Seven Fundamental Questions to Ask your Partner Before you Marry Them

Building a Strong Foundation: The Essential Conversations for a Lifelong Commitment

1. Why marriage?

A lot of modern marriages are initiated on a foundation entirely comprised of infatuation. Strong romantic feelings, while they are a wonderful indicator of compatibility and can nourish a baseline friendship beautifully, are a fragile and tenuous base to build a lifelong commitment over. All marriages, healthy or unhealthy, require a substantial individual investment of time, money, energy, patience, personal leisure etc. There should be a pretty compelling reason for choosing to embark on an investment as substantial as marriage and there should be some serious thought about the investment partner you choose. “What would marriage add to your life in your view?”

2. How does your parents’ marriage impact your view on marriage?

It’s important to be able to gauge what a successful union looks like to each of you. Every relationship is unique and thus we all develop a unique understanding of how they should operate based on the models we were exposed to earlier in our lives. Parent relationship dynamics will tell you how trust is demonstrated to a person, how conflict is approached, how often accountability is taken, how affection is shown etc. Understanding your partner’s blueprint for relationships and understanding your own can help you develop a picture of what your own relationship dynamic may look like and whether there is anything you want to address and alter in that prospective dynamic before it manifests.

3. How do you handle change & the unexpected?

A lot of people don't realise how meticulously they have planned out their life going into marriage. Fantasies, whether realised or not, hold significant influence over how we evaluate our life circumstances and relationships. The reality of life is cruel & painful at worst, and predictable but inconvenient at best. Life is unpredictable & when something happens that interrupts our perfectly curated plan, it can take a toll on the relationship. Death, injury, illness, unemployment - life is relentless in what it will throw at a person. What will ensure the marriage survives the jabs and crosses of life is a tolerance to change. Learn how competent your partner is at operating outside of their comfort zone.

4. Whose career would take precedence, if necessary?

It is not uncommon for career changes to disrupt the relational dynamic of a marriage. One of you may get a job across the country or loss of childcare may require one of you to leave work. Understanding your partner’s priorities, their attachment to their career & their views on breadwinning stops you from being blindsided in the future.

5. Do we have any major secrets we haven't shared yet?

Whether some secrets are to be kept is for both of you to decide, but you risk finding out later. It’s always best to attempt to be entirely truthful and your true authentic self from the genesis of your marriage & to know as it develops that you are fully accepted regardless of your past.

6. Do we agree on the division of labour in our house?

I’ve been old this question is trivial and unnecessary to ask at the start of a marriage. I wholeheartedly disagree. Who does what, and how often, is a perpetual issue for so many couples. The perception of marriage is called into question here. For a lot of people their life satisfaction is evaluated using the 3 weeks in Malaga or The Maldives in the sun with your spouse enjoying a heated pool and a sun bed once a year. In reality, those moments make up—at most—10% of your married life. The rest of the 90% of your life with that person is the greetings at the door when they return from work, the dinner table conversations, the errands you run, the mornings before work getting ready together. If you perfect the small mundane things as you go about chores, you have perfected 90% of your life together. The 10% in the sun is then an earned bonus. The 90% is where the effort and anticipation must be. When chores and mundane responsibilities are an issue it makes a very real and tangible difference on the quality of your life together. It’s important to discuss and perhaps even divide tasks between you (cooking, laundry, finances etc.) as early as possible & develop a forgiving attitude for any slip ups.

7. How will you handle it if we drift apart?

Infatuation fades. Work, kids & life in general can distract you from the ‘couple’ part of being married. The emotional intimacy and the curiosity required to keep a marriage truly romantic requires maintenance. There really is no ‘the one’ with whom infatuation and romantic attraction lasts forever effortlessly the way it does in the Disney films we ingested as children. You choose who the one will be. And when you do, you'll have to make that choice again and again many times throughout your marriage. Love isn't simply a feeling, it's an intentional practice. Maintaining romantic attraction & shared interests becomes hard. Ask ‘how would they approach a reconnect?’ ‘Would you consider couples therapy?’.

Disclaimer:

There are no perfectly correct answers to these questions. However, the answers they provide will allow you to paint a more realistic picture of what a married life with them will look like and what you can practically expect. This is not a complete list and should be used flexibly with further exploration being directed by your and their answers to these questions. The areas of particular interest and the points of tension will become obvious as the conversation develops and evolves.