Saturday, August 30, 1997

Course aims to enable counselors to head off marital woes

By LORETTA FULTON / Abilene Reporter-News

The woman repeatedly answered "no" when asked if her husband had ever "been there for her emotionally."

He had never been supportive when the couple dated, through their engagement or now during their years of marriage.

Robert Oglesby, family minister at Southern Hills Church of Christ, looked perplexed as he counseled the woman.

"If he's never been there for you emotionally, why did you marry him?" Oglesby asked.

"I don't know," the woman answered.

That's the type of situation Oglesby hopes to prevent in future marriages through a course the church offers based on the PREPARE program, designed by the PREPARE/ENRICH organization in Minneapolis, Minn.

The course is open to ministers or marriage counselors from any church. Deadline is Tuesday to sign up for an informational session which will be held from 7-8 p.m. Wednesday at the church. Call Oglesby at 692-2670 for more information.

In addition to the PREPARE evaluation process, the course also uses mentoring couples who are trained to "talk through some of the realistic phases of marriage," Oglesby said.

Training for the mentoring couples will be held Sept. 17, 24, and Oct. 1.

Oglesby started the PREmarital Personal And Relationship Evaluation program at Southern Hills two years ago after hearing Mike McManus, author of "Marriage Savers," talk about it in a seminar held at the Civic Center.

The program uses an evaluation form that the engaged couple fills out anonymously. The completed form is sent to Minneapolis for "grading" by experts. They can use the responses to point to potential problem areas, Oglesby said.

Questions cover a variety of topics including sex, personality issues, religious orientation, and financial management.

Over the years, the evaluation form has proved to have an 86 percent accuracy rate in predicting future problems, Oglesby said.

Since the program has been in effect at Southern Hills for only two years, its success rate is hard to determine. More than 60 couples have gone through the pre-marriage sessions and none that went on to marry have divorced at this point, Oglesby said.

An interesting statistic shows that 10 percent of the couples who went through the program decided not to marry.

"They just said, 'I don't think we can live together,' " Oglesby said.

Rather than seeing that as a failure, Oglesby tells the mentoring couple "You just prevented a divorce."

The mentoring aspect of the program is one of its highlights. Couples who have been married for some time and who have gone through the mentoring training are paired with engaged couples.

The mentors and their pupils attend a class once a week for seven weeks prior to marriage. New classes called "Fit to Be Tied" begin Oct. 1. The young couple also agrees to check back with the mentoring couple at six months and at one year after marriage.

However, Oglesby said most mentors and pupils develop such a close relationship that they meet much more frequently and even become close friends.

"They're like parents but they're much safer than mom or day" to talk to about some situations, Oglesby said.

Oglesby, who holds a master's degree in marriage and family studies from ACU, said exit interviews indicate a 98 percent satisfaction rate for the program.

His own church requires couples to go through either that program or something similar approved by the church before they can be married at Southern Hills.

The current divorce rate nationally is 50 percent, Oglesby said. Of all marriages, 75 percent are conducted in a church, so the church itself has a stake in the divorce rate, Oglesby believes.

He hopes the program at Southern Hills will help ministers and other church counselors learn how to spot potential problem areas before couples tie the knot.

"We're not a wedding factory," he said of the church. "We're a marriage preparer."