What Should You Talk About Before Getting Married?
Getting married means more than deciding that you love someone enough to spend your life together. You are also agreeing to share a life, and that life comes with bills, responsibilities, family relationships, career decisions, unexpected problems, and plenty of ordinary Tuesday nights.
Some couples have these conversations naturally. Others discover important differences after the wedding, when the differences are suddenly attached to a mortgage, a joint account, a child, or a family obligation.
You do not have to agree on everything before getting married.
You do need to understand what you are agreeing to build together.
What Do You Both Want Your Life to Look Like?
“Where do you see yourself in five years?” gets thrown around in interviews and relationship conversations so often that it can feel like a cliché. The useful version of the question is much more specific.
Where do you want to live?
Do you want children?
Would you rather own a home or rent long-term?
Is traveling important to you?
How often do you expect sex?
Do you want to stay in the same career?
Are nights out with friends important to you?
Would you move across the country for an opportunity?
How important is having a large family nearby?
Do you want your children to attend church?
What if you, or I, become paralyzed or chronically ill?
Are you able to handle body changes as we age?
Where you want to be 2 years, 5 years, 7 years from now?
You might discover that you and your partner have been imagining completely different futures.
One person may picture buying a house in the suburbs, having two children, and staying close to family. The other may picture living in a city apartment, traveling frequently, and never having children.
This mismatch can be tolerable in dating, and even complimentary sometimes, but once marriage enters the picture, these differences can very quickly shift the tone for both partners.
With marriage, the intention is until death as partners. But many people never truly understand what that entails. It is not the beautiful life that movies and TV shows sell; often marriage comes with mistakes, changes both physically and personally, learning, and growth.
And if you never talk about what growth together looks like, chances are you will grow apart instead.
What Do You Expect From Each Other at Home?
People often talk about dividing household chores as though the conversation is simply “Who washes the dishes?”
It is bigger than that.
Who cooks? Who grocery shops? Who cleans the bathroom? Who notices when the toilet paper is running out? Who schedules appointments? Who handles bills? Who takes care of the car? Who deals with repairs? What happens when one person is exhausted from work?
There is also the invisible work of running a household. These are the tasks that have to be done and are not usually things written down on a checklist. Instead, they're the everyday parts of living together. Things like:
Remembering that the car needs an oil change
Scheduling the dentist appointment,
Keeping track of your mom, her mom, your brother, your 2nd aunt, your children's birthdays
Noticing that the refrigerator is making a strange noise and figuring out why
Remembering that the electric bill is due today
Picking up the 57 cups laying around the house
Picking up toys and shoes
Vacuuming the entry carpet when its full of dirt
Hosing off the driveway after a mowing
Adding bug killer to the lawn
Feeding the dog twice a day with the specialty diet food
Picking up milk and eggs from the store in the middle of the week
Caculating if you can afford that $30 pair of headphones after paying the bills
Fitting in those 30 minutes of exercise with your wife/husband
Picking out a card for your granddad's retirement
Sending a thank you letter to the neighbor
Helping little Tommy finish his 3rd grade math homework for the 2nd time this week
Replacing that flickering bulb in the bathroom
Dusting the top of the mirror as you walk by
This list is long, but is it nowhere near everything that happens behind the scenes that keeps a house running. And when one partner takes on all of these roles without the help of the other, the chances of contempt, and even divorce, increase substantially.
You may have very different ideas about what “clean” means. One person may be perfectly comfortable with laundry sitting in a basket for three days. The other may consider that basket an emergency. You also may have very different opinions of what "help" means. Maybe you like doing all the administrative tasks, but really want help with sweeping and dishes a few times week. Or maybe you want to go 50/50 on everything. Either way, making sure you and your partner have the right expectations is necessary to keep things smooth sailing at home.
Understand who is taking on what role, and if/when it will be switched off. Many couples find one person handling specific tasks, while the other person handles different tasks work. Others like to split things mostly evenly with the other picking up slack is one is struggling to keep up.
The most important thing is to talk about it.
How Will You Handle Family and Boundaries?
Marriage can connect you to an entirely new collection of family relationships.
Parents, siblings, adult children, grandparents, and other relatives may all have opinions about your relationship, your home, your finances, your children, and how you spend your time. Sometimes those opinions are helpful. Sometimes they are unsolicited.
Talk about where you draw the line.
How often will you visit family?
Are relatives welcome to drop by without calling?
Would you lend money to a family member?
What happens if one of your parents needs financial or caregiving help?
How will you handle holidays?
What information about your relationship stays between the two of you?
Imagine that your spouse's parent calls asking for $2,000. Your spouse wants to help immediately. You are worried because you are already trying to pay down debt.
That is not really a $2,000 question. It is a question about how the two of you make decisions, how you handle family obligations, and what happens when your priorities collide.
Having that conversation before you are standing in the middle of the situation gives you considerably more room to work through it.
What Happens When Life Gets Difficult?
It is easy to talk about marriage when everything is going well.
It is much more useful to talk about what happens when it isn't.
What happens if one person loses their job?
What if one of you becomes seriously ill?
What if you have a child and parenting is much harder than expected?
What if one person has to relocate for work?
What if you have to take care of an aging parent?
What if you experience a major financial setback?
If one person becomes a caregiver for a parent, how will that affect the household?
If one of you needs to stop working temporarily, what happens to the family's finances?
if one spouse loses their job, will the other expect them to immediately take any job available, or will you agree to give them some time to pursue work in their field?
You cannot predict every problem you will encounter.
You can talk about how you expect to approach problems together.
These conversations can also reveal how each person handles stress.
Someone who wants to talk through every problem immediately may have a very different approach from someone who needs time alone before discussing it.
And having different approaches to stress can very quickly amplify it.
A partner who freaks out in an emergency may not help a partner who needs reassurance during a hard time. Conversely, a person who freaks out in an emergency might needs someone who is more levelheaded to calm them down. Understanding how your partner handles stress, and being honest about how you handle it, can prevent many arguments in the future.
Knowing that difference ahead of time can save you from interpreting “I need an hour to think” as “I don't care about this.”
What Does Marriage Mean to You?
This might be the biggest conversation of all.
Marriage can mean different things to different people.
For some, it is primarily a lifelong partnership.
For others, it carries strong religious, cultural, financial, or family expectations.
Some people expect marriage to mean doing nearly everything together.
Others place a high value on maintaining separate hobbies, friendships, finances, or personal space.
Talk about what you actually expect from each other.
How much time should you spend together?
How much independence should each person have?
What counts as cheating?
How should you handle friendships with exes?
How do you make major decisions?
How do you apologize?
What does commitment look like when you are angry with each other?
These questions may feel unusually serious when you are planning a wedding. That is exactly why they are worth discussing.
A wedding is one day.
Marriage is figuring out every single day after, together.
For ideas on where to begin, check out: 100 Questions to Ask Before Marriage
Final Thoughts
A strong marriage does not require two people who think exactly alike. It requires two people who understand the life they are choosing together and can talk honestly when their expectations differ.
Some conversations will be easy. Others may uncover disagreements you would rather avoid. Finding those disagreements before marriage gives you an opportunity to actually address them instead of discovering them years later under very different circumstances.
You are not trying to predict every detail of your future. You are getting familiar with the person you will be building that future with.
And once you start talking about building a life together, money usually walks into the room sooner or later.
Up Next: Money can be one of the most uncomfortable subjects for couples, especially when one person earns more, one person has debt, or the two of you have completely different spending habits.
The next article breaks down how to talk about money before marriage. Money is one of the largest aspects of marriage beyond romance and should be a topic that is understood long before saying "I do".
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