100 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged PDF
Twenty questions to work through with your partner before an engagement, covering money, children, conflict, sex, families and health, with what to listen for in each answer.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Why do you want to get married, rather than carry on as we are?
Why ask it
Answers divide into wanting a public commitment, wanting children, wanting security, and family pressure. All of them are workable, but you should each know which one you are answering before a ring appears.
When you picture us married in five years, what ordinary scene do you see first?
Why ask it
Asking for a scene rather than a plan tells you where they assume you will be living, who else is in the room, and who is doing what on a Tuesday evening.
What do you earn, and what do you owe?
Why ask it
Exact figures, not categories. Debt discovered after a wedding is one of the most common early shocks, and how readily the number arrives tells you how money will be discussed for the next decade.
Do you want joint accounts, separate accounts, or a mix, and who pays which bills?
Why ask it
This is where fairness gets defined. Listen for an assumption that the lower earner should still split everything evenly, or that one of you will simply handle all the admin forever.
Do you want children, and how certain are you?
Why ask it
Certainty matters as much as the answer. A firm yes paired with a quiet maybe is the most common way engaged couples get stuck, and waiting does not resolve it.
If we have children, who is at home in the first two years, and what happens to that person's work?
Why ask it
Plenty of couples agree they want children and have never discussed this. The answer decides two careers, the household income, and who is quietly resentful in year three.
How much time alone do you need to feel like yourself?
Why ask it
People rarely name this until they are short of it. A partner who needs two evenings a week to themselves is not withdrawing, but it needs saying now rather than being discovered and misread later.
How do you know when you are getting angry, and what do you do with it?
Why ask it
You are asking for self-knowledge, not manners. Someone who cannot describe their own build-up cannot warn you, and someone who goes silent for days is telling you how every future argument will run.
What did your parents do during a fight that you refuse to repeat?
Why ask it
More useful than asking how they handle conflict, because it is concrete. It also tells you what they will read as a serious breach even when you meant nothing by it.
If we were still having the same argument a year from now, what would you want us to do?
Why ask it
The real question is whether outside help is on the table at all. Ruling out counseling in calm conditions is worth knowing before the year in which you need it.
How often do you want sex in an ordinary week, and what should we do if we want different amounts?
Why ask it
Give a number rather than saying often enough. Mismatch is normal and workable; the couples who struggle are the ones who never said the numbers and read the difference as rejection.
What counts as cheating to you, including things that only happen on a phone?
Why ask it
Definitions differ more than people expect, particularly about messaging, old partners, and what is acceptable on a night out. Agreeing the line now removes the later argument about whether there was one.
How often do you want to see your family, and where do the holidays happen?
Why ask it
Holidays are the recurring flashpoint of married life. A specific answer, including which family gets which day, is worth more than a warm statement about how close everyone is.
What would you do if my family treated you badly?
Why ask it
You are finding out whether they would tell you, absorb it, or quietly stop visiting. This answer shapes the next twenty years of gatherings more than almost anything else on the list.
Which jobs at home do you assume you will do, and which do you assume I will?
Why ask it
Answer separately, then compare. The gap between the two lists is where the invisible work lives, and it is usually cleaning, cooking, and remembering other people's birthdays.
Where do you want to live in ten years, and how attached are you to it?
Why ask it
One of you may be assuming an eventual move home, and the other may have no idea. Distance from ageing parents turns this from a preference into a practical decision.
What health conditions run in your family, and what do you know about your own?
Why ask it
Plain information, easier to exchange now than during a diagnosis. It also covers mental health history, which is common and treatable and better understood before it becomes urgent.
If one of us were seriously ill and could not speak for themselves, what would you want done?
Why ask it
Marriage makes each of you the likely decision maker. Having heard the answer once, in ordinary conditions, is what makes it possible to act on it when the time comes.
What would make you leave this marriage?
Why ask it
Everyone has a line and most people have never said theirs out loud. Hearing it is not a threat; it tells you what you are each promising to stay clear of.
What are you unsure about with us, right now?
Why ask it
Ask this last, and then wait. Some doubt is normal and naming it is usually a good sign, but an apartment nothing after nineteen honest answers is worth gently testing.
Working Through the List Together
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to Use It
Four or five at a time, not all twenty
Twenty questions of this weight in one evening turns into a performance review. A handful at a time, with a break and something ordinary afterwards, is what gets honest answers rather than diplomatic ones.
Write your own answers before you compare
Answer separately on paper first, particularly on money, children, and housework. Otherwise whoever speaks first sets the answer and the other agrees to keep the evening pleasant.
Treat a difference as information
Almost no couple matches on all of this. What matters is whether you can hold a disagreement for a week without it escalating into a conversation about whether you should be together at all.
Take the stuck ones to someone else
Premarital counseling exists for exactly these subjects, and a few sessions is ordinary rather than a warning sign. If a topic stalls twice at home, that is the one to bring.
Answers Worth Slowing Down For
- Any version of we will figure it out on children, money, or where you live. That is agreement in the shape of a delay.
- Figures that arrive rounded, hedged, or postponed. Debt and income described vaguely are usually worse than the vague version.
- A partner who answers everything the way you would like. Ask what they would say if you wanted the opposite, and see whether the answer moves.
- Two different memories of an agreement you supposedly already reached. Write down what you decide about children, money, location, and faith.
- A subject one of you will not discuss at all. The refusal is the finding, whatever the subject happens to be.
- Pressure to get through this quickly. Anyone who wants these conversations over with is asking you to sign without reading.
Practical Items People Forget
- Marriage does not merge your credit histories, but joint borrowing exposes each of you to the other's. Look at both records before planning a mortgage.
- Decide whether either of you is changing names, and find out what that involves in documents and at work.
- If a prenuptial agreement is being considered, say so early and take separate advice. Raising it a month before a wedding rarely goes well.
- Write down who is paying for which part of the wedding, including any parental contribution and what expectations come with it.
- Ask a lawyer or notary what marriage changes about wills, pensions, and beneficiary nominations where you live, because it differs by country and by state.
- If either of you already has children, agree how they hear about the engagement and what changes for them day to day.