there’s also, as you think about it, marriage is an intimate relationship. And so, we can begin with that. How are relationships in this individual’s life? How are they relating to individuals of the opposite sex, but also of the same sex and just the way that they interact and walk through conflict and handle and manage differences. And so, I think there’s a lot of discipleship that happens in an individual’s life even before we get to the part of who it is. 

And I would imagine a lot of that insight has come from you working with marriages where things do go back to pre-marriage days. Am I right about that? Yeah. Is that part of the insight that you have? Certainly, yeah.   

Things show up in the marriage relationship that existed prior to the marriage relationship. Some of the best medicines for marriage happens pre-marriage, and you even started at a person contemplating marriage. It actually happens before marriage contemplation, doesn’t it? I mean, we’re talking early here, aren’t we? 

Right. And you know, Matt, as we started to think about how we support the church and how we build resources to encourage the church, well, we kept coming against this idea that we need to back up the process because with premarital or engagements we can quickly think, okay, it starts with who is it? 

Or, I’m thinking about marriage, but to realize that discipleship, like you said, Kaleb, is an aspect of the church. If we can get the right vision, the right expectations, the right mindset to think about how I even know who I am, where I’m growing, where I’m lacking, where I need to continue to step into things. 

That’s going to lay a solid foundation to step into that intimacy growth that you talked about, Kaleb, of coming together as a couple. So Arlan, you really cast an interesting vision of communal responsibility towards growing people in a way that they’re going to be able to enter a healthy marriage. 

You’ve really laid some onus on the church to be able to do this, which I think we need to pause and recognize. Because sometimes that’s not the air we breathe, and we think we’re kind of self-selection. Yeah. This is my deal to figure out. It’s a private thing that happens. What role does the community play in this? So maybe let’s press into that a little bit. What is the vision that the larger church community plays in good marriages?  

Well, one that comes to mind immediately is a video that we used to play at the marriage seminar of a 10- to 12-year-old girl in a wedding dress in front of a mirror imagining herself getting married. And then she looks out the window and sees her parents engaging in a tender moment together. And so, I say that Matt, because some in the community are sensing that representations of marriage are happening and they begin to form us fundamentally. For each of us, when we think of marriage, we immediately go to our parents and see how they did or do marriage. But there’s also a sense in our local community, as we look at couples and the way they’re living life and walking in the ministry together, that has a direct impact. 

So, there’s that modeling aspect, which is so powerful and so influential within our lives as we model off of what we see. But then the other part of community is just this whole council aspect. The council we receive that this is a matter of the heart and it’s a matter of two individuals walking through discernment and processing emotions and feelings in God’s will. And with that type of decision there is health to do that in community with the council of others. And so, part of the heart of the resource creation was to provide tools that could support that mentorship, that counseling, that community support into this process at every stage. 

It’s almost like the fundamentals. I’ve had this conversation with my son about needing to read a lot to prepare for the ACT and SAT exams. And it’s so out of mind right now because those exams are not on his schedule. But they will be. Right. And so, it’s almost like this pre-work and pre-contemplation of marriage are simply fundamentals of the human life and in more particular the Christian life that makes a person suitable for marriage and be ready for that step. And to wait for that step in order to do your reading isn’t a good thing. We don’t cram for this test. Yeah, we don’t for this test, but perhaps we kind of do that marital wise when we don’t look ahead. 

I think that’s the piece that’s driving part of this. That’s the point of it. Because so often we can view it as, oh, you know, this individual is engaged and then married, but there’s a whole lot of life and counseling that happens. So, let’s press into some of the finer points. Okay. What would be some discipleship aspects? What would be some matters to press in if a person is in premarital consideration but is just trying to grow as a human being in healthy ways that prepares them for whatever future, marriage in particular.  

Yeah. So, a couple comes to mind, and I think this is, this is kind of really building off of what Arlan already said. And that is there’s healthy self-awareness that is good to have. And there are circumstances, situations that come up in the marriage relationship that are more about my response to my wife than it is about my wife. 

So, I think with an identity grounded and rooted in Christ that has a healthy sense of humility of where my blind spots are, Arlan, those areas are tender, or we miss. And knowing that going into marriage is so healthy because if not, the sense is easy to put it on the marriage relationship or on the spouse, whereas, no, this is something that I bring. And your spouse knowing that is actually really helpful and goes a long way in working through conflict and differences in a healthy way. So that’s one, self-awareness, a small example. And I think there’s another piece that goes into that. And you see this again in some of those resources. 

What is a healthy understanding of marriage? We often can pattern it off what we have seen modeled, which can be very good. But also, we could have some areas that need to be shaped a little bit scripturally to say, you know, am I viewing marriage properly or am I viewing it as something that’s going to solve all of my problems? You know, regardless of the cost on another person, you know, this is going to fix me. Or how do I approach such a big weighty decision? And how do I even step into that in faith with godly counsel and biblical wisdom? Those kinds of things are going to start to rise to the top of self-reflection, but also like what is my expectation for what marriage is? 

Expectations are huge. They’ve come across this podcast in so many different conversations and settings. What your expectations are and what reality is. The gap between that is a great deal of heartburn. So, I want to go to Kaleb. What expectations have you seen people pursuing marriage? They have this idea of marriage and, well, it’s not that way. I’m curious what some of those teaching points would be. What expectations are we missing or in error about?  

Yeah, so they can certainly vary. I mean, it used to be that Cinderella story, right? Happily, ever after that, you know, you got married and all the bad things in your life now, all of a sudden, have become good. I don’t think that’s so much there, even though I would say that I think for all of us, I think this is true. There’s this hope out there that things will change for the good and that somehow this transition will lead to areas that I may struggle in becoming better. And actually, we would say that’s not completely accurate in time. You have a help meet to support you, but actually sometimes it exposes things in a way that leads to initially more conflict or distress on a path of moving towards things getting better. 

So, in the Cinderella story, one of the things that happens oftentimes during engagement or the stage of moving into marriage is idealizing it in a way that then creates something that isn’t real. We can overemphasize the blessing of it and minimize the messiness of it and the reality. Guess what? This is two centers in a relationship and if you expect that things are going to go well all the time, you are missing the boat. That’s not a healthy view of the marriage relationship. And I would say we have a wonderful marriage, but there are also challenges. Just like with any relationship. 

And so, I think a healthy view of that and to be able to put that into a place of a sanctification opportunity is going to grow me and grow me in my relationship with Christ and with another person. Like you said, Kaleb, in a very intimate relationship that’s going to really shine the light on who we are and give us that opportunity of growth. 

Yeah. How do we get a healthy expectation of marriage? That’s an interesting question, Matt. So, two things come to mind. One is, I think, we have to accept that we all have unrealistic expectations that will be exposed in the process of time in the relationship. So, I put that out there because the goal isn’t to eliminate all unreal unrealistic expectations, but because we’ve never walked that path before. And so, in a sense, I think the process of marriage exposes and brings those things out.  

But the other thing we talked about is community. I think about bringing healthy couples that come to mind that you could sit down with even in your single life. I mean, there are people involved in the youth group, and I know you are Arlan, and so they’re able to sit down with couples. There’s an authenticity to both the beauty but also the challenges in appropriate ways that I think helps create a more realistic picture of the marriage relationship. 

And there’s a level of vulnerability that it takes for couples to step into that place. And I think that helps also because you have reality testing with a couple who’s walking through life. But I think in that too, you can see a sweetness of that intimacy lived out over time and the beauty of God working in a couple through thick and thin. And if you open yourself up to that learning process, it starts to give a beautiful vision.  

I really appreciate that. If I could even push a little bit further, Kaleb, what would be some specific unrealistic expectations that seem to swirl? You don’t need to fix them all on this podcast, but if you were to give us some domains, like here’s one, here’s another, here’s a third. I’m curious what you would say those are. It’s a good question. So Matt, yeah, there are a few areas that come to mind.  

Certainly the area we’ve talked about already is the area of gender differences, but also specifically roles in the marriage relationship. One of the things we often talk about is what responsibilities does the husband have? And there’s an exercise that we have premarital couples actually engage in. And it’s interesting because oftentimes our expectation for what we will do or what our spouse will do is based on what our parents did. 

Oh, did dad take out the trash or did mom? What about the dishes? And we just bring that into the marriage relationship with the expectation of that’s just norm. Well, it might be the norm for you, but it doesn’t mean it’s the norm for your spouse. So that’s one area. Also, the area of intimacy. We would say intimacy is a big category, whether sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, or just how to engage and have fun together can look very different for individuals and all of us have expectations in those areas. And we bring those certainly to the marriage relationship.  

And so, I think another area is leaving and cleaving. You talk about a complex transition happening from an individual who’s in a family system now all of a sudden leaving. Not separating in the sense of disconnecting but leaving and cleaving to the spouse. And you have all these relationships happening and this family over here is different than this family over here, and they have certain expectations for what this relationship should look like. Plus, the couple themselves have expectations for what it should look like and how much time we should spend with each family. 

Right? So, there’s a lot of processing happening in that transition. And it’s really amazing, Matt, as I’m talking about this, that it goes as well as it does oftentimes. Yeah. I mean, it really is. You know, generations ago when Katie and I were premarital and engaged, I remember we did premarital counseling and the counselor said, there’ll be three areas that you’ll have conflict about. 

You’ll have conflict over holidays, which speaks to the leaving and cleaving expectations. You’ll have conflict over money, and you’ll have conflict over sex because those are areas that you just naturally come into, just like you highlighted Kaleb, with thoughts in your head. And part of the beauty of marriage is to work together as a team and have those expectations brought together into a whole, well, all the more reason to compliment what’s already been said in terms of a community and seeing the church as stewarding this process. 

For many, those expectations come by way of someplace in some way. And it’s the air we breathe in our culture, right? It’s the social media feeds. It’s the entertainment we’re taking in. They are all saying something about how sex works. How you’re connected and the purposes for marriage and self-actualization and all of these things, right? And so, there is a full court press required in order to have a healthy view of marriage. And that’s what I hear you guys being really passionate about. And I think one of the opportunities during that premarital time, in that engaged stage or engaged phase of marriage is to create opportunities and resources to try to do this where couples can begin to talk about these things together and begin to have conversations.  

What are some questions to ask each other? Where are some words to put some terminology, some definitions, just so you can begin to see how these emerge because they do emerge and we can help put language into what I’m experiencing or what I’m feeling as I go to another level of closeness, of intimacy with my spouse or my fiancé.  

So, I see that transition we’ve been talking about pre-contemplation of who, which, and then to this engaged place. And so, let’s go there to the engaged place. Where now all of a sudden, we have dialogue, and it becomes important. Or this communication now becomes important, which might be maybe a stress point, right? Yeah. Yep. And even with that, where my mind goes, just as he was talking about encouraging couples to have conversation, communication together, engagement is a busy time oftentimes. And so, there’s a lot of great things happening related to showers and weddings and bachelorette parties, all of these things. 

But I think prioritizing actually their relationship over the event so we can take our eyes off the ball. I think so. Because you’re cultivating back to the long view of a journey. This is about cultivating a relationship. Well, even more important is that we do the pre-work. Right. If we wait for engagement to do the work of marriage preparation, we may be behind the curve. Right. Think about the whole journey as foundation setting, and you’re never going to know what, you know, five years into marriage or whatever can bring.  

We’re not pretending that you can have that kind of premonition, but you can set foundational principles of first knowing ourselves well and growing and then being able to talk together and build healthy communication patterns, conflict resolution patterns, being able to step into conversations, and turn towards each other to talk through these things. If you can’t do that in an engaged phase when the emotions are often high and sometimes infatuation is there and those kinds of things, it’s going to be harder to do it five or 10 years down the road when life is throwing other curve balls at you. 

What’s some of the most common advice you give an engaged couple, Kaleb. What do you find yourself going back to over and over again? Remember this? Yeah. Well, one of the things that actually the parents talk about is choosing your ruts wisely, and that is developing early on what people call rituals or disciplines or this structure of some sort that helps you stay connected through life and being intentional about developing those early on. Because waiting for that until you’re in the middle of what life brings to you, whether it’s stress or whatever, is not healthy.  

So, you see connection as being very central to moving into a healthy marriage. Yeah. Connection. Yes. Okay. And what might some engaged couples miss in terms of connection? Because they’re like, what do you mean, we’re crazy about each other? Alright, so checkbox, that’s true. That’s a connection. Checkbox connection. Done. But you might say, wait, hang on here. Yeah. What are the components? I think part of connecting together is self-awareness. As we think about connection, we think about vulnerability and opening up because the depth of our connection also is in relation to the level of openness and vulnerability with another. We think about being naked and unashamed. 

Okay? That is the place we want to go to, but I think for all of us, our worst fear is to be seen and not loved. Yes. To be seen and not loved, or to be loved superficially. Right. And so, I think with that the connection is how do I expose vulnerabilities in a way that leads to deeper connection? 

Actually, here’s my aha, Kaleb. Naked and unashamed certainly has a physical sexual component to it. And we might just get off on the wrong foot by thinking the act of sex is the end of intimacy and all of intimacy. But the way I heard you explain it, no, it’s not. In fact, it could pass for that, and we keep our eyes closed to all that needs to be seen. Am I right? Yes. So good work in engagement is intimate work. Yes. The ability to bring up fears and to talk about those fears and to acknowledge them first myself but also share them can be tough work.  

Yes, depending upon what has been modeled for you or what your experiences have been, your level of self-awareness makes a difference and it’s a process. Yes. That takes time and you’re not going to flip a switch and do that. Everybody’s a little bit different, but it’s a process that takes time to step into. 

One of the pieces of advice Katie and I find ourselves continually giving to others is just that simple idea of just always turning towards each other. Because there may be many times when you want to just turn the other way or go in the other room or whatever. And I’m not saying you don’t have time to cool down. But that discipline of turning towards each other is a connection point that is going to force you into dealing with some of these issues and grow in your vulnerability, intimacy, and emotion. 

You know, it’s interesting too, Arlan, as you say that, and building the discipline of turning towards each other in the engagement phase, for example, because sometimes in the engagement phase we give each other much more grace. Yeah. And we can get mileage out of not doing the fundamentals. 

Am I right? Yes. The harm is that we go into marriage thinking the fundamentals might not be as necessary as it’s all cracked up to be. And we’re in for a surprise. So, you’re saying build those fundamentals. Build that foundation, because then that will continue to get you in the right rut, as you said. And the right trajectory. I like rhythms better than ruts. Oh yeah. I like that. The right rhythms and it’ll get you the right trajectory. That has a better ring to it.  

So, Arlan, in terms of resources. We’ve talked about equipping a church community to walk with people, to build in the soft skills that are going to be required, right? I’m curious about resources either for singles or for engaged couples. What are some places to go to? Sure. So, if you are single and are thinking about marriage or beginning to get your mind wrapped around marriage, go to our website and just search marriage decision making. There will be a series of things that pop up there like documents that speak into how you think about marriage in a healthy way and reflection guides that encourage you to think about some of the questions of growth that are excellent to walk through with a accountability partner or mentor of some type. 

And one of my favorites is just this idea of a balanced perspective when approaching marriage because it helps you think through some of the extremes. Because we can get these pictures of what marriage decision making is supposed to look like or what it looks like to approach marriage. And sometimes they can shade a little bit towards extreme views, and you find health and truth in the middle. And then to build upon that as an engaged couple or, and even in those early years of marriage.  

We’ve housed most of our resources in a booklet called Growing a Strong Marriage, and you can find online versions on our website. You can look at specific resources individually on our website, but again, if you search for Growing a Strong Marriage, you will find content filled with discussion questions and resources that will encourage you to start those conversations, to turn towards each other and begin to build foundations.  

That’s great. Yeah. Kaleb, as we think about the engaged couple, you work with a fair number of engaged couples, what are some resources or maybe a favorite book to read? Yep. So, one of the things that we find very helpful at some point during engagement is to have couples go through a couple of assessment tools that we use. One is Prepare and Enrich. Some churches are doing this already, whether it’s through the elder or minister or a mentor couple. And so, the couple completes it, and then the mentor couple or elder walks through it with the engaged couple. It shows areas of strength, growth areas, and just is a platform to engage in some really focused conversation unique to them. So, that’s one of the resources that would really bring to the surface a lot of the content we’ve talked about today. Yes, correct. In a way that a couple can walk through it in a really healthy way.  

Now, for our listeners who might not be tied to ACCFS, can they go Google Prepare and Enrich? Can they find this assessment? Can anybody go out and take it? How does that work? Yeah, good question. So, you need a facilitator to actually take it, which both Ted and I are facilitators. Do you know if that website provides any of that for a person going on and saying, hey, I want to do this. I don’t have a counselor, I don’t have this contact, but I want to take this assessment with my fiancé. 

So what they could do is search for a facilitator on the website if you really wanted to step into this. Okay. And you would then find a facilitator in your area who you may or may not know. Okay. So, if you’re comfortable with that, you could certainly go down that path, but it sounds like there is an on-ramp to this via other paths beyond ACCFS. Yes. Correct. And I know of at least a handful of ministers who are facilitators and local congregations that will take engaged couples through this. So, we’ll include in the show notes some of these links, some of these resources, links to the website also to prepare and enrich. 

I think that sounds excellent. Thank you both for sharing that. You know, I’m sure some are listening and saying they dodged the “who” question. I did not intend to dodge that question. Yeah. But actually, I’m going to leave it like that because it gets most of our angst and spins most of our wheels. 

And I don’t mean to minimize it, but certainly we have a high respect for that juncture. Yeah. And there are resources out there as you engage in that discernment process with the Lord. But today our focus was more about some of the things that often get overlooked because of that question. And so, I think we’ll leave it like that. 

Thanks both of you. Thanks, each one for listening. We really respect this area of marriage and view marriage so highly as a gift from God, but also a calling, and so we want to provide those resources. I hope that this has been that for you. God bless you each one.