I did Catholic marriage prep with my ex fiancé. It was mostly neutral, some slight BP moments but mostly ok.

It worked because it brought up differences between us that were shocking to me. Even though we had talked things out, I learned a lot I wouldn’t have thought to ask. For example, they asked what intimacy meant to us. I was saying it was physical, emotional, mental. My ex laughed at me like I was dumb and asked how I could possibly think intimacy meant anything but sex.

I actually walked out a couple times.

The same marriage prep course required by my church helped many of my friends have strong marriages and start on the right foot. Above all it facilitates communication. I’m extremely grateful I was spared from marrying my ex, as we were a terrible match and dating for the wrong reasons.

I do recommend a faith based course.

I completed Symbis with my husband! It’s a faith based one but it was super helpful and I highly recommend it! You can find counselors near you for it online too

I was part of a catholic courting group and still am! The man I am courting right now is wonderful and I hope we can get married by the end of the year, I'm so excited!! :)

My husband and I are not religious, but my parents stated they would ONLY help financially with our wedding if we were married in a church. I picked a Methodist Church with a female pastor, she required we complete 6 weeks of premarital counseling to be married in her church as non-members. At first, we both groaned. Marriage couseling? With a PASTOR? We had already been cohabitating for 3 years and thought we had it all figured out. It ended up being very useful.

She had us read "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. It is about how different people express and recieve love in different ways. My PRIMARY love language is quality time, I know he loves me when he spends time with me. It is important to express love to me through the act of gift giving. Gifts are not as important to my husband, his PRIMARY love language is acts of service. He knows I love him when I do things for him. We agreed that no matter what to make quality time for each other once a week, and before we were ever married "Sunday Date Day" was born. No matter how busy we get in a week, on Sunday, we go on a date together and spend quality time with one another. It has been a standing date for more than five years now. For acts of service, I try to do things for him whenever I can. His little sister was here and needed to go back to the airport and he was DREADING taking her to Denver in 5pm traffic. I drove her to Denver and made sure she got to the gate as an act of service to my husband. He knows I love him and will try to make his life easier whenever I can.

I don't feel like it was biased towards one sex at all. It was about learning about EACH OTHER, how to better communicate with one another. We had to draw our family trees and talk about the history of marriages in our families. My family has a lot of unhappy marriages I've seen, but divorce is unacceptable. His family, most everyone is on spouse #3 or #4. It was helpful to understand how our families may have shaped our attitudes on marriage and to learn from their mistakes.

I don't think it was RP. Our marriage vows did not include obey. She did not task us with different obligations as husband and wife. We were both tasked to "love one other person the way that God loves us." And we did vow at our wedding to always call a marriage counselor before a divorce attorney.

I like watching Marriage Today. It's super religious and kinda campy: I feel like I should be living in a small town in the bible belt to fit in with the audience... but damn it delivers good relationship advice. It places a lot of personal accountability on the state of one's marriage and I think that's very important. It doesn't necessarily teach actionable skills as much as it is about adopting the best mentality conducive to a happy marriage. But that to me is half the battle.

I recommend reading Fascinating Womanhood. Not heavily religious-based, works for anybody in a relationship (married or not) and builds very good habits.