My thread asking for book suggestions started coming up with its own list of important questions to ask one another, and I thought it would make a good thread in its own right. (No, I will not shut up about this wedding thing, sorry. It ate my life.)
Hampshire had a good list:
How much will you assist your children in financing their secondary education?
If for whatever reason you couldn’t have kids would you look into other options and what sort of $ limit would you put on it?
When you become empty nesters do you want to downsize? When you retire do you want to relocate?
How do you prefer to spend your vacations and holidays? Your family, their family, other friends, by yourselves?
Who gets the newer vehicle?
Who cleans the toilets?
If either of your parents become dependant are you willing to take them in?
Do you loan/give money to relatives who ask?
And Mrs Whatsit added:
Are either of you going to expect the other one to go to bed at the same time they do, and if so, how do both parties feel about this?
Which was actually a big annoying thing with my ex - he’d stay up or out late when I went to bed, but heaven forbid he got tired first - he’d come back to the living room after 30 minutes like a little kid and bug me about coming to bed. Drove me mad.
So what are some other less obvious questions? (I mean, we all know to talk about whether you want kids, and religion, and how to split the money up.)
I find that some of our more passionate disagreements are on the upbringing of kids, when and how to discipline, manners, etc. However, that isn’t the easiest thing to speculate on until it actually happens.
You should both acknowledge that shit happens, people find themselves falling out of love, people find themselves falling for another, you’ve both seen it, I’m sure. Personally, painful as it would be either way, I’d rather know at the falling, than after the consummation, as it were. Does he feel the same way?
What if we should need to divide our household, how would that happen? Who would get what? What if there were children involved? What would be your ideal solution should we be forced apart by circumstance? Could we be fair to each other? Could we keep it civil and supportive for our children? Who would pay for college? You’ve both surely seen such events unfold around you, talk about what you saw that was good, what you saw that you’d avoid.
If you can have this conversation, you’re ready to walk down the aisle, in my humble opinion!
I don’t think conversations about future possibilities are as helpful as all that. When you get there you might feel very differently.
There are things that are indicators of how a person will deal with unknown big issues though.
How does he/she make money decisions? Immediate gratification/whim vs thoughtful budgeting vs inability to decide/irrational parsimony. This pattern tends to be permanent.
How clean and tidy are they? How organized? This really doesn’t change much either.
How do they treat their relatives? Even the unpleasant ones? Lot of information there.
I think that couples of the same culture and class have a better chance of making it than those who have big gaps to fill in. Couples who share similar values have a better chance of longevity than those who just have similar tastes. There’s a difference.
And, although this may be hard to find these days, people whose parents stayed together fairly happily are a safer bet than children of divorce. It isn’t that they are better people, it’s just that they have an embedded model of sticking it out and getting past the rough spots. Which is what every marriage is going to have.
Moving for work
If one party gets a job opportunity that is extraordinary, but involves moving across the country or out of the country what will you do? What if there are kids? What if the other spouse cannot find work in the new place? Would you ever consider living apart? if so, for how long would you consider living apart?
How to deal with Pre-existing debt
Student loans - Does it matter whose salary payments come out of? Priority to pay off early or no?
Consumer debt - Non-endebted Spouse’s responsibility to chip in or should the debted spouse pay it off themselves by sacrificing “fun” money and living lean? (or some other variant, it all boils down to, does the other spouse “take on” your debt and treat it as his/her own or no?). Does it matter how the debt was aquired (medical bills vs. fun toys)?
I agree with Ulfreida that when you get to these places, one or both of you might feel very differently. Nevertheless, I think its important to discuss it first so you have a basis of understanding and so that neither one of you is surprised once you get there
Some big and little things:
Join accounts: Have them or not have them?
Name changes: Will you be changing your last name?
Household chores: I don’t think anyone really sticks to this, but it would be a good idea to divide up the chores a bit. Not like with exact number like you do 75% of dishes while he takes care of 31% of the vacuuming, but just who is usually going to handle it
Relatives: Any destructive or special relatives in either of your families that require attention? And not just medical needs, though that’s important too. I mean like if he has a brother who’s a thief, or you have a cousin who a manipulative. People in your life your SO should be warned about first
Sex: If either one of you has a weird sexual hangup, like Nazi cosplay fetishism, now’s the time to let that out
Drinkings/smoking: You probably know about this already, but this may be a small wedge if one of you prefers non-drinking/smoking
Religion: Not only how you two get along, but how you will raise potential children, if any
Pets: Allergies, either one of you? Or if one hates dogs and the other loves dogs, etc.
If one of you is secretly a superhero/villain: Self explanatory
We actually got a fairly good handle on this by discussing what we thought about the way mr. hunter’s brother and sister were bringing up their kids (brother: too permissive; sister: mostly very much the way we thought we would bring up kids, though at times a trifle more strict than we thought we’d be). Now that we have the kid, I’m in practice much more of a disciplinarian than mr. hunter is, but in theory we agree Anyway, if you’re close to some kids and can see how they’re being brought up, that’s an idea of something to discuss.
Do you already live together? Have you for a while? If so, the questions are different.
For us, there weren’t questions per se. More like agreements of our individual responisibilities. It’s my job to take care of the money/budget. It’s his to deal with gross things and be the handyman. I take care of scheduling and organizing. He makes sure I don’t lose my mind.
If there is a deal-breaker (like one of you wanting kids and the other not), you have probably uncovered it by now.
The hardest thing in being married (for us, anyway) is communicating. We feel connected enough that we are an extension of each other so we often forget to tell each other things. We actually have a nightly meeting to discuss the next few days to make sure we are both in sync. It seemed really lame at first but it really helped to reduce misinterpretations and misunderstandings.
Also, we update each others’ outlook calendars when we make plans (with or without each other) prevents double-bookings.
Infidelity is rampant (I’ve read estimates as high as 75% of all marriages in the USA having at least one spouse who cheats at some point…sorry, no cite), and it seems like most people assume it will happen to someone else, not them.
The topic should be openly discussed and researched by both partners. There is really good free material on the internet (websites on request) that goes into things like boundaries, meeting each others’ needs, risk factors, etc. It’s a many-faceted issue that goes way beyond simply fucking someone outside the marriage.
Both people need to clearly define what they believe infidelity is. For some, watching porn is cheating. For some it’s emailing, chatting, or texting in secret. For others, it’s not cheating until penetration. Agreement in this area is critical.
So infidelity, first and foremost…even before money or children, in my opinion.
Time management: How will you handle couple time vs solo time vs family time vs friend time, hobbies vs job vs household work, etc? Do you expect this to change if you have kids? Is it okay to be late for couple or family events or outings? Just what constitutes on time vs late, anyway?
Household management: What’s an acceptable frequency for doing various household chores? What, exactly, needs to happen before a given chore is considered “done”? Who’s going to take primary responsibility for various chores? What’s an acceptable amount of time for leaving something sitting out? Is having someone in to do certain jobs something that’s worthwhile to you?
Relatives: How much time do you expect to spend around your families? Does the spouse need to come all/most of the time, or are solo visits ok? Who is going to handle gift buying for relatives?
Non-sexual bedroom stuff: Kids/critters in your bed–yea or nay? TV in the bedroom or not? If yes, on or off when ready to sleep? How long is it okay to have a reading light on after your spouse is in bed? How many times is it acceptable to hit the snooze alarm?
Those are really great ideas. #2 is especially great considering how busy people are. I know my fiance is having a poker game tonight and one friend committed but then backed out (we think it’s date night but he’s too embarrassed to say so). This could have been avoided by the calendar-syncing technique.
I was vocally in favor of premarital counseling; he was/is against it. He doesn’t feel (and I certainly see his point) that an outsider can accurately assess a relationship. We joke and tease each other a lot and swear quite a bit so I can’t imagine someone understanding that either. Also we don’t know any non-religious counselors either.
So a compromise I came up with is once a month we get together for an hour and bring a quote, poem, or short story to bed (in the afternoon or evening on a weekend, not just before going to sleep). We exchange and read the other person’s, then we discuss what we saw in it. I took a NYTimes modern love story recently (link here) about a couple in their 50’s written by the man. He felt like the relationships around them were erupting and how it made them feel like the last men standing in a war. He charts their course, how people were amazed they married in the first place, how marriage seems out of fashion these days. Already in our 20’s we see this: people who have been together for several years splitting up, dividing friends and causing us strife. He picked a Kipling quote.
It didn’t reveal anything new but it did strengthen us and made us each feel better. I tend to take the longer view of things and he tends to be an “as they come up” person.
I cannot imagine having most of these discussions with a prospective spouse. Who could talk about retirement life that would have been 40 years down the line. I didn’t actually know that my wife was an atheist (I’m not sure I fully realized I was), but we did know that neither of us ever went to services. We briefly discussed kids, we both wanted some, but not immediately (turned out to be two years later) and never discussed child raising strategies. And in fact we changed that in mid-stream. When we realized spanking was have little effect, we stopped and the behavioral improvement was immediate and dramatic. There was only one question we discussed. “Do you want a diamond ring or two months in Europe next summer?” (She took the trip and has never regretted it. Much.) I guess in those days, name change and joint bank accounts were kind of assumed.
On the news a couple months ago was a couple who had been married forever and a day. The interviewer asked the husband to what did he attribute the longevity of their marriage? The man said he guessed that they just had never both fallen out of love at the same time.
Boy, was he ever right. Wait till your SO scrapes the spoon around the bowl for the umpteenth time.
Wait till they answer a heartfelt question with a half-smile while looking over your shoulder, hoping you’ll “be done” soon.
Wait till you realize their very presence set your teeth on edge for almost a year, and the only reason you’ve let yourself see it is because now you like them again.
And that’s not even deciding who’s to blame when the car runs out of gas.
It can’t be plotted out like the Five Year Plan because your life together happens every day, sometimes minute by minute like Chinese water torture, that over a lifetime becomes a shower.
As someone who went through premarital counseling and liked it, I will say that it is not the job of the counselor to assess your relationship (and if you find one that thinks that way, you should get a new counselor). (And I can say with near-certainty that our counselor completely did not understand our joking and teasing, which is often esoteric and/or based on inside jokes of long standing.) It is his/her job to give you tools to better assess your own relationship, and to discuss coping strategies that might help you in rougher times.
It was completely worth it for us, because it uncovered some problems we had not communicated about before. Or we could have just read CrazyCatLady’s post and saved ourselves the sessions:
The whole post really is excellent, but this one was a key thing for us to discuss.
Anyway, if you’re close to some kids and can see how they’re being brought up, that’s an idea of something to discuss.