Premarital counseling boosts communication, not happiness, BYU professors say

PROVO — Most engaged couples don't need help with the "happily," though their "ever after" can be improved by premarital education.

A recent BYU analysis of 47 studies over 30 years found there was no significant "relationship satisfaction" increase for couples who took a premarital education class.

"These are engaged couples — they already have stars in their eyes," said BYU family life professor Alan Hawkins. "If your point is to improve their sense of the relationship quality and their happiness, then premarital education is not very good at doing that."

However, those same educational programs were effective at helping couples improve communication and problem-solving skills, which directly affect the satisfaction of a relationship, Hawkins said.

So, while a premarital education program may not make love-sick couples any happier, it could still teach them how to communicate, handle finances, deal with in-laws and develop realistic expectations for their marriage.

"It's not like we're asking them to do something they don't think is a good idea," Hawkins said. "Virtually everyone says that taking a class on helping you to build a better foundation is a good idea."

The types of classes the researchers studied were church- or community-organized programs with an instructor and a curriculum. None was classified as one-on-one counseling or therapy, and no programs were from BYU.

It's still possible these programs may improve relationship satisfaction in the long run, but no data exist yet — not even for BYU's own popular marriage preparation class, Hawkins noted.

"Very few researchers look at the effects of their program after the program has ended," said Elizabeth Fawcett, a visiting professor at BYU and lead author on the paper recently published in Family Relations. "We hope that more researchers will look at longer follow-up studies to determine whether marriage preparation affects marital satisfaction, relationship quality and divorce rates years after a course is taken."

BYU professor Jason Carroll and BYU grad Victoria Blanchard are also authors on the paper.

Along with greater research on long-term outcomes, premarital counselors would do well to adapt their timing and focus, Hawkins said, offering more instruction to young single adults before they pair off, as well as to individuals who choose to live together before getting married.

In cohabitating, engagement becomes more of a "middle stage" of a relationship rather than a beginning, which means many couples end up sliding into marriage, rather than deciding, Hawkins said.

"Cohabitation ... is not the free pass (society) once thought," Hawkins said. "We (also) need some pre-cohabitation ... education, something like that, to help people think more clearly about taking their relationship to the next level."

For information on dating, marriage or premarital classes, visit The Utah Healthy Marriage Initiative at utahmarriage.org.

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