Couples are saying "I do" to premarital therapy.

• Why it matters: As the stigma of talk therapy fades, couples therapy has gone from a marriage-saving Hail Mary to a wedding prerequisite. And the rise in premarital therapy comes as divorce rates are dropping, Carly Mallenbaum writes.

🧮 By the numbers: Out of nearly 17,000 just-married or engaged couples, 30% attended premarital counseling or couples therapy, according to The Knot 2025 Real Weddings Study.

• If you just focus on Gen Z couples, it's 39%.
• And family or couples therapy appointments have increased more than 50% year over year from January 2023 to January 2025, according to data from mental health tech company Headway.

"'I don't want the relationship that my parents have' ... that's a quote I hear all the time from people that are reaching out to me," says Dan Sneider, a licensed clinical social worker based in North Carolina.

• "I have more early-20s couples than I would have had five, ten years ago," and there's more demand for premarital therapy, he says.

⚡ Catch up quick: Popular couples therapy methodologies were established in the '80s and '90s.

• Couples therapy still isn't available to everyone, but access has improved. The Mental Health Access Improvement Act, effective January 2024, allowed marriage and family therapists to bill Medicare for mental health services.
• And premarital counseling led by religious leaders has been around for longer, and is still encouraged in some religions, including Christianity and Judaism. It typically involves discussing marital responsibilities and commitments within a spiritual framework.

👰 Case in point: "You don't know what you don't know. I really wanted a guide for the kinds of conversations we just didn't even know to have," says Mollie Becker, a 26-year-old marketing manager who went to couples counseling with her partner even before they got engaged in 2022.

• "I feel we're better equipped to handle those scenarios [around future topics like parenting] when they come up," she tells Axios. They got married last October.

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Vista of the day: New Mexico's White Sands National Park, captured by reader Bob Russell of Colorado Springs, Colo.

• The park is home to the world's largest trove of fossilized footprints from the Ice Age.