The Pre-Marriage Course is an opportunity for you to invest in your relationship through five in person or online date nights created to help you to learn to communicate well, understand and appreciate your differences, and prepare for potential challenges.
Learn practical tools to help you invest in your relationship for a lasting marriage.
Enjoy private, intimate conversations as a couple giving you the space to engage openly and honestly throughout each session.
Choose to go through the course at a local venue in the company of other couples or online in the privacy of your own home.
Gain insights from interviews with leading psychologists, authors and psychosexual specialists.
The Marriage Course and The Pre-Marriage Course have been run in over 117 countries for over 1.5 million couples.
In the introductory session, you will explore expectations inherited from family and upbringing; communication styles and effective communication; the importance of recognizing and expressing your feelings; and some barriers to communicating. You’ll also develop an awareness of bad listening habits versus the power of reflective listening. As a couple, you’ll discuss your backgrounds and communication styles, and you’ll practice a listening exercise as demonstrated in the video.
Session 2 emphasizes that conflict in marriage is to be expected as you adjust to your differences and unpacks the unhelpful approaches of the “rhino” and “hedgehog” for dealing with anger. Nicky and Sila look at recognizing and accepting our differences in areas such as money management or family norms and share about the “10 o’clock rule”. They look at five steps to help reach agreement as well as the importance of saying sorry and a practical three-step process for healing hurt.
This episode explores the benefits of the marriage commitment in terms of deep friendship and a strong family life, and the idea of an equal partnership with responsibilities divided up according to strengths. You’ll hear what it means to put each other’s needs above your own, looking at the marriage covenant and love that is deliberate and intentional, not just a feeling. You’ll also discuss two partial aspects of the marriage vows: dealing with finances and managing relationships within the wider family.
Nicky and Sila look at keeping love alive during the whole course of a marriage and the deliberate choice to do so. They unpack various tools such as a weekly date night (with no phones!) and using Gary Chapman’s “five love languages” (words of affirmation, gifts or presents, quality time, kind actions and physical touch). This episode also focusses on the importance of sex in marriage, giving practical advice for good sex that is us-oriented not me-oriented and addressing the devastating effects of porn.
Marriage provides us with one of life’s greatest opportunities and one of its greatest challenges. In the final session, you’ll learn four requirements for working together as a team in marriage: showing daily appreciation for each other; letting go of unrealistic expectations; being prepared to change; and recognizing common overreactions. Nicky and Sila also discuss the importance of a couple’s values and priorities, and the roles of the more adventuring and more nurturing partner in the relationship.
At the start of each session, you will share a special meal together. This is an opportunity to unwind and connect, helping to create the romance and enjoyment of a date.
Each engaging and enriching episode explores a different topic through real experiences, expert insights and relevant teaching, with breaks for conversations.
Through workbook prompts and questions, you will be invited to enjoy private, intimate conversations that help you to engage with honesty and openness throughout the session.
We did The Pre-Marriage Course before we got married 6 years ago so it’s nice to be doing The Marriage Course now. The Pre-Marriage Course put us on a firm footing going forward. We thought we were close already but the course helped us to have conversations we didn’t know we needed to have.
The conversations that we had during The Pre-Marriage course formed how we interacted in the beginning of our marriage and gave us tools to communicate about certain issues, especially at the beginning when you’re trying to figure out everything…
The Pre Marriage Course really put us on a firm footing going forward. We thought we were close already but the course helped us have conversations we didn’t know we needed to have. And this course forced us to have even more conversations relevant to us in this stage of our marriage.
The Marriage Course not only transformed my marriage, it saved my life. We had been married for three years when my husband and I did the course. We had a traumatic birth, lost another child and we needed real help. Now we have been married for 15 years, we have had twins and I tell everyone to do The Marriage Course.
…it means that we stay friends, interested and really invested in the same things as opposed to just drifting apart. That means that we catch stuff really early and don’t allow resentment to creep in.
Yes, The Marriage Course and The Pre-Marriage Course have been translated into Spanish, Chinese and several other languages. Please log-in here and create a course to see all the language options.
In most cases, The Marriage Course and The Pre-Marriage Course are free to attend, but some churches or organizations do charge a nominal fee to cover the meal and other running costs. As a guest, you may need to purchase your own Guest Journals.
The Marriage Course was created by Alpha International, which also runs Alpha courses around the world. Alpha is a multi-week series of sessions exploring the Christian faith. Each week, the session looks at a different question around faith and is designed to create conversation. Alpha is run all around the globe and everyone is welcome. It runs online, in cafés, churches, universities, homes—you name it! No two Alphas look the same, but they generally have three key things in common: hospitality, a talk and good conversation. Click HERE for more information.
Each couple on The Pre-Marriage Course is allocated a Support Couple. This is a married couple who have completed The Marriage Course themselves and have signed up to host a couple from The Pre-Marriage Course. You will usually be hosted in their home, over an evening. During the evening, the Support Couple will guide you in conversation as a couple, using the findings of your Couple Survey, which you would have completed before the start of the course.
Even if you are not yet engaged, The Pre-Marriage Course can serve as a tool to work on your relationship and help you decide whether or not you are ready to get engaged and married.
The Couple Survey is an optional series of questions that you will complete before The Pre-Marriage Course begins. The purpose of the Couple Survey is to:
You will not receive the results of your Couple Survey, as these will go to the Support Couple assigned to you. The link to your Couple Survey expires 60 days after the last Pre-Marriage Course session. Following the course, you will have a discussion with your designated Support Couple. The Couple Survey report will guide this conversation, affirming areas of strength in your relationship and highlighting issues for discussion.
The Pre-Marriage Course consists of five consecutive sessions and is designed with the intention that guests attend one session per week.
As a guest you can purchase your Guest Journals HERE. You may want to first check if the Guest Journals are provided through your course hosts.
The Marriage Book was written by Nicky and Sila Lee, founders of The Marriage Courses and is available as a softcover or e-book HERE.
The Marriage Course and The Pre-Marriage Course each have their own version of the Guest Study Journal. Each guest on a course requires their own Study Journal (that’s two per couple) and can be purchased HERE or HERE.
The Study Journal is a small handbook that corresponds with the topics of each session, guiding couples’ conversations, prompting discussions, and allowing plenty of space for guests to make their own notes. The Study Journal was created as an additional tool used to help couples reflect on their relationship and the meaning of marriage, as well as to facilitate conversations between them. The Journal is for each guest to keep once the course has finished.
Keep your weekly date nights! You may want to review the Continuing Conversations that are found at the end of each session and review them on future date nights. You’ve made a great investment in your relationship on The Pre-Marriage Course. You may want to consider investing in questions about faith on Alpha. In this short video Nicky and Sila Lee talk about how the Pre-Marriage Course and Alpha work together HERE.
If you attend The Marriage Course or The Pre-Marriage Course in person through a church or organization in your area, each session should have the environment of a date-night: relaxed, romantic, and private. We ask our course leaders to make the evening as welcoming as possible. When you arrive at your course you should be seated at your own table for two, as we believe each couple should have privacy and not have to share anything about your relationship with anyone other than your partner. You should be served a meal in a romantic setting while listening to practical talks that are informative and fun. Background music will ensure that you have complete privacy for your conversations. Arrangements will vary from course to course depending on where it is being held and who is running it, but this is how we recommend the evening be set up.
Yes. To get the most out of The Marriage Course or The Pre-Marriage Course we recommend you try to come to every session, but if you do miss one you could always ask the course organiser to catch you up by sending you the missed session’s episode. You can then work through it with your Guest Journals in your own time. We do not recommend you attempt to do the whole course on your own like this.
If you’ve been cohabiting for more than two years and are not engaged or considering marriage, we recommend you try The Marriage Course. If you’ve been living together or married for less than a year and you are not aware of any major issues to address, it’s a great idea to attend The Pre-Marriage Course.
Use the Find a Course page to locate a course near you HERE.
While The Marriage Course and The Pre-Marriage Course are based on Christian principles, they are designed for couples with or without a Christian faith. We would love any couple to feel welcome to attend whether or not they have a Christian faith or any religious faith at all. We are confident all couples will find the courses relevant and helpful for their relationship.
We would love any couple to feel welcome to attend The Marriage Course, whether married or in a long-term, cohabitating relationship. The Pre-Marriage Course is ideal for engaged couples, newlyweds, or couples exploring the idea of marriage.
Both The Marriage Course and The Pre-Marriage Course have a similar structure, with the environment of a date night and an emphasis on private discussions for each couple. The key difference is that The Pre-Marriage Course is for engaged couples and those considering marriage, whereas we recommend The Marriage Course for couples who have been married for at least two years. The Pre-Marriage Course can also include a Couple Survey which each guest completes in advance of the course. Following the course they look at the results of their survey over a meal with a designated married “Support Couple”.
Currently we have over 8,000 courses, run in 117 countries, in 45 languages.
The Marriage Course has been run in over 117 countries for over 1.5 million couples and consists of two courses: The Marriage Course and The Pre-Marriage Course. The Marriage Course and The Pre-Marriage Course recognize the need to help couples with their relationships. The Marriage Course was developed in 1996 by Nicky and Sila Lee (authors of The Marriage Book) for couples looking for practical support to strengthen their relationship. The course equips couples with tools and techniques to keep the spark alive and stay connected. There is no group work and each couple’s conversations are completely private.
The Marriage Course and The Pre-Marriage Course have been successfully run in over 117 countries worldwide since they were created by Nicky and Sila Lee, authors of The Marriage Book.
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