Christian Dating Questions to Ask Before Marriage
Twenty questions for a dating couple deciding whether to marry, focused on faith rather than logistics: how each of you came to believe, what a normal week of practice looks like, church and giving, boundaries now, raising children, and what happens if one of you doubts.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How did you come to faith, and was there a point where it became yours rather than your family's?
Why ask it
The second half separates a conviction from an inheritance. Someone who has never had to choose it for themselves may hold it just as firmly, but they will not have language for the moments when it is tested, and marriage supplies those.
What does an ordinary week look like for you spiritually, when nobody is watching?
Why ask it
Ask about the last seven days rather than about ideals. The gap between what a person values and what they actually do is not disqualifying, but you will be living inside that gap, so it is better named now than discovered in year two.
Which church do you belong to, and what keeps you there?
Why ask it
The reason matters more than the name. Staying for the teaching, for friendships, for the music or because leaving would upset a parent produces very different behavior when the church goes through a hard patch.
Is there anything you believe that your church teaches differently?
Why ask it
Most people have one or two, and hearing them tells you how they handle disagreement with authority. Someone who claims perfect alignment either has not looked closely or is not ready to say.
When did you last feel far from God, and what did you do about it?
Why ask it
Everyone has dry stretches; what varies is whether they went to someone, kept going to church anyway, or quietly withdrew. Whichever they did then is a fair prediction of what they will do during a hard year of marriage.
Who holds you accountable, and what have you actually let them ask you about?
Why ask it
Naming a mentor is easy. The test is whether there is a subject they have given someone permission to raise, because accountability with no uncomfortable topic in it is a friendship with a label on it.
What would praying together look like for us, and how often?
Why ask it
Couples usually assume they agree here and find out they pictured different things: aloud or silent, nightly or when something is wrong, formal or unstructured. It is easier to negotiate now than to feel disappointed about later without knowing why.
Would you want us to read scripture together, and who would lead that?
Why ask it
The second half often exposes an unspoken expectation about who takes spiritual initiative. If neither of you wants to lead it, saying so honestly is better than a plan you both quietly abandon in the first month.
What did marriage look like in your parents' house, and what would you keep?
Why ask it
Most people reproduce or react against what they saw, and the pattern usually operates before either of you notices. Asking what they would keep is gentler than asking what they would avoid, and it tends to produce the same information.
If we married, whose church would we go to?
Why ask it
A practical question that couples defer for years. It carries a real cost for whoever moves, since they leave friendships, a serving role and often family, and pretending the cost is nothing builds resentment quietly.
How do you understand headship and submission, and what would that look like on an ordinary Tuesday?
Why ask it
Abstract agreement here hides enormous variation. Push for specifics: who decides where you live, who manages money, what happens when you disagree and neither will move. The Tuesday version is the one you will live with.
How much do you give away, and how did you arrive at that figure?
Why ask it
Giving is where belief and budget meet, so this reveals both. The reasoning matters more than the percentage, and a couple who have never compared numbers will meet this question again in their first joint budget.
What are we doing about physical boundaries while we date, and does anyone else know?
Why ask it
The last clause is the one that changes behavior. Boundaries agreed only between two people who want to cross them tend to move, and couples who have told a third person are describing something they intend to keep.
If we read a passage differently, how would we settle it?
Why ask it
Listen for a process rather than a verdict: study together, ask a pastor, live with the disagreement. Someone who cannot imagine unresolved disagreement is telling you how future arguments will end.
Would you be willing to see a counselor, and would it matter whether they were a Christian?
Why ask it
Worth asking before there is a crisis. An answer that rules out professional help entirely, or accepts it only from inside the church, narrows your options at exactly the point you will need them widest.
How would we raise children in the faith, including when they push back?
Why ask it
Baptism, schooling and Sunday attendance are the easy part. The difficult question is what happens at fifteen when a child refuses to go, and the answer shows whether faith is being handed on or enforced.
Is there anyone in your life who thinks we should not marry, and what do they say?
Why ask it
There usually is someone, and their objection is worth hearing even if it is wrong. A partner who says nobody has any reservations may not have asked, or may not have told you what they were told.
What would you do if my faith changed?
Why ask it
Faith shifts across a long marriage, in both directions. The answer tells you whether you would be a person to stay with or a problem to be fixed, and it is much harder to ask honestly once it has happened.
What have you been praying about regarding us that you have not said out loud?
Why ask it
Couples who pray separately about a relationship often carry reservations they have raised with God and not with each other. This gives that hesitation somewhere to go while there is still time to talk about it.
If you concluded you should not marry me, could you tell me?
Why ask it
The most important question here, and best asked before either of you is committed publicly. Someone who cannot picture saying it, out of kindness or out of fear, may go through with a wedding for the wrong reason.
Discernment while you are still dating
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to work through these
Spread them out
Two or three in an evening, with room for the conversation to wander. Working through twenty in a single sitting turns it into an examination, and people give tidier answers under examination than they do over a long walk.
Answer first
Give your own answer before asking for theirs on anything sensitive. It costs you the advantage of hearing them cold, and it buys a much more honest reply.
Write down what you hear
Not to build a case, but because six months later you will remember the impression and not the answer. The specifics are what matter when you are trying to work out whether something has changed.
Signs worth slowing down for
- Certainty used to close a conversation. If God told me is offered as the end of a discussion rather than the start of one, you have no way to disagree without appearing to argue with God.
- Pressure to decide quickly, particularly when it is framed as faith. Haste is not obedience, and no honest reason to marry gets weaker for waiting three months.
- A different account of your relationship given to their church than the one given to you.
- Agreement that arrives too easily on every question here. People who have thought about marriage have opinions and some of them will not be yours.
- Any suggestion that your doubts are a spiritual failing rather than information.
Bringing in someone else
Couples are poor judges of their own situation, which is why premarital counseling with a pastor or a trained counselor is worth doing before an engagement rather than as preparation for a date already set. Ask for separate sessions as well as joint ones; there are things each of you will say alone that neither will say together. If you are told there is nothing to discuss, or that prayer alone is sufficient, that is a reason to find someone else, not a reason to skip it.
If your practice is not at the same level
Differences in intensity are more common than differences in belief, and they cause more friction. The mistake is assuming marriage will close the gap, in either direction. Talk about what each of you would find lonely: attending alone, praying alone, raising children with one parent leading it. Then decide whether you can live with that arrangement as it is now, since that is the version you are actually choosing.