By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
April 5, 2004
Sharon Skonie and Tom Martin dated for three years and were engaged for 18 months prior to their wedding almost a decade ago. By all accounts, they knew each other very well.
But as devout Catholics, they also knew they would have to take part in pre-Cana, where they would meet with an already married couple and then later their priest to discuss marriage issues.
“Pre-Cana was a requirement for us to get married in the Catholic church, so the idea of getting [pre-marital counseling] didn’t come as a surprise to us,” says Sharon Skonie Martin of Bolingbrook. “I was actually really looking forward to it because I wanted to get to know Tom better.
“We had always talked about things, but not necessarily in a structured way. The pre-Cana provided that for us. We discussed finances, sexual behavior, whether or not we wanted to have children, ways to resolve conflict — all sorts of things.”
Her husband adds, “People do change, and you’ve got to have some flexibility in how you deal with things, because your view five years from now may be different from how it is now. But for us, working through some of these issues before we got married was really beneficial. We weren’t surprised in a bad way.”
They remained so close to the couple that counseled them that the Martins asked them to be the godparents of their only child.
Communication is the biggest asset a couple can have, according to experts such as Patricia Schell Kuhlman and Gregory Kuhlman, whose religion-neutral Marriage Success Training seminars guide couples through preparing for life. In their day jobs, she is a counselor working with women whose marriages are in crisis. He has been a psychologist for more than 25 years.
“Marriage isn’t a sure thing anymore,” says Patricia Schell Kuhlman. “You have a 25 percent chance of staying married if you just trust your relationship to luck. Half will get divorced within the first seven years of marriage. Then of the remaining couples that stay married, only half will stay truly happy and satisfied.
“No one wants to think about what could go wrong — especially when they’re in the glow of a new relationship. What we say is that all couples have bumps in the road. But working through those issues before they become major problems is key to the success of a marriage.”
Married for 15 years, the Kuhlmans recall having a few hours of counseling with their own officiant, though Gregory says he doesn’t remember what they discussed.
“We decided to [start this program] because marriage is a source of great pleasure to both of us, and we’ve worked very hard at staying married,” says Gregory Kuhlman. “We’ve watched friends we wished would’ve stayed together, and thought could stay together, get divorced.”
Can counseling help? President Bush appears to think so; his “Healthy Marriage Plan” would spend $1.5 billion in federal and state funds to promote marriage to welfare recipients and teach them the skills to keep marriages together.
The Kuhlmans suggest that couples should at least think about signing up, six to 12 months prior to their wedding, for some kind pre-marital counseling — whether it’s through a program like theirs, the church, a therapist or even a book.
Like the Martins, they’re proponents of Susan Piver’s The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say “I Do” (J. P. Tarcher, $10), which helps couples ask each other, well, hard questions.
“You have to feel comfortable with going to a workshop or a priest or whomever, because if you’re not, then you won’t go,” says Patricia Kuhlman. “So we say check out our Web site to see what we’re all about. Ask your friends for their recommendations. Just do a little research and find the right fit for yourselves.”
Before Linda and Michael Sawyer got married last year, the Chicago couple sought out friends to get advice on what they could expect in the upcoming months. What their friends prepared them for was a future beyond the wedding planning stages.
“Neither of us were comfortable at the time going to a counselor,” says Linda Sawyer. “One of our friends is a psychiatrist who was willing to counsel us. She and her husband have been married forever, so they were able to fill us in on what to expect once we got past the honeymoon stage. They also advised us to think about things like how much money we had saved up, how many kids we wanted to have, whether we wanted to attend church.”
As for the Martins, their marriage was put to a test early on. Within four months of their wedding, Sharon’s father had emergency surgery, two of her aunts passed away and then her grandmother died.
“I always say to Tom that my advice to a newly engaged couple would be that it really is more fun to ride the roller coaster with the same person than to go it alone,” she says. “Marriage is a lot of work, but the end result is so worthwhile.”
The Kuhlmans will have a seminar June 5 at the Embassy Suites, 600 N. State. The cost is $445 for registration before May 5; $495 afterwards. To register or for more information, call (866) 704-6565 or visit their Web site, www.stayhitched.com.
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Want to know how to make a marriage work? Relationship experts Patricia Schell Kuhlman and her husband Gregory Kuhlman offer their top three tips:
*Keep it positive. There’s nothing that brings a marriage into a bad state faster than too much negativity. They recommend five positive interactions for every one negative reaction.
*Make time for each other every day. This is especially true if you have children and/or a dual-career marriage. You have to make your relationship — and this includes a sex life — a priority.
*The only way you can change you partner is by changing yourself. Change is often created by something you do rather than by harping on your partner to do something differently.
