Questions to Ask a Potential Spouse
Twenty questions for two people deciding whether to marry each other: where you live, how money is held, children and whose work gives way, care of ageing parents, names, wills and illness, and what each of you would find hard to forgive. Written to be worked through over months.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What does being married give us that we do not already have?
Why ask it
Answers usually fall into three groups: legal and financial standing, a public commitment, or family and religious expectation. Knowing which one is driving this tells you what the marriage is for, and whether you agree.
What do you want an ordinary week to look like: how many evenings out, how much time apart?
Why ask it
Compatibility lives here more than in shared values. One partner picturing four nights at home and the other picturing four nights out will keep having the same argument in different costumes.
Where do we live, and whose family are we near?
Why ask it
Proximity to parents is one of the most consequential decisions a couple makes, and it usually gets settled by drift rather than choice. Ask how firm each answer is, and what would have to happen to change it.
How do we handle money: pooled, separate, or a mix, and who keeps track of it?
Why ask it
The second half of the question is the one that gets skipped. Whichever structure you pick, someone ends up doing the admin, and the person doing it usually holds more power over decisions than either of you intended.
What do you earn, what do you owe, and what do you own?
Why ask it
Three separate numbers, and most couples have only discussed the first. Reluctance about the second is worth attention: undisclosed debt is a common shock in a first year of marriage, and it becomes a shared problem.
Do you want children, how many, and roughly when?
Why ask it
Agreement on wanting children hides disagreement on timing, which matters when age or fertility is a factor. Ask what they would want to try if it did not happen easily, including treatment, adoption, or stopping.
If we have a child, whose work gives way?
Why ask it
This decision gets made under sleep deprivation unless it is made in advance. Push past whoever earns less to the practical questions of leave, part-time work, and how the person who steps back returns.
Who does what around the house, in specific terms?
Why ask it
Ask them to allocate real tasks: cooking, laundry, bins, bathrooms, bills, birthdays, the car, the calendar. Fair share stated as a principle almost never survives contact with a Tuesday evening.
How much would we help our families financially, and who decides?
Why ask it
A sibling's rent, a parent's medical bill, a cousin's tuition. Agreeing a rough limit and a rule about deciding together prevents the more generous partner from feeling policed and the other from feeling overruled.
What do we do as our parents get older and need us?
Why ask it
Most couples face this within twenty years and almost none discuss it while engaged. Ask specifically about a parent moving in, since that is the scenario that most often arrives without warning.
How do you feel about a prenuptial agreement, and how would you feel if I raised one?
Why ask it
The reaction is more informative than the position. It matters most where there is a business, an inheritance, children from a previous relationship, or a large gap in assets, and any actual agreement needs separate legal advice for each of you.
What do you want to do about names?
Why ask it
Small in itself, but it often carries family expectation, professional identity and future children's surnames with it. Better decided in a calm conversation than in front of relatives who have opinions.
What would you want from me if you became seriously ill?
Why ask it
Ask calmly and expect an unfinished answer. What you are after is practical: how much they would want told to family, whether they would want to be at home, and how much care they would accept from you rather than from professionals.
Have you thought about a will, and who you would want making decisions for you?
Why ask it
Marriage changes inheritance and next-of-kin status in ways that vary by jurisdiction, so the assumption that everything passes to a spouse is not reliable. A short conversation now, followed by proper advice, saves the survivor a great deal.
How much do you hope for physically, and how should we talk about it when we want different things?
Why ask it
Frequency differences are normal and long stretches of mismatch are near certain, so the useful part is the second half. A couple with no way to raise the subject tends to substitute distance for the conversation.
How do you want us to handle close friendships with people either of us has been attracted to?
Why ask it
Rules imposed later feel like jealousy; agreements made in advance feel like consideration. Ask what they would want told to them, and what they would consider theirs to keep private.
What do you need from me on your worst day?
Why ask it
People differ sharply between wanting presence and wanting solitude, and each instinctively offers what they themselves want. Getting this wrong for years is a common and entirely avoidable source of loneliness.
What is the angriest you have been with me, and did I ever hear about it?
Why ask it
If the answer is no, you have learned something about how conflict will go: things get absorbed rather than raised. The specific incident also tells you what they consider unforgivable in you.
What habit of mine do you quietly hope changes once we are married?
Why ask it
Everyone has an answer to this and almost nobody volunteers it. Hearing it now lets you say plainly what you will and will not change, rather than leaving them waiting for a change that is not coming.
What would make you consider ending a marriage?
Why ask it
An uncomfortable question that clarifies where the true limits are: infidelity, addiction, contempt, dishonesty about money. Knowing each other's lines is not pessimism, it is the clearest statement of what you each promise to keep away from.
Working through these before you marry
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to use the list
Spread them over months
Take two or three at a time, in ordinary settings, with no plan to reach a conclusion in one sitting. Working through a list of twenty in an evening turns a conversation into a negotiation, and both of you will present your best case rather than your real one.
Answer as well as ask
Give your own answer to the money, children and household questions before you ask for theirs. Otherwise the conversation becomes an assessment, and assessments produce careful answers.
Write down what you agreed
Two or three lines in a shared note about accounts, timing for children, and where you plan to live. A year later you will each remember the version that suited you, and the note is easier than the argument.
Consider premarital counselling for the sticky ones
If money, in-laws or children keep ending badly, a few sessions with a counsellor gives you a structure and a referee. It is a good deal cheaper than the alternative, and going before there is a crisis is the point.
Paperwork these conversations lead to
Put the numbers on the table once
Pay, debts, savings, credit history and any support obligations, seen rather than described. One awkward evening with statements open prevents the slow discovery of a situation neither of you planned for.
Check what marriage changes where you live
Tax treatment, inheritance, next-of-kin rights, liability for each other's debts and the effect on any benefits all vary by jurisdiction. Find out what applies to you rather than assuming, particularly if one of you has children or a business.
Get names and wishes in writing for the medical case
Whatever the local instrument is called, naming the person who speaks for you if you cannot, and writing down what you would want, takes an afternoon. It matters most in exactly the situation where nobody can ask you.
Common mistakes
Treating agreement as the goal
Two people can want different numbers of children and still marry well if both know it and have decided how to handle it. What predicts trouble is a quick yes offered to close the subject.
Asking during a bad week
These questions raised in the middle of a fight read as a case being built. Raise them when things are calm, and give the harder ones their own occasion rather than tacking them onto an argument.
Assuming the wedding settles it
Money, work and care of parents get renegotiated after a move, a baby, a redundancy or a diagnosis. Plan on returning to the same four or five questions every couple of years.
Skipping the ones that feel unromantic
Debt, wills, prenuptial agreements and what would end the marriage are the ones people leave out, and they are the ones with the largest consequences. Take them one at a time, on separate days.