Check-in with Checkup

As y’all know the husband and I just celebrated our 5 year anniversary last month 🙂 What you might not know is that just  like I love feedback in every other area of my life, I love feedback on my marriage as well! Now, what I mean by that, is being open and honest with my husband about areas we need to work on as well as the areas that are moving along without a kink. I will be the first to tell you we are not the perfect couple, but I also think we’re a pretty spot on match for one another because we value our relationship and are willing to work through disagreements because we love each other deeply and this is a commitment and covenant that we do not take lightly.  You see, we did pre-engagement counseling with our campus minister before he popped the question, along with pre-marital counseling with the pastor who married us, and (likely much to his chagrin) have re filled-out the 5 love languages a handful of times to make sure we were still in tune with how to speak love to one another. And while we have always been on the same page, it’s nice to have that confirmation and refocusing that even if we have an argument about something stupid, we know how to resolve it.

I think it is quite healthy for couples to check up on their relationship, and have a realistic view of their relationship, so that when trials come, they are already firmly rooted. If you’ve been around for a minute, you’ll know the last few months have been somewhat crazy for us between pregnancy, hospital stays, fires, surgery, and all the rest on top of the day to day. I firmly believe that because of the time, love, and energy we put into our relationship from day 1 has made this time simply a season we’ve walked through together, and not one that has tempted to break us apart.  Especially as we learn to navigate marriage and parenthood together!

Now that’s it February, everyone is thinking of Valentine’s Day and such, but did you know that Feb 7-14 is National Marriage Week? That’s right, the week leading up to the most romantic of holidays & celebrations of love is a week to celebrate marriage! So Prepare/Enrich is hosting the Check-up with Check-in Campaign where they have a couples checkup on their relationship by using an assessment. Well, I was really excited when I found out about this as we did the Prepare/Enrich counseling guide for our pre-engagement sessions. That and I love a good assessment 🙂

Here are a few things about the Couple Checkup –

• Each partner takes their own portion of the assessment on their own (should take about 30 minutes, but everyone is different!)
• Once the second partner completes their portion, couples can download/print out their results as well as the full discussion guide (which is like a workbook)
• Results are available for 90 days after your account is created
• We recommend taking Couple Checkup on a neutral day (nothing really extreme happening – ex. just got engaged or just had a huge fight), as high emotions skew answers
• Assessment customizes to couples in all stages of their relationship, for dating, engaged, or married
• Couple Checkup is powered by PREPARE/ENRICH which is a research based assessment used by clergy and counselors

One of the things I love most about the results are the graphs. I am a huge data person, so this visual is perfect for me. They break down each response and then combine for a couples result. And I like that it labels things as strengths and areas to grow – you can always improve on areas in any relationship, so I appreciate that they don’t just label the areas where you don’t match as “weaknesses” or “bad” areas.  It gives you opportunity to make it better without feeling like you’ve failed! Here’s an example of one of our categories:

While there are questions about your relationship, there are also questions about yourself and your personality. It then graphs this in comparison to your partner’s as well which is fun to see how we balance each other – and remember our differences in personalities contribute to why we view things different ways. There’s even a checkup guide that you can download to help as you go through your results. So whether you’re married, engaged, or in a serious relationship, I encourage you this Valentine’s season to seek out what’s best for your relationship by investing time into it!

During National Marriage Week, there is a discount from $35 to $19.95 for the couples assessment, but they are also going to give one lucky reader the assessment for FREE! All you have to do is enter below 🙂

Check Up with Check In

Disclosure: I received this assessment free of charge to review, however all opinions are my own based on my experiences with Prepare/Enrich & the Couple Checkup.