Engagment/Marital Functioning

I really enjoyed the lectures about Marital Function and Engagment. I found it to be applicable to my life even though I am not married, nor am I engaged. However, my boyfriend and I have discussed the idea of engagement within the next year, depending on if I graduated next May or not. But more specifically, we have discussed steps that we want to take prior to becoming engaged. We both are not affiliated with a church or religious group, nor do we plan to be married by one either. So we have discussed what "classes" or "mediated discussions" we would want to take prior to engagement. I suggested taking the RELATE questionarie, but also going in to talk to a clinician about what we need to focus on once we get engaged, and how that should follow through into marriage.

But, the part that I really found interesting from the lecture, was how known problems and issues should be worked out prior to not only marriage, but engagement as well. Due to homeostasis, the more set and committed you are as a couple, the harder it is to change how you react to each other and treat each other in varying situations. Which makes complete sense, but prior to this discussion in class, I would have thought that you can kind of just deal with issues as they come. But why not make the effort to pin point troubled spots with the RELATE questionarie, and mediated discussion before hand? Even though it will not ensure that you have an problem-free marriage/engagement it will definately help to set up a framework of problem areas to look for and make it easier to see what's happening as the problems arise.