Questions to Ask Before Marriage LDS
Twenty questions for a Latter-day Saint couple to work through before a sealing. They cover where each of you actually is with the church, callings and time, tithing when money is tight, children and schooling, the Word of Wisdom in social settings, doubt, in-laws, and how you handle conflict. Intended for several conversations, not one.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Where are you with the church right now, week to week?
Why ask it
Activity and belief are not the same thing, and engaged couples often assume both from attendance. A person who can describe the parts that feel like duty as well as the parts that feel like conviction is telling you something you can build on.
Do you hold a current temple recommend, and is there anything that would need resolving before a sealing?
Why ask it
Asked plainly, this avoids a very hard discovery close to the date. You are not asking for a confession. You are asking whether there is a timeline issue, and whether they would tell you if there were.
How does your mission, or not serving one, still affect you?
Why ask it
Both answers carry weight. Some people came home changed in ways they have never unpacked; others carry real defensiveness about not having gone. Either can shape how they talk about obedience, authority and their own worth.
What do you want a sealing to mean in how we actually treat each other?
Why ask it
Eternal language can be used to raise the standard of daily behaviour or to make leaving unthinkable regardless of how things are going. Listen for which. The answer usually appears in whether they describe effort or permanence.
What did your parents' marriage look like, and what do you want to do differently?
Why ask it
This is where most inherited expectations about roles, money and who apologises come from. The parts they can criticise are usually safe. The parts described as normal are the ones you will meet in the second year.
What would our Sundays and weekday church commitments look like?
Why ask it
Get specific about hours: meetings, ministering, temple attendance, youth activities. Couples who never total it up are surprised by how little of the week is left, and then argue about the wrong thing.
How do you feel about a demanding calling, and what would you decline?
Why ask it
Someone who says they would never say no is describing years where the family absorbs whatever is asked. Someone who has actually declined something, and can explain how they did it, has a boundary you can plan around.
How do we handle tithing and fast offerings in a month where money is short?
Why ask it
This is the question that turns principle into arithmetic. Look for whether they treat it as the first commitment or as something to be balanced, and whether they could hear a different answer from you without treating it as a failure of faith.
What is your thinking on when to have children, and how many?
Why ask it
Expectations here can come as much from family and ward culture as from personal conviction, and the two are worth separating. Also ask what they would want to do if it turned out to be difficult, because that answer is harder and more revealing.
Would either of us pause school or work for children, and which of us?
Why ask it
This is where the general agreement about family life turns into one person's degree or career. Get to the specific choice, and to what happens financially if the other person's income has to carry the household.
How do you handle the Word of Wisdom around people who do not keep it?
Why ask it
Work dinners, coffee meetings and relatives with wine are ordinary life. What you are learning is whether they can be somewhere without being uncomfortable or making others uncomfortable, which matters more than the rule itself.
What place do you want temple covenants and garments to have in our habits and our privacy?
Why ask it
Couples rarely discuss this and often assume the other's practice matches theirs. Differences about exercise clothing, hot weather, intimacy and what gets discussed outside the marriage are much easier to handle when named first.
How do you handle questions about church history or doctrine that do not have tidy answers?
Why ask it
Some people study, some set it aside, some cannot tolerate the question being raised. The third answer is the one to notice, because it means you will have to manage your own thinking alone for the rest of the marriage.
If one of us stopped attending or stopped believing, what would you do?
Why ask it
Ask before it is real. Answers range from staying and adjusting to treating it as a threat to the marriage. This one question predicts more about the next twenty years than anything else on this list.
Who in your family is not a member or not active, and how do you treat them?
Why ask it
How they speak about a sibling who left tells you how they would speak about you. Look for whether that relative is still close, still invited, still spoken about warmly, or handled as a problem.
How much say do your parents expect in our decisions?
Why ask it
Money, housing, wedding plans and the timing of children are the usual pressure points. Ask who would deliver the news if you decided against a parent's wish, because whoever it is will be doing it repeatedly.
What do you do when we are in conflict: go quiet, push, or bring someone in?
Why ask it
Ask for an example from a past disagreement, not a self-description. Also ask who hears about it, since a bishop or a parent learning about your conflicts before you have finished having them changes the marriage.
Would you see a professional counsellor with me, or only a bishop?
Why ask it
Bishops are volunteers with other jobs, and most would say the same. Someone who rules out clinical help, or who would only go if a leader told them to, has narrowed your options in advance of needing them.
Is there anything in your history you would want me to know before we are sealed?
Why ask it
Open and voluntary is the point. Debt, past relationships, a repentance process, a mental health history: you are learning what they consider yours to know, and whether they would rather you heard it from them or from someone else.
When one of us hurts the other badly, what does repair need to look like?
Why ask it
Some people mean forgiveness is immediate and the subject closed; others need changed behaviour over months. A mismatch leaves one partner feeling unforgiven and the other feeling permanently on trial, and it is worth finding now.
Working through these before a sealing
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to run the conversations
Three or four questions at a time
These are heavy topics and the useful thinking happens afterwards. Spacing them over a few weeks also shows you how each of you behaves when a conversation is left unresolved overnight, which is worth knowing.
Answer before you ask
Going first on tithing, children or callings gives up the advantage of hearing them first, and that is the point. It keeps the evening from becoming a worthiness interview one of you is conducting.
Separate church culture from personal conviction
Much of what a couple assumes is required comes from a ward, a family, or a region rather than from doctrine. When an expectation surfaces, ask where it came from. Some of them turn out to be negotiable.
Where couples find real differences
- The total hours church commitments take, and who is expected to absorb them at home.
- Money: tithing in a hard month, debt brought into the marriage, and whether one income is the plan.
- Timing and number of children, especially where family expectations differ from yours.
- How each of you responds to unresolved historical or doctrinal questions.
- How much access parents and leaders have to the inside of the marriage.
Getting help before and after
Ask what any preparation course actually covers
Marriage preparation classes vary widely in whether they address conflict, money and expectations or stay with doctrine. If yours does not cover the practical ground, cover it yourselves and bring the unresolved parts to someone qualified.
Agree on a counsellor now, not during a crisis
Deciding in advance who you would both accept, and whether cost is a barrier, removes one argument from a moment when you will not have the patience for it.
Talk to a couple ten years ahead of you
Ask a married couple you both respect what surprised them in the first two years. Specific answers about money, callings and in-laws are more use than general encouragement.
Reasons to slow the timeline
- A date set before the two of you have discussed money, children and what activity means to each of you.
- Either of you assuming the other will become more observant, or less, after the wedding.
- Family or ward pressure that makes the timeline feel fixed and the questions feel disloyal.
- A disagreement being deferred on the grounds that the sealing will resolve it.
- Any topic that cannot be raised without one of you treating the question itself as an accusation.