When I was dating my boyfriend, who is now my husband, an older lady told me to ask him as many questions as I can while we were still dating. She was right. Anyone who is intentional and wants to build a future with you will be more than willing to share as much as they possibly can with you. You will have to do the same of course. It’s absolutely necessary for you to have serious conversations about expectations you may or may not have before marriage. These are 5 topics to discuss before you say “I do”.
5 Topics to discuss with your partner
Starting a family
You’d be surprised how many people get married assuming they want the same thing as their partner – a family. Have a discussion about starting a family, if that’s something you both want or don’t. You both have to be on the same page in order for this to work, do not think that you can change your partner’s mind down the line, you’ll end up very disappointed. If they in fact do want children but need more time, that’s a different story. But if they make it clear from the very beginning and you feel quite the opposite, you will have to make a decision on wether you’re going to be okay with that in the long run. Here are some questions to ask your partner in the meantime.
- How do you feel about having children?
- How many would you potentially want?
- When would you like to have children?
- What would your roles/responsibilities be in our child’s life?
- How do you envision balancing work and family life?
- How would you handle the possibility of infertility during pregnancy?
- How do you feel about adoption or fostering?
Cheating
Cheating has a different definition for everyone. You need to know what your boundaries are and you need to set them early. Everything that may be an issue while you’re dating will only worsen once you get married if you choose to ignore it. Have a serious conversation about what you consider cheating and make it clear.
- What constitutes cheating in our relationship?
- Have you cheated on someone before? What happened?
- What are your thoughts and feelings about infidelity?
- How do you feel about having friends of the opposite sex?
- Do you stay in touch with your ex’s?
- What do you consider flirting?
- How do you feel about having access to each other’s cellphones?
- How do you plan on communicating about potential challenges or issues in the relationship that could lead to cheating?
- Do you think cheating can be forgiven?
- How would you handle the aftermath of infidelity?
Roles
It is vital that you talk about the roles in your marriage before you get married. If not, you’ll get married and suddenly have all these responsibilities that you never discussed and it will feel like you’re carrying the world on your shoulders. That’s how resentment starts in marriage, often couples feel like one is doing more than the other. To avoid that, discuss what your roles are going to be once you’re married.
- What would your roles be in our marriage?
- What would my roles be in our marriage?
- How would we divide chores?
- Will you help cook/clean?
- Will we both work full time?
- What happens if one of us loses our job?
- How involved would you be in raising children?
- I may/may not want to be a stay at home wife/mom. How do you feel about that?
- Do you ever see yourself being a stay at home husband/dad?
In laws
Do not overlook this, do not ignore it. As much as you may love your in laws, space is necessary in your marriage especially as newlyweds. If you would rather have them part of your marriage at all times, that’s your business. But if you want to make sure that you and your partner are on the same page about boundaries and space then talk about in laws and expectations they may have.
- What are some boundaries do we have to put in place?
- What can we share with them?
- What don’t we share with them?
- How do we handle disrespect?
- How often do we want to see and communicate with them?
- How do we handle situations where they have different expectations or opinions about our relationship or our lives?
- How do we handle situations where where they are financially dependent on us or vice versa?
- How do we plan on balancing our relationship with our in laws?
Finances
This one should actually be at the top of my list as it’s one of the main reasons we have a high rate of divorce in America. Have a clear conversation on how you’re going to move forward financially as a married couple.
- Are you a spender or a saver?
- How do you feel about having joint and separate bank accounts?
- Are we saving money together or separately?
- What would I be responsible for financially?
- What would you be responsible for financially?
- Do you have financial goals?
- Would you rather one person handle the finances or both of us?
- How do you feel about having financial meetings about expectations, goals etc as often as once once a month?
- What do you like to spend money on?
- Do you believe in running expensive purchases by your partner before buying it?
Don’t wait until after marriage to have these kind of conversations. Be transparent, share how you feel and remember there will be a lot of compromise in marriage. A lot. Learn as much as possible about your partner before you say “I do”. Make sure that this is the person you truly want to spend the rest of your life with.
Listed below are more marriage related posts
- Individuality in marriage
- What I’ve learned in 2 years of marriage
- A letter to newlyweds
- Q&A with my husband
- Married young (are you making the right choice?)
- The first year of marriage
- From Miss to Mrs
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