Marriage · Tradition · Premarital Counselling
Thirty-six gunas can tell you the stars agree. They cannot tell you whether the two of you do.
✍ Dr. Prerna Kohli, Ph.D. · 📅 June 2026 · ⏱ 13 min read
They had matched thirty-one out of thirty-six. An excellent score. Both families had exhaled with relief, the pandit had smiled, and the wedding had been fixed within the month.
Now they sat across from me in my Gurugram clinic, eight months married, and the wife said something I have heard, in different words, more times than I can count: "On paper, we were perfect. So why does it feel like I married a stranger?"
The kundli had been matched with great care. The stars had been consulted. The doshas had been checked and cleared. Every traditional safeguard had been honoured — and not one of them had asked the two people getting married whether they had ever discussed money, children, where they would live, or how they would argue.
They had not. The score had been so good that no one thought they needed to.
The stars had agreed. The minds had never been introduced.
Quick answer
Kundli matched — do we still need premarital counselling?
Yes, and the two are not rivals. Kundli matching (Guna Milan) assesses astrological compatibility — temperament, doshas, the thirty-six gunas. Premarital counselling assesses how the two people actually function together: how they communicate, handle money, and align on family, children, and expectations. A high guna score is a reassuring start, but it cannot tell you whether you've had the honest conversations a marriage runs on. A wise family uses both — the chart and the counselling room — because each answers a question the other cannot.
Let me say at the outset what this article is not. It is not an argument against kundli matching. I have no wish to dismiss a tradition that millions of Indian families hold dear, that carries genuine cultural meaning, and that — for many — is woven into the very fabric of how a marriage begins. I respect it.
What I want to offer instead is a distinction I believe is essential: kundli matching and premarital counselling do not compete. They measure entirely different things. One looks to the stars. The other looks to the two people who will actually have to live together every ordinary morning for the next forty years. A wise family, in my clinical view, does not choose between them. It uses both.
What the Kundli Measures — and What It Cannot
Kundli matching — also called horoscope matching or guna matching (Guna Milan) — is the traditional Vedic method of comparing two birth charts before marriage. Using the Ashtakoota system, an astrologer scores eight aspects — the eight kootas — of the couple's charts out of a maximum of thirty-six gunas. Eighteen or above is traditionally considered an acceptable match; above twenty-five, good; above thirty-three, excellent. Doshas such as Manglik or Nadi are checked separately.
It is a careful and ancient system, and a genuine attempt to assess compatibility before two lives are joined. But look closely at what the eight kootas actually assess: temperament, spiritual and physical compatibility, planetary friendship, health and progeny indications. These are meaningful categories. Yet notice what is absent. Not one of the thirty-six gunas measures whether a couple can resolve a disagreement without wounding each other. None of them asks whether they share a view on money, or children, or how much authority the in-laws will hold. None of them tests whether these two specific people, with their specific histories and habits and wounds, can build a daily life together.
The kundli can tell you the stars are aligned. It cannot tell you whether you have ever had an honest conversation.
What the research — and the tradition — actually show
Sources: Carroll & Doherty (2003), Family Relations, 52(2), meta-analysis of 23 outcome studies (the ~30% / 79% figure); Stanley, Amato, Johnson & Markman (2006), Journal of Family Psychology, a large US survey (the 31% lower divorce rate); Fawcett, Hawkins, Blanchard & Carroll (2010) on communication as the most reliable gain from premarital education. Ashtakoota threshold per traditional Guna Milan practice. Figures are averages across studies; individual outcomes vary.
Here is something I find quietly reassuring, and that surprises many families: the tradition itself does not claim to do the whole job. Experienced astrologers will tell you that the guna score is one factor and not the only one — that a low score can still yield a happy marriage with understanding and effort, and that a high score guarantees nothing on its own. Some astrologers, faced with a couple whose score is low but who already know and care for each other, will themselves suggest pre-marriage counselling, so the couple can understand their differences and decide whether they are willing to adapt to each other. The tradition, at its wisest, points exactly where I am pointing.
The kundli tells you whether the heavens consent to your marriage. Counselling tells you whether you and your partner do. I have never met a couple who regretted asking both questions — only ones who wished they had asked the second.
— Dr. Prerna Kohli, Clinical Psychologist, Gurugram
Two Real Cases: When the Score and the Reality Disagreed
The two couples below come from opposite directions — one with a near-perfect score and a struggling marriage, one with a poor score and a strong one. Both are composites drawn from common patterns in my Gurugram practice rather than any single client, with all identifying details changed.
"On paper, we were perfect. So why does it feel like I married a stranger?"
The match everyone trusted
Theirs was an arranged marriage, matched at thirty-one of thirty-six gunas — a score so strong that both families treated every other question as already answered. The horoscopes agreed; what more was there to discuss? The engagement was short, the wedding warm, the families satisfied. The couple themselves had met three times before the wedding, always with relatives present, always over tea and pleasantries.
What the score had quietly skipped
They had never spoken — really spoken — about anything that mattered. They did not know how the other handled stress, or money, or disagreement. He assumed they would live with his parents indefinitely; she had imagined a home of their own within a year. He expected her to pause her career when children came; she had no intention of doing so. Each had simply assumed the other shared their picture, because the score had told everyone they were compatible.
What we actually did
Our work together was not dramatic. It was simply the set of conversations they had never been given the space to have — about money, family, ambition, and the daily mechanics of a shared life. Some of what surfaced was difficult. But none of it was unworkable. These were not incompatible people. They were two compatible people who had been allowed to marry without ever meeting each other's inner life. Once they did, the marriage steadied. The stranger, it turned out, was someone they could love — they had simply never been introduced.
"The astrologer said sixteen. Both our families wanted to call it off. But we already knew."
A score that frightened everyone
This couple came to me in distress, but not the kind I usually see. They were in love, had known each other for two years, and wanted to marry. The problem was the kundli: their score had come back at sixteen, below the traditional threshold, with a dosha flagged. Both families, who had otherwise approved, were now anxious and divided. Elders spoke of bad omens. The couple felt the ground shifting under a relationship they had been certain of.
What counselling revealed that the score could not
Over our sessions, a very different picture emerged from the one the number suggested. These two communicated honestly. They disagreed and repaired well. Their values on money, children, faith, and family aligned to a degree I rarely see even in couples with excellent scores. The psychological compatibility — the kind that actually predicts whether a marriage endures — was unusually strong.
I want to be careful here. It is not my place, as a clinical psychologist, to overrule anyone's astrologer or to tell a family that their tradition is wrong. What I could do was offer something the score could not: a grounded, professional assessment of how these two specific people functioned together. That assessment gave both the couple and their families a second, evidence-based source of reassurance to set alongside the chart — and, in time, the room to make an informed decision rather than a frightened one.
Kundli Matching and Counselling: What Each One Checks
The clearest way I can put it to the families who sit in my clinic is this. The two are not rivals. They are two different instruments measuring two different things — and a marriage benefits from both readings.
What kundli matching checks
- Planetary and cosmic compatibility
- Temperament through the eight kootas
- Doshas — Manglik, Nadi and others
- Auspicious timing for the marriage
- Traditional, astrological reassurance for both families
What premarital counselling checks
- How you actually communicate and argue
- Whether your money values and disclosures align
- Expectations of in-laws and living arrangements
- Views on children and how you'll raise them
- Career, roles, intimacy — and whether you truly know each other
One looks upward, to the heavens. The other looks across the room, at the person you are about to spend your life with. Why would you not want both?
Matched your kundlis? Now match your minds.
Speak with Dr. Prerna Kohli about premarital counselling — in Gurugram or online, for arranged and love marriages alike.
Chat on WhatsAppFive Things the Kundli Cannot Tell You
In thirty years of counselling Indian couples — many of whom arrived with their horoscopes already matched — I have found these to be the questions a chart simply cannot answer. They are precisely the questions premarital counselling exists to ask.
How the two of you handle conflict
Every marriage has disagreements. What decides its health is not whether you fight, but how you repair afterwards. No koota measures whether one of you goes silent for days while the other escalates — yet that single pattern shapes a marriage more than any planetary alignment.
Whether your money values align
Spender or saver, joint accounts or separate, how much goes to extended family, who decides the big purchases. Money is among the most common sources of marital conflict in my practice — and it is nowhere on the chart.
What you each expect from in-laws and family
Joint family or nuclear, how much say elders will hold, where you will live and how boundaries will be drawn. These expectations, when unspoken and mismatched, quietly fracture more Indian marriages than any dosha.
Whether you want children — and how you'll raise them
If and when, how many, whose career pauses, what values you will pass on. The kundli may speak of progeny in the abstract. It cannot tell you whether the two of you actually agree.
Whether you truly communicate — or simply coexist
This is the one that matters most, and the one no score can capture. Communication is among the strongest predictors of whether a marriage thrives or strains. It cannot be read in the stars. It can only be discovered by two people willing to talk honestly — ideally, before the wedding, with someone to guide them.
What I Have Learned From 30 Years of Counselling Indian Couples
Tradition and psychology are not opponents. The families who do best, in my experience, are the ones who refuse to choose. They honour the kundli for what it offers and they invest in counselling for what it offers. The wisest among them treat the two as complementary — the heavens consulted, and the human beings consulted too.
A high guna score is not a guarantee. Some of the most painful marriages I have worked with carried excellent scores — precisely because the score gave everyone permission to skip the real conversations. A strong chart should be a beginning, not an excuse to stop asking questions.
A low score is not a verdict. I have seen couples nearly separated by a frightening number who were, in every way that endures, profoundly suited to one another. When families are willing, a professional assessment of how a couple actually functions can sit alongside the chart and bring calm where there was fear.
The families' anxiety is real and deserves respect. When elders worry about a chart, they are not being foolish — they are expressing love in the language they trust. My work is never to dismiss that love, but to add to it: to offer a second kind of reassurance, grounded in psychology, that helps everyone make a clearer-eyed decision.
The conversations are better had before the wedding than after. Almost everything a couple discovers in their first difficult year of marriage could have been discovered, more gently, in a counselling room beforehand. Premarital counselling does not predict the future. It simply makes sure the two people stepping into it have actually met. You can read more in my guide to pre-marriage and premarital counselling — this matters especially for an arranged marriage on a short timeline or an inter-faith or inter-caste match, where the chart so often becomes the flashpoint. If you are still weighing whether any of it is worthwhile, I have set out what the evidence says about whether premarital counselling is worth it. And on the family side, here is more on navigating in-law dynamics in Indian marriages.
Key takeaways
- Kundli matching and premarital counselling measure different things — astrological compatibility versus how two people actually function together.
- They are complementary, not rivals; the wisest families use both.
- A high guna score is a start, not a guarantee — it can tempt couples to skip the real conversations.
- A low score is not a verdict; counselling can offer a grounded second assessment of compatibility.
- Communication, money, in-laws, and views on children — the things a chart can't read — are what counselling explores.
- It's especially valuable for arranged marriages on a short timeline, and works in person in Gurugram or online.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between kundli matching and premarital counselling?
Kundli matching assesses astrological compatibility — the gunas, kootas, and doshas of two birth charts. Premarital counselling assesses the two people themselves: how they communicate, handle conflict, and align on money, in-laws, children, and expectations. One looks to the stars; the other looks at the couple. They measure different things, and a marriage benefits from both.
Which is more important — kundli matching or premarital counselling?
Neither is "more important" — they answer different questions. Kundli matching speaks to astrological and traditional compatibility; premarital counselling speaks to how two people actually communicate and live together day to day. Rather than ranking them, most families I see treat them as complementary: the chart offers one kind of reassurance, counselling another. Together they give a fuller picture than either could alone.
What is a good guna score for marriage?
In traditional Guna Milan, the couple's charts are scored out of thirty-six. Eighteen or above is generally considered an acceptable match, twenty-five and above good, and thirty-three and above excellent; below eighteen is usually discouraged. But astrologers themselves treat the number as one factor among many — a low score can still lead to a happy marriage, and a high one guarantees nothing about how two people will actually live together.
Is kundli matching enough to ensure a happy marriage?
Kundli matching assesses astrological compatibility — temperament, doshas, and planetary alignment — but it does not measure how a couple communicates, handles money, or aligns on children and family. Even traditional practice treats the guna score as one factor among many. A happy marriage depends heavily on psychological compatibility, which premarital counselling, not the chart, is designed to explore.
Is kundli matching scientifically proven to predict a happy marriage?
There is no scientific evidence that astrological compatibility predicts marital happiness or divorce — and I don't raise that to dismiss anyone's faith or tradition. What research does consistently link to lasting marriages is psychological compatibility: communication, conflict repair, and shared expectations on money, family, and children. That is precisely what premarital counselling assesses, which is why I suggest treating the chart and the counselling room as complementary, each answering a question the other cannot.
Can premarital counselling identify red flags before marriage?
It can. By bringing money, values, family expectations, and how a couple handles conflict into the open before the wedding, counselling often surfaces differences a couple hadn't noticed or had quietly avoided. The aim is never to "fail" a relationship — it's to help two people understand each other clearly and decide, with open eyes, how to move forward.
We got a low guna score. Should we call off the marriage?
Not on the score alone. Astrologers themselves note that a low score can still lead to a happy marriage with understanding and effort, and that doshas often have remedies. If you already know and care for each other, premarital counselling can give you and your families a grounded, professional assessment of how compatible you actually are as people — a second source of reassurance to set alongside the chart.
Our kundli matched perfectly. Do we still need counselling?
An excellent score is a wonderful start, but it can carry a hidden risk: it sometimes convinces couples and families that the real conversations — about money, in-laws, children, and expectations — are unnecessary. Many of the struggling couples in my practice had high scores. Counselling ensures the two of you have actually discussed the things that shape daily married life, rather than assuming the chart settled them.
Is premarital counselling against our traditions or religion?
No. Premarital counselling is not a replacement for kundli matching or any tradition — it sits alongside it. It is a neutral, confidential space to prepare for marriage, used by couples of every faith and community. Many families honour both: they consult the astrologer and the counsellor, treating the two as complementary safeguards rather than competing ones.
We're having an arranged marriage with little time before the wedding. Can counselling help?
Yes — it is often most valuable precisely then. When couples have only had a few supervised meetings, premarital counselling offers a structured, low-pressure way to accelerate genuine understanding: to discuss values, finances, family living arrangements, and expectations before the wedding, rather than discovering them afterward.
Can we attend premarital counselling online?
Yes. Dr. Prerna Kohli offers sessions in person in Gurugram and online across India and internationally, so couples in different cities — or with one partner abroad — can attend together.
