Couples Therapy Before Marriage: Should You Try It Before Getting Engaged or Married?
There is a quiet assumption built into how most couples approach marriage. You meet someone, the relationship deepens, you make a decision to commit, and you trust that the love between you will carry you through whatever comes next. The idea of doing therapy before you are married, when by most measures things are going well, can feel slightly odd. Therapy is for problems, the thinking goes, and we do not have any.
This is one of the most consistent patterns I see in my work. Couples come in for help after years of difficulty that could have been prevented, or at least softened, by a few honest conversations early on. The research on this is unusually clear. Couples who do some form of structured relationship work before marriage divorce less, report higher relationship satisfaction, and handle conflict better than couples who do not. The effect is large enough that the question is not really whether premarital work helps. It is whether you want to do it.
This piece is for anyone who has been wondering whether to suggest therapy to their partner before they get married, or before they get engaged. I want to walk through what the evidence actually shows, what premarital therapy involves, why so many couples skip it, and how to think about whether it is the right move for you. If you have already decided you want therapy and are wondering what to expect from your first session, I have written about that separately.
What is premarital therapy?
Premarital therapy, sometimes called premarital counselling, relationship education, or marriage preparation, is structured work that couples do before getting married or before making a major commitment. It is not the same as crisis therapy. Couples who do this work are typically not in distress. They are doing something closer to preventative maintenance, learning the skills and having the conversations that will matter most over the course of a long marriage.
The format varies. Some couples do a short course of weekly sessions over six to twelve weeks. Some do an intensive weekend programme. Some do a few sessions specifically focused on particular topics, such as finances or how to handle in-laws. The work is generally short-term, focused, and skills-based, with a different texture from open-ended couples therapy for distress. The aim is not to fix anything. It is to build the foundations that long-term relationships need.
The best-known and most-researched programme in this category is PREP, the Prevention and Relationship Education Program developed at the University of Denver by Howard Markman, Scott Stanley, and colleagues. PREP is the gold standard in the field, with more than three decades of randomised controlled trials behind it. Many therapists draw on PREP principles, alongside other approaches such as the Gottman Method or Emotionally Focused Therapy, when doing premarital work.
What the research actually shows
This is one of the better-evidenced areas in relationship psychology, so the claims worth making are unusually specific.
Premarital work reduces divorce risk
Multiple longitudinal studies have followed couples for years after premarital intervention. Stanley and colleagues' research consistently finds that couples who participate in premarital programmes have lower divorce rates than couples who do not, with effects that persist for at least five years and in some studies more. The effect size is meaningful: around a 30 percent reduction in divorce risk in some studies, with the largest benefits seen in couples who were at higher risk to begin with.
It improves relationship satisfaction
Carroll and Doherty's meta-analysis of premarital prevention programmes, published in Family Relations, found that participants showed significantly higher relationship satisfaction and communication quality than couples in control groups, with effect sizes that compare favourably to many other psychological interventions. The benefits were apparent immediately after the programme and persisted at follow-up assessments.
It teaches skills couples actually use
One of the most consistent findings is that the conflict and communication skills taught in premarital work tend to stick. Couples who learn structured approaches to disagreement, repair, and difficult conversations during premarital preparation tend to use those skills years later, often without realising they are doing so. This matters because conflict skills are one of the strongest predictors of long-term relationship outcomes.
It does not require things to be wrong
The point worth emphasising is that the research is on couples who were not in distress at the time of the work. Premarital therapy is preventative. It is for relationships that are functioning well and want to build foundations for the long term. Couples who are already in significant distress need a different kind of work, and the evidence base for that is also strong, but it is a different question.
The conflict and communication skills taught in premarital work tend to stick.
What you actually work on
Premarital therapy varies depending on the couple and the approach, but most good premarital work covers a fairly consistent set of areas. These are the conversations that turn out to matter most over the course of a long marriage, and that are easier to have before you are in the middle of them.
Money
Most couples discover, sometimes painfully, that their assumptions about money are not aligned. How much should you save, how much should you spend, who pays for what, how do you handle different earning levels, how do you make large financial decisions, what does each of you expect from retirement. Money disagreements are one of the most consistent predictors of marital distress, and one of the most responsive to having clear conversations early.
Children
Whether to have them, when, how many, how they will be raised, who will take primary caregiving responsibility, how the relationship will be protected during the early years. Assumptions in this area often turn out to be very different between partners, and the cost of discovering that mid-marriage is much higher than the cost of discovering it before.
Conflict and communication
How you fight matters more than whether you fight. Premarital work typically introduces structured approaches to disagreement, including how to slow down before things escalate, how to repair after rupture, and how to handle the communication patterns that tend to harm relationships if you find yourselves drifting into them. I have written separately on how to stop arguing with your partner and on how to repair after a fight, which cover the underlying ideas in more depth.
Sex and intimacy
Sexual desire is rarely identical between partners, and the small differences that feel manageable early in a relationship often become larger over time, particularly through life transitions like marriage, work pressure, illness, or having a baby. Talking openly about expectations, preferences, and how you will handle changes over time is one of the most under-rated parts of premarital work. The piece I wrote on desire discrepancy covers some of the ground here.
Families of origin and in-laws
How much contact you want with each other's families, how you handle holidays, how you set boundaries when needed, what role each set of parents will play in your life together. These are the kinds of issues that tend to surface around weddings themselves, often for the first time, and that can become significant sources of strain if not addressed.
Expectations and assumptions
Most couples carry unspoken assumptions about marriage drawn from their families of origin, their religious or cultural background, or simply what they have absorbed from the world around them. Surfacing these assumptions and checking whether you actually share them is one of the most useful things you can do before getting married. The disappointment of discovering, three years in, that your partner had a completely different idea of what marriage involves is one of the more avoidable sources of distress in long-term relationships.
Why couples skip premarital therapy and why I think that is a mistake
Despite the strong evidence base, most couples do not do premarital therapy. The reasons people give tend to fall into a few categories, and each of them is worth pushing back on gently.
"We are doing fine, we do not need it." This is the most common reason and the most important one to address. Premarital therapy is not for couples in trouble. It is precisely for couples who are doing fine. The question is not whether you need help. The question is whether you want to be doing even better in five years than you are now, and whether you want to build something that can absorb the difficulties that will inevitably come.
"My partner will think I am suggesting we have problems." This is also common, and worth addressing directly. The framing matters. Premarital therapy is not crisis intervention. It is the relational equivalent of going to the gym before you get injured, or doing financial planning before retirement. Most partners, once the framing is right, are receptive. I have written separately on how to talk to a reluctant partner about couples therapy which covers some of this.
"We do not have time, the wedding is taking up everything." Genuinely understandable, but probably the wrong way around. The wedding takes a year of planning for one day. The marriage is the rest of your lives. Spending six to twelve weeks investing in the marriage itself, before the wedding, is one of the better trades you can make with your time.
"We have already done a pre-marriage course at our church or with a religious leader." These can be valuable and I would not want to discourage them. But religious or community-based premarital programmes vary widely in quality and depth, and most are not based on the research literature. There is good evidence that secular, structured, research-based premarital therapy adds something distinct, particularly around skills like conflict management and communication. The two can complement each other.
Premarital therapy for same-sex couples and non-traditional configurations
Most of the premarital research has been conducted with opposite-sex couples, but the broad findings, that structured work before marriage improves outcomes, applies across configurations. Same-sex couples, for whom I have a particular focus in my practice, often have additional ground to cover around how you handle family acceptance, how you navigate community expectations, and how you build a marriage that may not have many models in either of your families of origin. Couples in consensually non-monogamous relationships have their own important conversations to have before formalising the partnership, including agreements, boundaries, and how you intend to handle the practical and emotional realities of the structure you have chosen.
How to start
If you are considering premarital therapy, the most useful thing is usually to have a conversation with a therapist before deciding anything. Most therapists, including me, offer a free initial consultation by phone or video. It is a low-stakes way of finding out whether the work might be a fit, what it would involve, and whether the therapist feels right for you both. There is no commitment beyond the call itself.
My practice, Rise and Grow Therapy, offers couples therapy across central London from rooms in Kensington, Pimlico and Angel, Islington. I work with engaged couples, couples considering engagement, and couples who are already married but want to do some of this work in retrospect. I work with couples of all configurations, including same-sex couples and couples in consensually non-monogamous relationships.
The thing I most want to leave you with is this. Marriage is one of the largest commitments most people make in their lives, and it is unusual that we make it with so little preparation. A few weeks of structured work before you get there can change the next thirty years. There are very few investments with that kind of return.
About the author
Mark Ryan is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist (MBACP Accred) and NCPS Accredited Registered Relationship Therapist based in central London. He runs Rise and Grow Therapy, with rooms in Kensington, Pimlico, and Angel, Islington, and works with individuals and couples on relationship difficulties, intimacy, communication, and emotional connection. He has particular experience working with LGBTQ+ clients and couples in consensually non-monogamous relationships. To book a free consultation, visit riseandgrowtherapy.co.uk.
