What is Pre-Engagement?

[@Andrea-iw9gh]

Wow this is so timely! My boyfriend and I are in this stage right now. Thank you very much for this video!

[@OneWay4D73]

I've heard others call it that, and it is definitely the stage I'm in. Many of our conversations are beginning to revolve around the topic in one way or another.

[@abbymoates2191]

Me too!!

[@BlessedisShe]

Thank you for sharing!

[@matthewlester4910]

Hello Elizabeth Busby! This message is a further encouragement to keep advocating for marriage prep to be done during pre engagement. Your development of JPII’s work is having incredible fruits for practical discernment. I have been sharing the fruits of this approach with my spiritual director in Kingwood, TX and everyone in the Houston area who could benefit from this knowledge and from your Discerning Marriage Podcast. When I speak to my mentor priests, they all say how much this is needed for discerning couples! My only hope is for this development to become more widely recognized because of the structure, peace, and fruition that it has brought to my current pre engagement with my significant other.

[@schwatster]

This is like what, ‘courting’? Yeah it’s a counter-cultural word, but that’s what my wife and I called it. We weren’t exactly concerned about sounding “with it”, and actually it was our mentality from the start-we weren’t interested in wasting either of our time, biological clock and all…

[@cayennepepah]

Wow thank you so much, you called me out at the end of this video 😂 I am surely putting this in my back pocket. Just broke up exactly in this stage. I was ready for further commitment but at this point I also saw that my partner doesn't think the same. Thanks for pointing out about wounds that may resurface esp when entering the stage too.

[@anamaldooli]

more videos on this plz!!!

[@HappyEndings8]

Thank you SO much!

[@nicoleyoshihara4011]

Yes much needed! I need more help with what do while single and called to marriage and pre engagement, engagement, marriage and housemaking and mother advice lol I'm so overwhelmed and I haven't even began my vocation yet 😂

[@alannassir9543]

We have this in our culture. We call it a Promising. Where both partners would wear a cross and promise in Gods eyes to have a Christ-like Marriage.

[@israeliana]

Cool which culture

[@alannassir9543]

@@israeliana Iraqi/Assyrian Culture

[@caseyfarrell5713]

I would like to see a video on cohabitation very much

[@maryrankin9869]

Please Elizabeth outline the three stages and give us a breakdown of the absolute necessary criteria for each one. Do you have a checklist of topics couples should talk about? Couples are in dire needs of this..please share your insight. Thank you. Wondering if Pope John Paul 2 has a simplified version to offer to couples discerning a future with each other. There has to be some absolutes just like drivers ED.

[@sitka49]

The biggest growing segment of married divorces are marriages that are 20, 25, and on years ( and this goes for Catholic marriages also). Everybody's in love and on the there best behavior, dating, engaged so you overlook a lot of the things that would bother you , until your married and then they really start to bother you, and than you find out other things irritate you, you didn't know about, than throw a couple kids into the mix maybe some money issues , and about 10, 15 years into marriage your trying to push through it and hope things will get better, and by years 20, 25 you say who is this person I'm married too? The kids are on there way out of the house ,and you had enough. Most of the divorces in those years are initiate by wives.

[@juice2307]

The problem isn’t unseen problems. It is selfishness and unwillingness to be like Christ. If both people were truly living the Catholic faith they would be harder on themselves and see that they need to keep dying to their pride.

[@sitka49]

@@juice2307 Most marriages die boredom! And yet I have never met anybody that is truly Christ-like or what that even looks like in a sinner's realm? Jesus wasn't completely human he was a son of God, how do you compete with that? Even the monks that live the cloistered life couldn't achieve it A lot of them turned to homosexuality and mysticism

[@juice2307]

@@sitka49 marriages die from selfishness. And yet even with sin many marriages have managed, and that is because both people appealed to the indwelling grace from the sacraments. This is why I will say never marry someone who does not seek humility or virtue. A dead marriage is a failure in virtue on behalf of one or both. It does not happen, and only happens because one or both people have willingly slighted God and His graces. Usually the man.

[@sitka49]

@@juice2307 Believe me you're not the first one to think of going into marriage with the best rightous intentions and a partner with all right qualities and the grace of God , blah , blah blah, but at the end of the day the only person you're in control of, is yourself , and going into marriage with two imperfect people ( and then there's life, bills , sex, sex problems , money, money problems, kids, in-laws, ECT ..) Then trying to holding a marriage together for the long term isn't for the faint of heart. Divorcing isn't the worst thing , living in a dead and lifeless marriage for 10,15,25 years is a worse penance. And best you can salvage out of it in the end is a cordial roommate situation .

[@maryrankin9869]

@@juice2307 So right. There is no room for selfishness in a marriage. It is in giving that you will receive.