Pre-marriage prep

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In preperation for my upcoming wedding/marriage, my fiance and I are having to do something called the FOCCUS test. I did a search and came up with some general info on it, but I’d like to hear a Catholic perspective. Basically, how much does the testing cost and what kind of questions should we expect?

Also, just for my own curiosity…did any of y’all whove taken this test find it helpful? Either as a way to gather more information about your intended spouse or as a communication tool?

Thanks in advance for any replies! 🙂
 
I took the test over 15 years ago and I don’t think it has changed much. The questions are about your values and expectations of marriage, family and life in general. Some are also about how much you understand your future spouse’s values and expectations. The idea is to flush out differences and possible areas of concern in order to address them before you get married.

I don’t remember many of the questions but I do remember there were many about how we handled money, how many kids we wanted to have, discipline, in-laws, etc.

My own experience was not great. There were issues flagged by the test that we never addressed in our pre-cana counseling or even discussed between us. Lost opportunity that may have saved later heartache. :o

I don’t think it was very expensive, maybe $20.
 
I think the FOCCUS is a great instrument.

It’s not really a “test” per se. It is an instrument that is used as a springboard for discussion. You complete the instrument and then discuss the results with a trained facilitator-- in our case it was our deacon.

The instrument helps zero in on areas that have either not been discussed or where there are areas of disagreement. The point of it is to talk through issues and ensure that the couples have adequately thought through these areas.

We did not pay a fee, although it was probably covered in the fee we were already paying for the Church.
 
I think the FOCCUS is a great instrument.

It’s not really a “test” per se. It is an instrument that is used as a springboard for discussion. You complete the instrument and then discuss the results with a trained facilitator-- in our case it was our deacon.

The instrument helps zero in on areas that have either not been discussed or where there are areas of disagreement. The point of it is to talk through issues and ensure that the couples have adequately thought through these areas.

We did not pay a fee, although it was probably covered in the fee we were already paying for the Church.
 
DH and I had a blast with it… basically it shows areas that are suggested to talk about… like if your future dh wants 10 kids and strictly disciplined… and you want 2 kids and let them do as they please, it will detect this as something you need to talk about.

The fun part was about the in-laws… it actually prompted our pastor to ask us if we wanted to be married a few days early so neither family could try to ruin the wedding… like I said, we had a blast!

I forget if there was a cost involved… I am thinking the parish paid any cost for us.
 
Corki said:
My own experience was not great. There were issues flagged by the test that we never addressed in our pre-cana counseling or even discussed between us. Lost opportunity that may have saved later heartache. :o
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That’s not the test’s fault. Your priest or pre-cana counelors dropped the ball big time! Our priest made a point of going over our FOCCUS results point by point and insisting we talk about places where there were differences. He said we had the most compatible score he’s ever seen, but we still had points to talk over.

We found it useful. One thing it helped us see is that a lot of our disagreements were really just perceiving and saying the same things in different ways.
 
Personally FOCCUS was an annoyance for us. Possibly if you have not been together long, or for some reason have not discussed your future with regard to family, finances,and faith, it could certainly indicate areas that need discussion prior to marriage. We’d already been together 5-6 years so there wasn’t any surprises. Also we both found the wording of the questions caused some discrepancies, as we would interpret it differently. Not all but some, as well there were some double negatives that were confusing. But it’s really not a big deal because your facilitator will recap the “problems” after the results come in and you can explain. I think we paid about $80? It was mandatory otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered.
 
Funny thing, DH and were engaged for four years, and we still found it useful. I guess it’s very individual…

The cost of ours was part of our marriage prep and fees we paid to use the church…
 
It’s just there to make sure you’re talking to each other about things that will most likely arise in marriage. As for my fiance and I, we’d been dating less than a year when we took the test and analyzed the results, but for the most part we were on the same page. I wouldn’t ask a girl to marry me without knowing her opinion on most of the important questions, but it’s still a good exercise. Some of the questions are worded funny, but they’re all yes/no/not sure answers. When you go over the questions where you didn’t answer the same or with the expected answer, you’ll just try to figure out why that was. Here are some of the topics:

Finances
Who will work vs. Who will stay home
Children
Sex
Communication
Family of origin

Good luck! I’ve enjoyed the activities we’ve been able to do together in preparation for our marriage, so it was fun for us. Hope that helps.
 
Ours was free. We didn’t do the Pre-Cana classes but instead a series of meetings with my Priest (who has known me since I was 9 or 10) when we were able to come home from college. DH is from the area too so the priest knew who he was. He had us do the FOCCUS test, and since we’d been together since we were in high school, we’d pretty much discussed all the issues at length. I can see how it may be helpful and I’m glad it’s required for most Catholic marriages.
 
Ours was free with our church prep and it was a great way to delve a little deeper into some big issues of any marriage. We had a lot of fun with it. My husband’s first language is not English and we took the test in English and he messed up some questions which were hilarious! Overall, the test was a great experience for us and helped in our communication as a couple.
 
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