300 Questions to Ask Before Marriage
Questions for a couple deciding whether to marry, kept concrete rather than abstract: money and debt, children, housework, whose career gives way, arguing, sex, in-laws, faith, illness, and what either of you would need if life went badly. Best worked through over several conversations rather than one evening.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What do you picture an ordinary week of ours looking like in five years?
Why ask it
Ask for the Tuesday, not the wedding. Most couples discover a mismatch here first: one describes evenings at home with children, the other a life of work travel and friends. Vague answers usually mean the future has not been imagined in any detail, which is worth knowing before you commit to it.
Do you want children, how many, and roughly when?
Why ask it
This needs a number and a timeframe, because someday is not an answer two people can plan around. A partner who wants them eventually while you want them within two years is a real difference, and the gap tends to widen rather than resolve itself with time.
If children turned out to be difficult for us, how far would you want to go with treatment or adoption?
Why ask it
Uncomfortable in advance and much harder in the middle of it. Fertility treatment costs money, takes years and puts strain on a marriage, and couples who have never discussed their limits often find they disagree at the worst possible moment. Adoption and fostering deserve their own separate answer.
How do you want us to handle money day to day: joint, separate, or a mix?
Why ask it
There is no correct arrangement, but the unspoken one causes trouble. Listen for who assumes they will manage it and whether either of you expects to be given money rather than to have access to it. Somebody who does not want you seeing their spending is telling you something now.
What do you owe, and what is your plan for paying it off?
Why ask it
Debt should be a number said out loud before a wedding, including loans, cards, tax owed and money borrowed from family. The plan matters as much as the amount, and so does how they react to the question: reluctance here is one of the strongest signals available to you.
How much can either of us spend without asking the other?
Why ask it
Agree a figure. Couples rarely argue about the principle and constantly argue about the specific purchase, and having a number removes most of that. If your two figures are wildly apart, you have found a difference in how each of you thinks about security.
Who does what at home, and does that change if one of us earns more?
Why ask it
Get down to the actual list: cooking, laundry, bins, bills, birthdays, booking the dentist. General agreement that it should be equal is compatible with a very unequal life, and the invisible half, the remembering and arranging, is the part that goes unnoticed for years.
If one of our careers had to give way, whose would it be, and for how long?
Why ask it
This becomes real with a baby, a relocation or an ill parent, usually with little notice. Notice whether they assume yours will flex, and whether they have thought about what the person who steps back loses in earnings, pension and confidence.
Where are we living in ten years, and how do we decide if a job asks us to move?
Why ask it
Where to live is one of the few decisions that cannot be split down the middle. Someone who intends to return to their home country or town eventually needs to say so now, because that expectation rarely fades and it will decide much of the rest.
How much time alone do you need, and how much time together do you want?
Why ask it
Mismatches here get read as rejection when they are usually just wiring. Ask for it in hours and evenings rather than in feelings. It also covers the harder version: whether trips with friends, separate hobbies and separate holidays are welcome or resented.
What did arguing look like in the house you grew up in?
Why ask it
People marry the argument style they were raised with unless they have deliberately changed it. Shouting, silence, one parent conceding, or nothing ever said in front of the children: each produces a particular adult, and knowing which explains a lot about how they behave when things get tense.
What do you want me to do when you are angry with me?
Why ask it
Some people need to talk it out immediately, some need an hour alone and then a conversation, and each finds the other's instinct maddening. Asking in a calm moment gets a usable answer; asking mid-argument does not.
Think of our worst argument: what did I do that made it worse?
Why ask it
Asking for criticism of yourself is the most useful thing on this list, because you already know their side of the complaint. Take the answer without defending, and see whether they can also name their own part. A partner who can name only yours is showing you the pattern.
How often do you want sex, and what should we do when we want different amounts?
Why ask it
Desire changes with children, illness, medication, stress and age, so the plan matters more than the current frequency. What you want to hear is a willingness to keep talking about it rather than a promise. Silence on the subject before marriage tends to persist afterwards.
What would count as cheating, to you?
Why ask it
Definitions vary more than people assume: messaging, an old flame kept in contact, pornography, a confiding friendship, paid sites. Setting it out plainly prevents the argument that begins with one of you saying nothing actually happened, and it reveals past hurts on either side.
How much say do your parents get in our decisions?
Why ask it
Money from parents, opinions about the wedding, expectations about holidays and grandchildren: this is where a large share of early marital conflict lives. The answer you want is that the two of you decide and then inform them, and you will be able to hear whether they mean it.
What is the plan if one of our parents needs care, or needs to live with us?
Why ask it
Almost every couple faces this and almost none discuss it beforehand. It involves money, space, distance and who does the daily work, and cultural expectations may make it non-negotiable for one of you. Better to know that now than to negotiate it in a hospital corridor.
What part should faith play in our home, and in raising children?
Why ask it
Practice matters more than belief here: services, holidays, food, schooling, ceremonies for a child. Couples often agree easily in the abstract and then collide over a specific rite. Ask what their family will expect too, since that pressure will arrive whether or not you invited it.
What would you need from me if you were seriously ill, or lost your job?
Why ask it
Marriage is largely a promise about the bad years, so it is worth knowing what they would actually want: practical help, company, space, or to be left to manage it. Listen also for whether they can accept help at all, because someone who cannot will disappear into a crisis alone.
What would make you consider ending a marriage?
Why ask it
A hard question to finish on, and the one that shows what each of you treats as unforgivable. It also tells you whether they think of marriage as permanent regardless, or as conditional on certain things holding. Neither answer is wrong, but you should both know which you are agreeing to.
Having these conversations before the wedding
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to run them
A few at a time, not an evening of twenty
Two or three questions per conversation, with time in between, gets honest answers. A marathon session turns into fatigue and agreement for the sake of finishing, which is the opposite of what you are trying to find out.
Answer in specifics or you have not answered
Numbers, dates, names and amounts. We will be fine with money is not an answer; a joint account for bills, separate accounts for spending, and a five hundred threshold for asking, is. Vagueness is where couples hide disagreements from themselves.
Do not save them all for the engagement
Children, money and where you will live are worth raising early enough that a serious mismatch does not arrive with a deposit already paid on a venue. The pressure to make it work rises sharply once other people are involved.
Write down what you agree
Not a contract, just a note: how money will work, what you decided about parents, the spending threshold. Memories of these conversations diverge within a year, and a written line settles it without either of you having to be the one who remembers correctly.
Notice how they handle the question, not just the answer
Willingness to sit with an awkward subject, ask you what you think, and say I do not know yet is the actual thing being tested. Someone who deflects every difficult question now will deflect the same questions once you are married.
The financial conversation, in order
- 1Both say what you earn, after tax, including anything variable such as bonuses or freelance work.
- 2Both say what you owe: cards, loans, student debt, tax, money borrowed from family, anything being paid in instalments.
- 3Both say what you have: savings, pension, property, and anything you own with someone else.
- 4Agree how bills are shared, and whether that is by halves or in proportion to income.
- 5Agree the spending threshold above which you check with each other, and hold to it.
- 6Decide what happens to money that was yours before the marriage, including anything inherited or expected.
- 7Agree who does the administration, and set a short monthly time to look at the accounts together so that one person is not the only one who knows.
Common mistakes
Treating any disagreement as a verdict
Most couples differ on several of these, and difference is workable when it is known and discussed. The dangerous items are the small set with no middle ground: whether to have children, where in the world to live, and whether faith will govern the home.
Accepting a hypothetical as a commitment
I would be happy to move, or I would take the time off, is a description of an intention, not a plan. Ask what would need to be arranged for it to actually happen, and whether they have ever done anything similar.
Asking in order to be reassured
If you already know the answer you want and steer toward it, you will get it and learn nothing. Ask, then be quiet long enough for the real answer, including the part that arrives after the polite one.
Leaving the awkward one out
Whatever subject you are quietly avoiding, debt, an ex, a health problem, what their mother expects, is the one most likely to cause trouble later. Skipping it does not remove it from the marriage.
Doing it all alone
If a subject keeps ending in the same argument, that is a reason to sit down with a couples counsellor or a premarital course rather than a sign that something is wrong with the pair of you. A neutral third person makes some conversations possible that are not possible at the kitchen table.