Marriage is an exciting new chapter filled with love, dreams, and the promise of a shared future. Along with choosing a venue and planning your honeymoon, one of the most important, and often overlooked, parts of preparing for marriage is understanding sex and intimacy. Whether you are waiting until the wedding night or you have already been physically intimate, the way you approach this part of your relationship can set the tone for years to come.

When we think of emotional safety, most of us imagine being truly seen, heard, and understood. And while those things absolutely matter, there’s a deeper layer we often overlook. Real emotional safety doesn’t come from how others respond to us—it comes from knowing we won’t abandon ourselves, even when we feel misunderstood.

Why Premarital? 

Getting engaged is such an exciting time with cake tastings, venue tours, and dreaming about your future together. However, between picking a color scheme and writing your vows, it is easy to forget that marriage is about so much more than just the big day. It is about building a life together and that takes more than just love and good intentions. That is where premarital counseling comes in. 

Maybe you have come across the term Internal Family Systems (IFS), or heard it described as “Parts Work.” It’s been showing up more in therapy circles—and maybe even on your social media feed. As a therapist, I’ve found IFS to be one of the most compassionate and transformative approaches out there. Let me tell you why.

I considered it a wake-up call when I came across the New York Times article by Oliver Burkeman, “Stop Multitasking. No, Really-Just Stop It.” Somewhere during my years of raising my three children, I came to believe that my days would be richer and more streamlined if I could conquer numerous tasks at once, all the while wondering why I felt scattered and depleted. Burkeman describes it as being “afflicted by the ambient anxiety that seems to be an intrinsic part of life in the 2020s.” He prescribes a novel antidote for restoring one’s sanity: be present and focus on one activity at a time.