Your Questions About Pre Marriage Counseling

Are we too young to marry?

I was very skeptical about posting here knowing that most everyone’s answer will be yes, you need to wait.
Here’s where my explaining begins.
I am 18,he is 19 and we are both committed Catholics.
We have lived together for a little over year (We don’t have sex), dated for a year and a half. I am a college student (have been for a year), and he is a retail manager. He dropped everything for me last year and moved 300 miles away from his hometwon to stay with me while my mother was ill. She passed away, he stayed and has established himself here. We have joint bank accounts, and other things in our names.
I feel that a ‘number’ cannot describe our maturity or personal experiences. Our parents are supportive of us.
We are already in the marriage process with the Church, we knew we wanted to marry over a year ago.
Our date is set for November. He’ll be 20 by then. We are also involved in pre-marital counseling and have had no problems.

What do you think?
about ‘whats the rush, you don’t need a paper to prove it’:

We are both religious, and to have our marriage recognized by God is absolutely important. Would you go 2-3 living with someone without sex?

How many people were nervous before thier wedding and how did it work out?

I love my fiancee, but lately i have been worrying about what will happen after the wedding. I was thinking that pre-marital counseling might help my nerves, but i dont want to hurt my fiancees feelings. It might just be my anxiety acting up, but marriage means a lot to me. I am terrified of divorce (Probably because my father had a few of them). My relatives had been together for about nineteen years, and then out of no where, after nineteen years, they got divorced.
My fiancee isnt worried at all, and i wish i could be like that right now.
It used to seem like things in my life never went right, so it feels a little bit like i dont deserve to be this happy.
Is it a bad sign that i am worrying about this?
How many of you had these feelings before your wedding?
How did it turn out?
What did you do to help?

Adoptive Parents – Did you get any therapy or emotional support prior to adopting?

Pre-marital counselling is generally recommended before a marriage, as an example…I’m wondering how important it is for paps to get counselling before adopting to ensure that THEIR issues do not become their child’s issues in the future…Especially in cases of infertility/miscarriages or the loss of a biological child.

If you did seek counselling, do you feel it helped? Do you believe that it should be mandatory for all paps?
@Sam: You have NEVER heard of anyone recommending pre-marital counselling??

Is that…a Canada thing, or what?
I know there’s no guarantee of someone being a good parent just because they had counselling. There’s also no guarantee of someone never committing a crime just because they had a clean crim check. We still need to do them.

I’m just wondering if it would be a step toward due diligence. I’d support counselling for ANY parent, but adoptive parents have more challenges sometimes as far as special needs go (older child adoption), and different emotional issues of the adoptee as they mature. They also may have a history of infertility, and in foster adoption cases, their could also be childhood traumas, as someone mentioned, that are similar to what a child has gone through, and counselling may help to ensure a parent isn’t “triggered” by supporting that child.

Also, in our home study, they NEVER suggested counselling…We sought it out ourselves. I’m glad to hear that some jurisdictions do enforce it!

Thanks for the thoughts everyone. I’m enjoying the answers.

How do I deal with this situation?

So we want My Fiance’s brother to perform our ceremony since he is a minister. We are having an outdoor ceremony. we don’t want it overly religious since I am atheist and don’t feel like a wedding is time to PREACH to non-believers. I am fine with including god in the ceremony because my fiance is a believer and it is what he wants, but we have agreed that it will be minimal. Only one or 2 prayers etc. We don’t want a long ceremony anyways. ANYWAYS this is the email we got from his brother (who lives on the otherside of the country) when we asked him:
” What we could do is talk to a local LC-C pastor there, and see if he’d be willing to be involved. If necessary, perhaps he can sort of sign off on the marriage license/certificate (the civil end of things) while I could perform the actual ceremony. Since I’d have to travel, obviously, and since I strongly believe in some sort of pre-marital Biblical counseling done by a pastor, I think getting connected with such a pastor there is the best way to go. Not to mention getting connected with the church again! (speaking as your big brother and all…)Getting married outside in the new Hollywood-style fashion is all fine and good to a certain extent, yet I really encourage you to do it under the auspices and blessing of the Church. Marriage is, as you probably know, a public commitment of two people to each other in the presence of God…if a person or couple does not want God to be a part of their relationship, obviously that’s a bad thing. Trust me, marriage is a very difficult proposition at times, and we sinners need all the help from God we can get particularly and especially through the forgiveness and guidance we get from His Word and Sacraments, which we receive in the church. Being connected to other believers in a local community of faith is so very important – not just for marriage, but for all of life. You do still believe in Jesus as>your Savior from sin, death, and hell, don’t you? He indeed is our Savior, and so it’s important to live all our lives under Him in the manner He makes clear through ongoing contact with His good Word.”

How do I deal with this? This is obviously him trying to push his beliefs on me. I hate when people do that. I don’t push mine on others why should I have to put up with someone else doing it? ESPECIALLY if he is going to do this at my wedding. My fiance doesn’t go to church either, he believes in god but feels he doesn’t need to sit in church bored out of his mind every week to prove this.

Any help on how to deal with this would be great because it is really starting to upset me.
He is Lutheran. I don’t know if that makes a difference. but someone mentioned what his denomination is.
btw their dad is atheist like me, and my fiance believes but doesn’t feel he has to go toa church or chose a specific church. There is always a few beliefs in each church he doesn’t agree with.
It’s only the three of them in the family.
Also, we have always openly discussed our beliefs. neither of us have an issue with the other’s beliefs. I am perfectly fine celebrating christmas, easter etc. I celebrate them with my family right now. I am not anti-religion. but we have discussed it and our kids will never be forced to go to church and will know about ALL religions. not just christianity and atheism. They will know buddhism, islam, judiasm, etc etc. They will have their choice in what they should believe.
valschma…
THAT is exaclty what I have said all my life, and argued with my religion teachers in highschool (went to a catholic highschool). If god created nature and is everywhere with you then why would he not be with you in a garden? It’s ridiculous to think that
I thank most of you for your input. but the few that are being rude, take your rudeness elsewhere. I asked an honest question and a couple of you are acting like I am the worst person in the world and never actually answered the question at hand. Please keep those opinions to yourself. I don’t care what you think about my beliefs I am asking about this situation at hand. Please, answer my question or don’t say anything.
THANKS!