Should the military mandate pre-marital counseling for service members?

100% yes, when I married my wife while in the USMC they made me get permission from my CO, the CO said no you need to see the BCO. BCO said see the chaplain then he finally approved. I only knew my wife for 5 months before we married. We are still married today 27 years later however if you spouse is non military they have no idea what they are in store for and feel that counseling should be provided to help protect the service member and educate the future spouse what she is signing up for.

This would be such a hard policy to enforce, so I hesitate to say premarital counseling should be required. That said...I think it should be highly-encouraged. Most military chaplains require couples to get premarital counseling before they'll agree to marry them. They do this for three reasons: 1), it will help the couple build a successful marriage; 2) many chaplains are expected by their faith group to require it; 3) it prevents every "Snuffy" under the sun from trying to use the chaplain for a quickie wedding. All that said: the counseling is only useful to the couple if they take it seriously. I will often ask the question of a couple in our first session: "Do you know what the #1 cause of divorce is?" After they give the typical responses (communication, money, etc.), I will answer: "Marriage! 100% of those who get divorced are married. So by getting married, you'll put yourself at risk of divorce." This usually sobers the couple up, because for most engaged couples the notion of divorce is unthinkable.

SFC (Join to see) I married before joining and still the Pastor who married us asked us to get counseling and show her proof before marrying us. It was something that although we didn't thought we needed, was very helpful.