Commitment Counseling

(pre-marriage

counseling)

 

Your marriage commitment is one of the biggest steps you take in your lifetime. Within your marriage, there will be a need for patience, work, and much understanding.

 

Kidder Counseling offers a unique program designed to evaluate an engaged couple's readiness for marriage and to help the couple reach their full potential as husband and wife. The two-part program includes a national, standardized questionnaire (FOCCUS: Facilitation Open Caring Communication, Understanding and Study) for both partners and an extensive counseling session with Stacey Kidder.

 

Through this program future spouses learn more about themselves and about each other.  Perhaps even more importantly, each will learn the tools to help prevent possible future problems and issues.

 

If the couple has been referred by a minister, Kidder Counseling submits a reports on the results of the survey and the counseling session to assist his or her work with the couple before the ceremony.

 

When our office receives a referral to or request for the program, we prepare a packet including the FOCCUS survey, along with some additional evaluation questions. Completing the paperwork takes approximately an hour. Each partner should fill out the questions separately so that his/her answers are independent and unbiased.

 

The survey is scored, and Stacey Kidder evaluates both the results of the questionnaire and the partners’ answers to the additional questions. She determines which areas of compatibility require attention and need to be addressed in the counseling session.

 

The couple schedules a counseling session, which usually runs 90-120 minutes. The counselor reviews the results of the survey with the couple, and they and the counselor discuss their answers and therapeutic tools for dealing with any areas of conflict or incompatibility. (Along with counseling the couple as partners, the questionnaires screen for possible mental health issues that could affect the relationship.)

 

If a couple has been referred by a minister, the counselor creates and submits a report detailing the readiness of the couple for marriage, along with strengths and weaknesses.

 

Ministers, both locally and around the country, refer couples to our program. Parents and friends also give this service to a couple as a wedding present. What better gift could one provide than the tools to create a happy, successful marriage?