The NY Times has a free article (no registration required) relevant to this discussion: Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying
Not married myself, but of my married friends it’s clear that several couples would have benefited highly from going through the list. At the time, though, they were too starry-eyed in love to take an approach any more (ir)rational than, “we love each other, so it’ll all work out.”
What a third party will do (if they are good, and many of them aren’t):
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Identify the issues that need to be discussed and have you discuss them.
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Gently prod for more information. “Do you both want children?” “Yes,” she gushes, “I really want kids, I think my life will be empty without kids.” “Um, I suppose” he says. She, in her love (and wish for the white dress and seven bridesmaids) has done the translation of “Um, I suppose” to “Of course, honey.” The counseler should recognize “I suppose” is not a ringing endorsement and find out what about kids appeals and doesn’t appeal to him.
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Call bullshit. A good pre-nup counselor should be able to recognize someone who is playing a game (unless the game player is even better.) “Do you want kids” results in an apparently insincere “Yes, I want kids” - which circles back to #2.
I went for my second marriage, even though I didn’t really like the idea at first. However after a couple of meetings it was better then what I thought it would be. Even though we didn’t have a problem of talking about things, it did help us to figure out what we should talk about. I’d do it again if I was in the same situation.
I was surprised at a few questions/issues that were raised because we had never thought about them before. I wasn’t avoiding them, or wary of talking about them, they simply never entered my mind before because they had never come up in real life. (And I don’t think I am especially dim or anything 
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It wasn’t that we needed a counselor’s help in working out issues, it was more of a convenience that a third party was running down a checklist of topics.
Ah…you mean ‘Pre-Cana’. To summarize 8 agonizingly long hours, it was basically Sister Mary Elephant whacking us both on the back of the head with her ruler shouting, “Reproduce…Reproduce…Reproduce!!!”
I can honestly say that it helped me tremendously; I’ve been sleeping late on Sundays guilt-free for years. 
When my brother was getting married, one day that they were at my parents’ Mom asked “are you getting one bed or two? For the linens, you see, I’m thinking of getting you some if you need any.” (They hadn’t lived together, or even in the same town)
In stereo: “One/Two.”
They look at each other.
She says: “One of course! Where did that question come from? It’s impossible to have a succesful marriage with two beds!”
He says, looking at his parents’ raised eyebrows: “Eeeeeh, welllll…”
Both sets of grandparents had twin beds (70+ years, three daughters and going strong; 40 years, five kids, both now deceased). My parents had twin beds. All my aunts and uncles, twin beds. Bro and SiL have one, but they had to think about it.
One of the questions in that Times list was “TV in the bedroom?” That’s one I had never thought of!
Thanks to you and Dangerosa for the clarification, I think I understand the point of this kind of counselling a bit better now.
Did. Was the best thing we ever did.
The counseling we had was more set up as “You’re gonna fight. So let’s make sure you know how to fight fair.” Took a test and everything. The counselor showed us where our trouble spots would probably be and that you never verbally attack your partner, you attack the argument.
This was invaluable when 2 months after the wedding, I’m having multiple surgeries and on complete bed rest. I’m being a big old nasty bear to DeHusband when he looks at me and asks, “I know you’re angry, but why are you attacking me? What did *I do * to make you so angry?” Nothing. He was just available. But rather than snipping right back, he calmly showed me that I was hurting him for no apparent reason.
Did. Would (but hopefully won’t need to, as I’d like this to be my last marriage as well as my first :D) again.
I was raised Catholic and some pre-marriage sessions were required as we were considering getting married in the church (ultimately opted for a civil ceremony). Among other things, we filled out questionnaires which helped point out potential issues (our biggies: in-laws, and religion - which were spot-on). I think it helped us put some thought into things.
I did it (Catholic church requirement), and I would strongly recommend it to anyone, for the many many reasons already given by Dangerosa, Quiddity, delphica, and others. Even if you’re already in the habit of having open and frank discussions with your partner, talking everything out specifically with a counselor can expose issues that haven’t come up yet, or just give you extra reassurance that you’re perfectly compatible. It’s a win-win.
(Side story: One of the questions on our compatibility quiz was “Could your partner’s drug problem harm your relationship?” to which she responded to the priest, “No, his drug problem brings us closer together.” How could I not marry her after that? 
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Heh. Yeah, at ours, among other things they had an MD talking about the reproductive system, followed by an older couple talking about the joys of Natural Family Planning. The couple stated emphatically that “the Pill makes you sterile!” while looking to the MD to confirm this Great Truth.
To his credit, he stood there shaking his head “no”. He stood up after their spiel and corrected their misinformation (‘does not make you sterile. It makes you infertile, while you are taking it’).
I lost a great deal of respect for the whole NFP process after that. I mean, yeah it’s compliant with the Church’s teachings and there are benefits to using that vs. hormonal methods, but don’t fucking LIE to us!!!
Honestly, other than that, the day was OK (helped tremendously by the fact that one of Typo Knig’s grad-school colleagues was also there and the two guys swapped sotto voce wisecracks the whole time).
I would not recommend the Catholic Church version - at least the version I went through - which was group counseling. I don’t think issues come out very well in group. (I’ve been in group counseling that works, but it was intense and we spent HOURS together, plus we all wanted to be there and needed to be there because “something bad” had happened that we needed to talk through - this wasn’t like that) They gave you things to talk about, but no real opportunity to talk about them.
HA! We HAVE had this discussion, at least. And our mutual answer is, no way!
As far as religious counseling, we aren’t apt to elicit any as he is of the Buddhist persuasion (but not entirely Buddhist; mostly an admirer of the “don’t cause harm” philosophy) whilst I am pagan in orientation, a nature-lover with an inclination to be somewhat polytheistic, in the sense that there isn’t just ONE figurehead running the whole show, if in fact it is being run at all. We don’t see problems with a spiritual conjuncture between us at all. But we also aren’t going to be married in a Catholic or Protestant ceremony, either, that much has been decided. So any counseling would have to be of the health community type.
So I think I am seeing that no one felt too awkward about it, and found it to be ultimately helpful, among those of you who would and did go. I like the idea of seeing someone I select or feel comfortable with; that would surely lessen my hesitance.
One question, tho, Nava: WHY twin beds? Snoring? Restless movement during the night from one partner so the other cannot sleep? Family tradition? Can’t feature it myself, but then no one in my family history back 3 generations has ever done this, so maybe I am missing something GRAND about it?
–Beck
I see no point in it. They’re never going to tell you not to get married. The church counselling is just about indoctrination more than anything else. All they’re going to do is give you a few bog-standard tips about conflict resolution, ask you a few questions about shared “goals,” and then shine you on about what a great “team” you’re going to be if you work together. It’s all just a hand-job.
If you don’t trust the person, don’t marry them. The best way to find out if you’re compatible is to live with them for awhile. Then, if you find out you can’t stand the person, you haven’t lost anything. I don’t see how some formulaic “counselling” from a stranger is going to head anything off. People who are about to get married are generally already convinced that they’ve found the perfect person and they’re never going to listen to negative advice anyway (not that any pre-nup counsellors are likely to tell them anything they don’t want to hear anyway).
One of my problems with the Catholic Church is that they weren’t going to tell us not to marry.
But you are wrong that they never do. I’ve heard stories where the marriage counselor has said “after working with you guys, I’d recommend you reconsider.”
Though I agree - pre-nup counselling almost always comes to late - you’ve decided to get married, put the wedding train in motion, and, to meet the requirements of the church, go to counseling. That isn’t a recipe for success. The recipe for success with counseling is to say “I think you are the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, lets talk this out (either with or without a facilitator) and figure it out.” If that yields good results, then you start the wedding train. i.e. you have to go into it being able to back out.
I lived with my first husband for a while. Still married him, because I trusted him (against logic) and I believed his issues were fixable (a common failing among young women). A good marriage counselor would have brought out our incompatibilities and at least pointed my eyes in the direction of the things that I wasn’t likely to fix (opening them may have not happened).
And a minister that I know has had couples decide all on their own to reconsider.
Now granted, her anecdote about one couple made me want to say “So, um, how did they get that far down the wedding train without discussing what they envisioned their lives would be like in 20 years?” But it does happen that sometimes issues are brought up that the couple could have discussed on their own, but didn’t because they assumed that both people had the same answer. And so, at the end of the first counseling session, the minister said “So, would you like to schedule your next conseling session?” And the couple said “Not yet–we need to talk about some stuff before then” And the bride-to-be called the minister later in the week to say “Um, the wedding’s off”
You know, a great orgasm and a nice butt and it just doesn’t seem important - where life will be in twenty years.
Well, I did not do counseling before getting married, and would not have signed a pre-nup, in fact, getting asked to sign a pre-nup would have made me reconsider. That was nearly twenty years ago. I was only 18 so what did I know? I just talked to my husband and he says if I had asked him to sign one, it would make him wonder why I did not trust him, and would also have made it difficult to trust me. He was twenty-one, so what did he know? We did not get counseling, because we frankly did not care for anyone’s advice. We were given enough unsolicited and nearly all of it terrible. Most simply would not believe that we had known each other long enough to know that we wanted to be together. Some of those have since divorced.
Maybe I’m naive, but I think that if you’ve lived together long enough to consider marriage, you already know your way around each other better than any third party is liable to.
The rabbi who married us wanted to meet with us well in advance of the wedding day, which we did. We’d been dating eight years by then, and actually had discussed everything that he brought up, and he quickly concluded that we knew what we were doing and were likely to make a go of it, and the rest of the meeting was simply a pleasant conversation that left all of us feeling good. We’ve been married ten and a half years, and while we have had some challenges (fewer than most, I suspect, partly due to blind luck), there’s never been a time when I’ve questioned the stablility of our marriage.
I don’t know that the benefit of good counselor is so much in running down a canned checklist of questions, but in being trained in recognizing warning signs in the way couples react to the questions he/she does ask. Very often, I suspect, it’s not what they say but how they say it, how they relate to one another, etc. In Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell describes how researchers have identified ways of determining the likelihood of a marriage ending divorce based on viewing mere seconds of video of the couples interacting. Now, obviously not every counselor possess the skills or insight to do so, and it’s debatable whether this would work in a group environment, but I think experienced clergy and counselors are probably able to recognize at least some of the hallmarks and make some decisions on the fly about how deep and how hard to press any issues that come up. Hmm. Might have worded that better, I suspect.
Anyway, I’d be concerned that anyone who’s resistant to the very idea of counseling was avoiding potentially troubling issues. That being said, I’d probably say that having a good counselor could make the difference between it being worthwhile or not, and a church- or synagogue-mandated by-the-numbers group class or some of the other prefunctory sessions described by others might not be the best option. Nevertheless, anything that gets couples thinking and talking before they get married is better than nothing.