When was the last time you had a marital check-up?

Regular medical exams are designed to identify potential health issues before they start. Identifying and treating these issues early increase your chances for living a longer and healthier life.

The same is true for marriage. Early identification and treatment of potential problem areas will improve your chances for living a lifelong, healthy and happy marriage. Assessment tools are available to assist you in gauging the health of your marriage and guiding your improvement efforts. One such tool is offered by PREPARE/ENRICH®, more commonly known for pre-marriage relationship assessments.

They also offer Couple Checkup™, an assessment tool that helps married couples explore and strengthen their relationships. The main component of the program is an online survey that husbands and wives take individually. The survey takes approximately 30-45 minutes to complete and will help identify the unique strengths and growth areas of your marriage. Results are available immediately after you both complete the survey. To maximize the benefit of the survey, consider meeting with a trained facilitator to help you interpret the results and guide you through growth exercises. Facilitators in your area can be found here.

The assessment will help you:

• Explore strengths and growth areas
• Strengthen communication skills
• Identify and manage major stressors
• Resolve conflicts
• Develop a more balanced relationship
• Understand personality differences and maximize teamwork
• Establish personal, couple, and family goals

Specifically, Couple Checkup assesses these areas of your relationship:

• Roles
• Spiritual beliefs
• Personality
• Couple and family mapping
• Sexuality
• Communication
• Stress
• Conflict resolution
• Children and parenting
• Finances
• Leisure activities
• Managing your expectations in marriage

Your results will include a couple workbook with exercises to help you grow in all areas of your relationship.

Healthy, holy and happy marriages require work. Regular checkups will help identify where you can best invest your time. Schedule your marriage checkup today and take the steps necessary to ensure that your marriage will endure to the end.