Weekend Happings

What a weekend. Brian and I had our first and turns out only meeting for premarital counseling. (Don't worry we are still getting married.) I think we tend to puzzle people. Back in February we took an assessment test that our church gives to couple contemplating marriage. It is part of a pre-marriage class that the church offers. The assessment was a ton of questions covering everything from children, to conflicts, to religion, to self esteem, to your individual families and childhood. We each took separate tests. The results of the assessment are then used by the leader of the class to know how to gear the rest of the course. However, due to a lack of interest, the particular session we enrolled in only had 2 other couples sign up and both of those couples were in the early 20's. So the leader made arrangements for each of the couples to receive some individual time with him. Saturday Brian and I got to meet with for the first of what was to be 2 sessions. I was especially curious to see how Brian and I did. We do such a great job of communicating and have talked about so many things from the very beginning. I was sorta nervous, but not too bad. But I really had no reason to be nervous and it actually turned out to be a very fun session.

Brian got to start out by telling our story. I love hearing him tell it, he really lights up when he talks about how we meet. Then we each got to tell our separate spiritual story. Again I love listening to Brian tell his. While we each had very similar childhoods and similar experiences. Hearing Brian talk about challenges he faced after college and his battle with depression and how he overcame it makes me appreciate all the more what a strong person he is.

Then we got to the specifics of the assessment test. Here is where it got interesting. Brian and I answered most of the questions the same. So much, that if we hadn't answered a few questions differently, the counselor said he would have thought we had copied each others test. Then he gave us a simpler more concise set of questions to answer about what we saw as strengths in our relationship and areas of growth. Again, without looking at each others sheet, Brian and I pretty much gave the same answers. lol.... Next he showed us a graph that showed based on the test results what type of relationship we had. There were 4 different levels and amusingly Brian and I were mostly above the top level in all areas. And the areas that we had the greatest difference in answers were not areas of huge concern. Finally he asked us to point on a chart to where we each say our relationship and surprise surprise, we both picked the same box. :) By the end of the 2 hours the counselor said that unless we had some specific areas of concern that we wanted to go over with him, that he didn't see the need for us to come back.

Today Brian and I each looked at our e Harmony profiles from 2 years ago and were not surprised to see how similar they really were. Not that Brian and I are clones of each other, we are different in many ways, but I think all of this has shown us that in the things that really matter in life, in the things that are important in insuring a long lifetime marriage, we are very similar. And it just reassured me that we are making the right decision to get married at this point in our relationship. (not that I was having any doubts) And I also believe that our individual strengths and weaknesses are great compliments to the other person's strengths and weaknesses.

Then tonight as we were saying goodbye, Brian said the most special thing to me about our relationship. Something he had never shared with me before. He told me that last September when we discovered that I was working for his former college roommate's father, that was the moment he realized that I was the person God had destined for him. He only wishes that our paths would have crossed 25 years earlier. But I reminded him that those 25 years have made us into the people we are today and that we needed to go through those experiences to be able to appreciate just what a special gift we have in each other.