Your wedding is one day. Your marriage is a journey. The conversations you have before saying “I do” can help you build a stronger foundation for the life you want to share.
Engagement is an exciting season filled with love, dreams, and anticipation. Between choosing a venue, planning a ceremony, and preparing for your wedding day, it can be easy to overlook one of the most meaningful parts of getting married: preparing for your life together.
How will you handle disagreements? What does financial security mean to each of you? How have your family backgrounds shaped your expectations about marriage? What helps each of you feel loved, understood, and supported?
You don’t need to have all the answers before getting married. What matters is being willing to explore these questions together.
At New Land Therapy, I offer online premarital relationship preparation for engaged couples and couples considering marriage throughout South Carolina. Through the SYMBIS assessment process and personalized sessions, couples can explore their relationship strengths, better understand their differences, and begin meaningful conversations about their future.
What Is the SYMBIS Premarital Assessment?
SYMBIS stands for Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. Developed by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, the SYMBIS assessment is designed to help couples explore important aspects of their relationship, including their expectations, communication patterns, personal backgrounds, and opportunities for growth.
Each partner completes the assessment individually. The results provide a framework for guided conversations about how you think, feel, communicate, and approach married life.
With professional facilitation, couples can use these insights to recognize their strengths, explore differences with curiosity rather than judgment, and identify practical ways to support one another.
The goal isn’t to create a perfect relationship or eliminate every disagreement. It’s to help you enter marriage with greater self-awareness, mutual understanding, and a shared commitment to growing together.
Why Is Premarital Counseling Important?
Premarital counseling isn’t only for couples experiencing difficulties. It can also benefit couples who feel happy, connected, and excited about their future.
Love is an important foundation, but a lasting partnership also involves communication, realistic expectations, mutual respect, and the ability to navigate life’s changes together.
Premarital relationship preparation gives you an opportunity to discuss important topics before wedding planning becomes married life.
1. Understand Each Other’s Communication Styles
You may express emotions differently, need different amounts of time to process a difficult conversation, or have different ways of asking for support.
Learning how each partner communicates can help reduce misunderstandings and make it easier to express feelings, needs, and expectations openly.
2. Learn to Navigate Conflict as a Team
Disagreements are a normal part of relationships. What matters is how you respond to them.
Premarital conversations can help you recognize your reactions during conflict, practice listening without immediately becoming defensive, express concerns respectfully, and work toward solutions together.
Instead of asking, “How can I win this argument?” you can begin asking, “How can we understand each other and work through this together?”
3. Discuss Money and Financial Expectations
Money can represent security, freedom, responsibility, or even stress, depending on your personal experiences and family background.
You may have different spending habits, saving priorities, financial obligations, or expectations about managing money as a couple.
Discussing these differences before marriage can help you develop a shared understanding of financial responsibilities, priorities, and long-term goals.
4. Explore Family Backgrounds and Expectations
Every person brings a personal history into a relationship. Our families, childhood experiences, cultural backgrounds, and previous relationships can influence what we expect marriage to look like.
Conversations about family involvement, traditions, household responsibilities, boundaries, and future parenting can help you understand where your expectations come from and decide what works best for your relationship.
You don’t have to agree on everything. You can learn to respect your differences while building a life that reflects your shared values.
5. Strengthen Emotional Intimacy
Emotional intimacy grows when partners feel safe enough to be honest, vulnerable, and understood.
You can explore what helps each of you feel loved and appreciated, how you prefer to receive support, and what happens when one of you feels overwhelmed or disconnected.
Small, consistent acts of care can help nurture connection throughout the changing seasons of married life.
6. Build a Shared Vision for Your Future
Marriage involves more than sharing a home. It means making decisions about priorities, responsibilities, personal growth, and the kind of life you want to create together.
Discussing your hopes and expectations can help you identify shared goals, recognize important differences, and approach future decisions as partners.
What If We Already Have a Strong Relationship?
That’s a wonderful place to begin.
Premarital counseling doesn’t mean something is wrong with your relationship. You don’t have to wait for a crisis, recurring argument, or difficult season to learn more about each other.
Think of it as an opportunity to be intentional about your future.
Even couples who communicate well may discover different assumptions about money, family, emotional needs, or their expectations for married life.
The purpose of premarital preparation isn’t to predict whether your marriage will succeed. It’s to create space for honest conversations, greater awareness, and practical relationship skills before you begin this new chapter.
What to Expect From SYMBIS Premarital Services at New Land Therapy?
My approach to premarital relationship preparation is personalized, supportive, and focused on helping couples have meaningful conversations about the life they want to build together.
Step 1: Free 15-Minute Consultation
We’ll discuss your goals, answer your questions, and determine whether the service is a good fit for your needs.
Step 2: Individual SYMBIS Assessments
Each partner completes the assessment independently online. The results provide a starting point for exploring your relationship and identifying topics worth discussing together.
Step 3: Personalized Results Review
During our sessions, we’ll explore your results, recognize relationship strengths, discuss differences, and identify areas where greater understanding may be helpful.
Step 4: Practical Relationship Preparation
We’ll discuss ways to strengthen communication, navigate disagreements, clarify expectations, and develop healthy habits that support your future marriage.
The process is an opportunity to learn about yourselves and each other in a supportive environment, without expecting either partner to be perfect.
SYMBIS Premarital Package
Investment: $350
The proposed package includes:
- SYMBIS assessments for both partners.
- Two 50-minute online sessions to review and discuss your results.
- Guided conversations about relationship strengths, differences, and growth opportunities.
- Practical strategies to help you prepare for married life.
A free 15-minute consultation is available before you begin.
Package availability, assessment fees, and final pricing should be confirmed before booking.
Start Your Marriage With Intention
You don’t need a perfect relationship to prepare for marriage. You need a willingness to listen, learn, grow, and keep choosing to work together.
The conversations you begin today can help you better understand the person with whom you’re building your future.
Your relationship deserves the same thoughtful preparation as your wedding day.
Ready to take the next step?
If you’re engaged or considering marriage, I invite you to learn more about premarital relationship preparation at New Land Therapy.
Schedule your free 15-minute consultation to discuss your goals and explore whether this service is right for you.
Zoryana Kakhnovets, LPC, NCC
New Land Therapy
Website: https://newlandtherapy.me
Email: newlandtherapyllc@gmail.com
Online premarital relationship preparation available throughout South Carolina.