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So, I'm really not trying to offend anyone or anything here, but I didn't think this would be an appropriate tread for CS.
My boyfriend and I recently attended a marriage training class. In the state of Texas, if you take one of these classes, you can get a certificate that basically knocks something like $60 off your marriage license fee. Plus, well, we figured it would be a good idea. We read some reviews online about other couples who took the class and said they learned a lot from it and that it really made them think about stuff that they'd never considered before.
I wasn't sure what to expect from the class, but I was a little...disappointed. We really didn't learn anything. Almost everything that we went over in the class, was stuff that boyfriend and I have already talked about and worked out on our own. For example, one of the exercises we did was to fill out a list of chores with who was going to do them: Me, him, or both of us. We both filled out the list separately and then compared. There were maybe 30 topics on the list, and of those, I think we only had 2 that didn't match.
Another example to go along with the first one. The instructor of the class told us how everyone has different expectations when it comes to chores, based on what their parents did. For instance, when he was growing up, his mom always brought the trash out. But in his wife's family, her father always brought the trash out. So when they moved in together, the trash didn't get taken out for (not sure how long, but it was more than a few days because it became an issue after a while) because they both expected the other to take the trash out, and neither of them talked about it to the other.
Those are just a couple of the examples that stood out in my mind. My issue here is, who doesn't talk about this kind of stuff before they get married? Is it really an issue in this country, that people get married without communicating this kind of stuff? Granted, all of the other couples in the class were quite a bit younger than us (we're 25 and 27, everyone else seemed to be in their teens/early 20s) so maybe the class is really catered toward young people? But in the instructors example, I can't even imagine letting something like that happen. The way he told the story, they must have let the trash just pile up until it reeked before one of them finally brought it up to the other and they talked about it.
I guess boyfriend and I have the advantage that we both lived on our own before we moved in together, so we both know how to take care of ourselves without depending on someone else to do something for us. It still sort of amazed us that these kinds of things need to be taught...by someone other than a person's parents. I'm not saying the class was bad; it had a lot of good information, and if someone doesn't know some or any of that information, then it's really great for them to take that kind of a class to learn about it before committing to a long-term relationship. I wonder how many people who NEED that kind of a class actually TAKE it, though.
My boyfriend and I recently attended a marriage training class. In the state of Texas, if you take one of these classes, you can get a certificate that basically knocks something like $60 off your marriage license fee. Plus, well, we figured it would be a good idea. We read some reviews online about other couples who took the class and said they learned a lot from it and that it really made them think about stuff that they'd never considered before.
I wasn't sure what to expect from the class, but I was a little...disappointed. We really didn't learn anything. Almost everything that we went over in the class, was stuff that boyfriend and I have already talked about and worked out on our own. For example, one of the exercises we did was to fill out a list of chores with who was going to do them: Me, him, or both of us. We both filled out the list separately and then compared. There were maybe 30 topics on the list, and of those, I think we only had 2 that didn't match.
Another example to go along with the first one. The instructor of the class told us how everyone has different expectations when it comes to chores, based on what their parents did. For instance, when he was growing up, his mom always brought the trash out. But in his wife's family, her father always brought the trash out. So when they moved in together, the trash didn't get taken out for (not sure how long, but it was more than a few days because it became an issue after a while) because they both expected the other to take the trash out, and neither of them talked about it to the other.
Those are just a couple of the examples that stood out in my mind. My issue here is, who doesn't talk about this kind of stuff before they get married? Is it really an issue in this country, that people get married without communicating this kind of stuff? Granted, all of the other couples in the class were quite a bit younger than us (we're 25 and 27, everyone else seemed to be in their teens/early 20s) so maybe the class is really catered toward young people? But in the instructors example, I can't even imagine letting something like that happen. The way he told the story, they must have let the trash just pile up until it reeked before one of them finally brought it up to the other and they talked about it.
I guess boyfriend and I have the advantage that we both lived on our own before we moved in together, so we both know how to take care of ourselves without depending on someone else to do something for us. It still sort of amazed us that these kinds of things need to be taught...by someone other than a person's parents. I'm not saying the class was bad; it had a lot of good information, and if someone doesn't know some or any of that information, then it's really great for them to take that kind of a class to learn about it before committing to a long-term relationship. I wonder how many people who NEED that kind of a class actually TAKE it, though.
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