I did and am divorced. There were no warning signs or issues. However when one party is less then honest imo it is useless.

Nope, divorced in 4 years.

We had to go to pre-marital counseling to get married in the Catholic church

I don't think it could hurt, but I feel it is important that two people should be able to talk about anything without a mediator.

Life constantly changes and if you cannot talk about the adjustments, you will have a difficult time.

However, they may be able to offer topics which may not come readily to mind so it wouldn't hurt. It may also help to lay out a "format" which you could use in future discussions to make sure you are understanding each other clearly.

My suggestion...give it a go, but don't depend on it.

IMHO Step-parenting is a tough road to travel. I don't think anyone would say it is easier and many who would say it is impossible. Read the blogs, understand the level of patience it will require of you, not only now but years from now. Remember, you are not just committing to your SO, you are committing to the skids and skids extended families. If you cannot communicate easily now, I worry for you.

If you do talk to a counselor, I would definitely make sure they go over techniques and methods to keep the lines of communication open, not only with SO but with everyone you will be dealing with.

Good Luck

DH and I did premarital counseling with a therapist who specializes in blended family issues. She herself had personal experience with a high-conflict ex and PASed skids. We found it really helpful, though I know not everyone has a good experience with it. She helped us plan ahead in how to deal with issues that may arise such as boundaries with the BM, visitation-related issues, hostility from the skids, etc. Sure, things came up that we didn't expect, but at least we had a general plan in place. I think if you find the right therapist, one with blended family experience and who's a good fit personality-wise, it can be extremely helpful. The more "generic" counseling, like what my ex and I had to do through the church, not so much, from my experience.

Yes and it did wonders for us! We were well on our way to splitting up before we did counseling. It worked for us because DH actually opened up. Complete shocker! I learned so much that I had no idea about.

Our counselor didnt specialize in step families, but for us it didnt make a difference.

IMO DH and I would not be happily married if we didnt have that foundation of counseling to address the issues. For whatever reason counseling helped DH to open up and discuss the problems.

You will not be able to back off the hot button issues forever. These issues will be the very same ones to flare into monstrous proportions as soon as you marry.

My suggestions for lines in the sand are:

1. I told my husband if he didn't trust me to have an adult perspective and have everybody's best interest at heart, including and especially my extremely difficult stepdaughter's, then he should not have married me. Therefore, no tossing my concerns aside by elevating the child to adult status: "Well, Teen Girl says what really happened was bla bla bla." No. Not operating like that. Either I'm your trusted partner or I'm not.

This has been a crucial boundary that has worked very well for us. I see on the board all the time where stepparents are suffering and end up dreaming of divorce because the bio parent will never believe their kid did something that the spouse is relaying concerns about. I recommend this as a line in the sand. Each partner must be treated as a trusted adult, the most trusted partner.

2. My dh told me it was important to him that we show the kids a united front. It was an excellent recommendation from him. We have all our discussions behind closed doors. Whatever one spouse says in front of the kids, the other supports. For the moment! Any changes in course are presented by both parties, kids cannot trace the change to its source. The source is always "both of those dang adults" from skids perspective.

The parent cannot be throwing the stepparent under the bus by saying "well, it was ok with me, but wicked stepparent doesn't like it so can you stop doing that? As a favor to me?" Or any version of that, rolling eyes, whatever. Do not help your kid make the stepparent the enemy. You will lose both your marriage and your own kid's respect. United front all the way for success.

No pre marital counseling. Married 2 1/2 years now and could not be happier. Seriously, we are doing great. Teen Girl is a constant challenge but those rules have served us well and our marriage is very strong.

Oh, yeah, one more. The counselor should make it very clear to each of you that you only have one spouse--each other. Ex-spouses or babymamas/daddies ARE NOT YOUR SPOUSE. Commit to the one person in front of you. Draw a great big fence around the two of you and guard that. Those other people have to solve their own problems and you cannot "manage" them anymore. You are chipping off bits of your new marriage every time you "manage" that ex. Keep communication brief and to the point with those exes. Unless you want to chip your new marriage right into a sack of dust.

We didn't. We just discussed a lot about how we would treat each other's kids, what our roles would be.. that sort of thing.

My role changed almost immediately after getting married when the BM forgot she had kids.

We didn't have counselling, but we did have lots of long discussions about our philosophies on life, how we want to live and our attitudes towards the big three things that couples fight over in marriage...money, sex and kids. We learnt that although we have different views we can trust each other and learn from each other to move towards a common goal. What helped us was that we were long distance for almost 2 years so all we could do was talk for a lot of that time, that was our therapy. I can imagine that having these topics bought to the table by a trained counselor with relevant experience would help you two to work out how you are going to live your married lives together and start conversations that you will come back to over time.

I think a prenup is more appropriate if you're looking for something to help you out as you head into marriage which will create a step family. It needs to be drawn out, legally, in black and white who gets what in case of death or divorce.

One of the things that needs to be discussed very openly and honestly is what happens when one of you dies? If you go first? If he goes first? Who gets your things? How will that be decided? It needs to all be in writing.

Yes, and no it did not help.

We didn't talk about the right things!!!! We would argue about the ex, but it was always handled in a "why are you so jealous" manner rather than a "why don't you have any boundaries" manner. We talked about skids- but we never discussed that my place in the family was to have all of the work and responsibility but zero authority. We never discussed that the word of children would be held to a higher standard than my own. We never discussed that he could complain about, yell at, punish, ground, and even spank Skids but if I dared uttered one tiny word of frustration or dissent then I HATED HIS KIDS.