Premarital Counseling Certificate Of Completion: Fill & Download for Free

No, I don’t see her desire to keep her name as a red flag. I see your reaction to her desire as a warning sign, though, a red flag that the two of you aren’t ready for marriage at this time, and a possible sign of much bigger problems. It’s time for premarital counseling ASAP, unless you just want to split up and call it a day.Presuming you want to end up happily married to her, I have a few points for you to ponder.Point 1: I describe how my husband and I handled the name issue.I got married for the first and only time in my life five years ago. We started dating ten years ago, and it became pretty clear pretty quickly we’d be together for life, whether or not we got a piece of paper. And our reasons for getting that piece of paper aren’t particularly traditional. Then again, neither are we. He and I only look traditional at a superficial first glance. He brought two delightful kids from a prior marriage into my life, kids who are now in college.I’m a feminist, which surprised much of my traditional family. I love my family name, and have loved it since I was old enough to understand the meaning and history. I’ve had that name while obtaining university degrees and professional certifications, and while building a career I’m proud of. I would have wanted to keep my name had I gotten married much earlier in my career just on principle, but having a career where my degrees and certifications and experience are relevant, I had professional and financial reasons not to change my name.My husband’s ex-wife took his name at marriage. That marriage still ended badly. That proved to him that a name change didn’t guarantee marital success. My husband and I talked at length about how each of us felt about the name change issue, and we had compatible, similar opinions. We each felt that me keeping my name was consistent with our beliefs, and would avoid any potential income-harming consequences that could follow if I changed my name. We also discussed the name issue with the kids to ensure they understood and accepted the reasons for our choice. We reinforced our commitment to becoming one family with them in words and deeds as we planned the wedding. Their mom had already remarried and taken her new husband’s name. So yes, the kids were cool with our choice. We’ve occasionally made jokes over the years about our family sounding like a law firm.Point 2: I describe how my traditional sister and her traditional husband handled the name issue.My sister is a television producer with an accomplished career herself (I brag about her sometimes; she tolerates my bragging about her gracefully). Her professional reputation has been established using her “maiden” name, even though she’s not exactly famous. She recently married a man who also has kids from a prior marriage (yes, we see the similarity in our situations, and no, it wasn’t intentional, just a coincidence). My sister and her husband make a great couple, and they took the time in their relationship to make sure they had compatible values before getting engaged.They also discussed the name issue at length. They had to. They shared a traditional belief that she should take his name without hyphenation, but they had to balance that against the particular norms of her incredibly competitive and image-conscious industry. If she just took his name without having her own somewhere in the picture in her professional life, it could harm her career growth and even her income — and who wants to take a pay cut for that?? Wouldn’t the money be better spent on buying a house with a little more room or saving for the kids’ education? So they came up with their own approach. She took his last name for use on everything that has no tie to her profession, while choosing to use a now-three-word name professionally, consisting of her first name, her maiden name, and his last name. It’s a complicated compromise, but it works for them. And I think they made a fantastic choice, and I’m glad they didn’t blindly follow anyone else’s script. They’ve done it their way.Point 3: Marriage doesn’t have one single script that everyone should follow unquestioningly.My life experience has told me different couples who get married should never follow someone else’s generic script if they want a happy and healthy marriage. Following a generic marriage script that doesn’t account for different values, priorities, backgrounds, personality types, etc, is a great way to end up bitterly divorced within the first few years.My folks have been together for over fifty years, as have a majority of the couples in their circle of friends. The last couple of adult generations of my extended family seem to have a lower divorce rate than the general public, and within our extended family, different couples often have very different-looking marriages, even comparing the marriages of siblings in some cases, so some of us must be doing something sort of right.Two people considering a lifelong commitment need to have respect for each other, and for each other’s life experiences and beliefs, to discuss *all* of their values and priorities as their relationship grows. That discussion should be honest and ongoing once a relationship reaches the point of considering cohabitation and/or marriage. Assumptions about anything that’s important can doom a relationship. That discussion should include the name issue, and it should allow the couple to find a way to proceed that suits the two of them specifically. If they already have kids or plan to have them, they should talk about naming conventions for kids, too.That may mean one spouse changes their last name to the last name of the other spouse. That may mean each spouse continues to use the last name they entered the relationship with. That may mean one or both spouses take on a hyphenated combination last name. Or both spouses come up with a new shared name. They may come up with a naming plan for the current and future kids that’s totally traditional, or completely unexpected by the general public.Point 4: How people are named at birth or marriage often looks different in other cultures.There are other parts of the world where the structure of full names given at birth (or at religious naming) looks very different from the structure that most English-speaking developed countries use. There are other parts of the world where married names may look different as well (most Slavic countries have a naming convention for married names that often confuses outsiders, for example). The traditional English-language developed society naming model has never been universal, even when our society was much more traditional.Point 5: Marriage isn’t what it used to be; it’s much better now that people have options.Marriage is no longer as universal a rite of passage into adulthood in our society; people can leave their parents’ homes to live independently without marriage. Marriage is now essentially optional, except in a few more narrow-minded places in our society. And different people can choose different approaches to married life that look unlike the most traditional models.There used to be a lot of miserable marriages in our society, marriages that dragged on for decades, because women had fewer options to support themselves alone, because divorce was seen as socially scandalous or a religious failure, because it was harder for married people to get divorced as per secular law, and because people didn’t believe that it was okay to build a life that didn’t include marriage. Those were the bad old days, and good riddance.Point 6: You’re definitely not ready; she may not be, either.Your deceptively short and simple question tells me — actually, it shouts — that you’re an individual whose exposure to the world has been relatively narrow. Also, you don’t respect your fianceé’s beliefs enough to even entertain the possibility that she has the right to a different opinion than you about this. You, as an individual, aren’t ready yet for the kind of lifetime commitment that requires two people to have compatible values and priorities to succeed, as well as healthy ways to discuss differences of opinion. I’m also worried that your fiancée isn’t ready for marriage, either. She accepted your marriage proposal before either of you realized you had at least one significant gap in your values and beliefs. That’s not a good sign for either of you.Point 7: Next step is serious and thorough premarital counseling.If you’ve supposedly gotten premarital counseling, it clearly didn’t do everything that’s needed here, and you need a more rigorous and thorough type of premarital counseling ASAP. If you haven’t had any premarital counseling, you’re both overdue, so go and get it ASAP. Get it. Either that or just break up.Point 8: But we’re getting married tomorrow/next week/next month!If your wedding date is coming up soon, postpone it, even if it’s financially painful and publicly uncomfortable and embarrassing. A postponed or canceled wedding is far less expensive and traumatic than a divorce to everyone involved. Just talk to anyone who’s had a difficult divorce.Point 9: But we already have a kid (or two)!Even if you have kids already, delay everything about getting married except premarital counseling. If your premarital counselor is amenable to the idea, add co-parenting counseling to your premarital counseling. If not, and if premarital counseling leads you to significantly delay or cancel the wedding due to values differences, try to find some co-parenting counseling if you can squeeze it into your schedule and budget. Trying to co-parent with significantly different values only gets harder as kids get older, and the therapy that the kids will need will be even more expensive and time-consuming. And if you already have kids, co-parenting is no longer optional, whether you stay together or not.Point 10: What will happen if we get married anyway, without good premarital counseling?The short answer: Nothing good, unless you’re very lucky. And I don’t believe in relying on luck.Point 10-A: How about an example of a couple who started like you, without good premarital counseling?Two friends of mine who got engaged in college clashed about the name issue before they married, and they came to an uneasy compromise. At the time, they thought the name issue was their biggest difference in values. As it turned out, they had more differences in values and priorities that emerged. Romantic love and personal chemistry evaporated before everyone’s eyes, and it was painful to watch. The relationship soured bitterly as the differences became more obvious and harder to bridge. Their marriage didn’t last ten years. The divorce was ugly and expensive. They both had lots of legal appointments and no few court dates during the separation and divorce process, which was not helpful to either of their competitive careers. Their circle of friends had to either take sides or struggle to find ways to stay friends with them both; staying friends with both was something only one or two people managed (the difference in the couple’s values turned out to reveal similar differences in their circle of friends). The split took a long time to sort out because of financial issues alone, and neither of them was particularly wealthy (yes, college loan payment issues poked up). Amazingly, they didn’t even have kids. Imagine how much worse it could have been had they dragged small children through such an ordeal.Point 11: Good luck! I want you both to be happy, either together or apart! 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Can you describe a Quaker wedding?When I am visiting my family, I attend a Meeting that is part of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Friends General Conference. I have not attended a wedding there yet, but between reading Faith and Practice and the accounts of people who have attended such weddings, I can offer the following info:If a couple feel led to marry under the care of the Meeting, they ask for a Clearness Committee. My understanding is that Bruce Taylor’s characterization of this process as similar to pastoral premarital counseling in other Christian denominations is accurate.However, Quakers traditionally do not have pastors, but rather assume that the entire Meeting is corporately responsible for all of the functions necessary for the Meeting’s welfare. This means, among other things, that any person may minister vocally during the Meeting for Worship. It also means that Meeting business is decided corporately, and that pastoral functions are served by members of the Meeting when the need arises and the Spirit leads. It is assumed that each member needs to be open to being led by the Spirit in this way.So, a committee is formed to serve the purpose of premarital counsel and discernment. The formation of such a committee for a given couple is minuted in the monthly Meeting for Worship for Business notes for the information of Meeting members.When the clearness process is complete, a date for a Meeting for Worship for the purpose of witnessing the marriage is set. It will not normally be during a regular Meeting for Worship. It will also be minuted during Meeting for Worship for Business.In advance of the wedding, a marriage certificate (usually beautifully calligraphed) will be drawn up, detailing the date, place, vows made, and information about name changes pursuant to the marriage, if applicable. At the close of the wedding, the entire congregation present sign it as witnesses, and it is then framed and hung in a place of honor in the couple’s home.Because the vows appear on the certificate, the couple need to memorize their vows in advance of their wedding day. There is a suggested text for these vows in the Faith and Practice book.So, when the day arrives, a wedding bench is set up at the front of the Meeting space, and everyone comes in and a normal Meeting for Worship begins. The couple may be dressed even pretty much the way couples in other Christian denominations dress, but the meeting space will probably not be decorated. It will be, as usual, very simple. The only way you will know it’s a place of worship is that there will be rows of benches for seating.The Meeting will remain silent until the couple feels led to stand up and make their vows before the Meeting. After the vows are exchanged, vocal ministry may be offered by others present. Indeed, the couple themselves may also speak during this time as well.I am aware of a very touching moment at the wedding of old high school acquaintances - at which I was not present, but which I heard about from the bride’s parents later - where the groom got up and basically witnessed that he had walked into his wedding an atheist, but after hearing the vocal ministry offered at the wedding, he had become convinced of God’s presence, so that he was going to be walking out of his wedding a believer in God.It still makes me cry to think about it.

Sure you can, if you're willing to lie your a** off. Just walk right in to any Catholic Church on a Sunday morning, and do what everyone else does, say what they say, sing the songs, the whole deal. Heck, go up and receive Communion, too. You're already perpetrating a fraud by pretending to believe what the others do, why not go for sacrilege, too? That's one of the big boys of mortal sin, but what do you care, since it's not really your religion.After Mass, ask the priest or deacon how to register as a member of that parish. There will probably be a short form of some sort for you to fill out. It will probably ask you something about when and where you were baptized, and maybe what previous parish you attended. Keep on spinning that web of lies. Don't worry, probably no one will catch you, as long as they don't ask for a baptismal certificate from the parish where you were baptized, and if they do, just tell 'em, gosh, it's been so many years, I don't even know where it is, they might let you slide. As a rule, no one background checks to see if you're really Catholic, because who in their right mind is going to lie about that? Anyway, make sure you turn that form back in to the right person, and they'll put you in the membership rolls.Voila, you're an atheist, probably haven't even been baptized, you don't even care, and now you're a member of a Catholic Church. Congratulations! Now, give it a couple-three months of showing up regularly for Mass for everyone to get to know you and trust that you are who you say you are, and you're in like Flynn. Sure, you're going to be perpetrating that same fraud over and over again during that time, but you're in this deep now, might as well keep going, right? In for a dime, in for a dollar.Once you've done that, go talk to Father Mike and tell him all about your plans to get married to that wonderful gal. He'll set you up with the Pre-Cana classes. That's a series of premarital counseling classes that you'll have to take, to talk about your faith and raising children and how to have a holy and sacramental marriage and all that. Maybe you'll get lucky and get signed up with an online course, so you don't have to spout so much BS about what you pretend to believe. Then again, they may do it in person, so study up, because you'll have to completely hustle them for several weeks.The big day finally arrives, and it's time to marry the gal of your dreams. Isn't she beautiful? And boy, isn't she the lucky one, too! She gets to marry a man who does not share in her faith; is so completely lacking in a moral compass that he is willing to lie to whole hosts of people over and over again just for the privilege of marrying her inside a church; and is so lacking in personal backbone that he is willing to compromise his principles instead of just telling his bride-to-be, "Being an atheist, I'd rather not get married in a church." Wow, I can't imagine a happier day for her. That's going to be quite the marriage, considering the foundation of trust you've built.