Questions to Ask Your Boyfriend Before Marriage
Twenty questions to work through before you get engaged or married, covering children and timing, actual figures for debt and income, housework, in-laws, illness, sex, and what either of you would consider grounds for leaving. Practical rather than romantic, and better asked over several conversations than one.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What are you expecting marriage to change?
Why ask it
A good opener because the honest answer is often "nothing," and that can be either reassuring or the beginning of a real conversation. If he expects it to fix something that is currently difficult, that expectation needs examining now.
What does a good marriage look like to you? Whose do you have in mind?
Why ask it
Almost everyone is working from a specific model, usually their parents' or the opposite of it. Getting the reference point named tells you what he is aiming at and what he is quietly afraid of repeating.
Do you want children? How many, and starting roughly when?
Why ask it
All three parts matter, and "eventually" answers none of them. This is the mismatch that causes the most damage when left vague, because both people can leave the conversation believing they agreed.
If we could not have children, what would you want to do?
Why ask it
Worth asking before it is a live question rather than during it. Whether he has thought about treatment, adoption, or a life without children tells you how he handles a plan not working, and that is information you will use again.
How were you disciplined as a child? Would you do the same?
Why ask it
Parenting disagreements are usually inherited rather than reasoned, and they surface at the worst moment. This question gets the inheritance out in the open years before anyone is standing in a kitchen at bedtime.
How much debt do you have? Do you know the number?
Why ask it
Ask for the figure, not the category. Not knowing is itself the answer, and it is more common than people expect. Marriage ties your financial life to his, so this is a question of fact rather than of trust.
What do you earn, and what do you realistically expect to earn in five years?
Why ask it
Two figures, both of which shape every plan the two of you make about housing and children. The second one also shows whether his career has a direction or is currently just a job with a salary attached.
Do you want to combine our money, keep it separate, or something in between?
Why ask it
There is no correct arrangement, only an agreed one. What you are listening for is whether he has a view at all, and whether his view assumes an income difference that either of you might resent later.
What is the largest amount you would spend without mentioning it to me?
Why ask it
Ask for a number and give yours. Couples rarely set this figure explicitly, then discover their assumptions were hundreds of pounds apart, usually while one of them is looking at a bank statement.
Who is going to do the housework? Be specific.
Why ask it
General fairness is easy to agree to and means nothing. Go through the actual list: cooking, bins, laundry, bathrooms, admin, remembering birthdays. Resentment about domestic work is built out of tasks nobody ever named.
If one of us had to stop working for a while, who would it be and why?
Why ask it
This forces the assumption into the open, whether the reason given is money, career stage, or something less examined. Ask what he thinks that person would be entitled to expect while not earning.
How much time do you expect to spend with your family once we are married?
Why ask it
In-law difficulty is nearly always a scheduling problem before it is an emotional one. Get the specifics, which weekends, which holidays, how much notice, while it is still hypothetical and nobody is offended.
What would we do if one of your parents needed to live with us?
Why ask it
A real possibility for most couples and one almost none discuss in advance. His answer shows both what he believes he owes his family and whether he assumes your agreement without having asked for it.
What do you do when you are losing an argument?
Why ask it
More useful than asking how he handles conflict in general, because it asks about the moment he is least at his best. Withdrawing, escalating, conceding to end it: whichever it is, you will see it for decades.
If I got seriously ill, what do you think you would be like?
Why ask it
A question about self-knowledge rather than a promise. The answer worth having is honest about limits, since anyone who says the right thing quickly may not have imagined the practical shape of it at all.
What would count as cheating, to you?
Why ask it
The definitions people hold are more varied than they assume, and the edges are where the trouble is: messaging, old friendships, what happens on a work trip. Agreeing the boundary now is far easier than arguing about it afterward.
How long could you go without sex before it became something you would raise with me?
Why ask it
Long marriages contain lean periods, caused by illness, newborns, or stress. What matters is whether he would say something or go quiet and resentful, and this question asks about that habit rather than about frequency.
Have you ever been in therapy? Would you go if we needed it?
Why ask it
His answer tells you what he will do when something between you is beyond the two of you to sort out. Reluctance is worth understanding rather than arguing with, and it is much better known in advance.
Under what circumstances would you consider divorce?
Why ask it
Asking is not pessimism; it is finding out where his limits are while you can both speak calmly. Someone who says no circumstance at all is telling you something about how he handles the unthinkable, and it is not necessarily reassuring.
Is there anything you have not told me that I should know before we do this?
Why ask it
Leave a silence after it. Most of the time the answer is nothing, and the asking itself is what matters. When something does come, it is usually about money, family, or health, and it is always better heard now.
How to work through these before you get engaged
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Structuring the conversations
Split it into three sittings
One on children and family, one on money, one on conflict, sex and the harder limits. Doing all twenty in a single evening guarantees that the last third gets rushed, and the last third is where the questions people avoid are kept.
Bring the documents to the money one
Not a metaphor. Actual balances, actual debts, actual payslips, both of yours. The money conversation held from memory produces two people describing their finances approximately, which is how couples get married with a materially wrong picture of each other.
Ask, then answer, then write down what you agreed
Answer each question yourself before hearing his, so the asymmetry never develops. Then keep a short note of the numbers and the timings. Couples routinely remember the same discussion with different figures in it, and the note settles that without an argument.
Consider doing some of it with a third person
Many couples work through this material with a counsellor or with whoever is marrying them, and it is worth asking about. A neutral person keeps the difficult questions from being dropped, and being asked something by someone else is easier than being asked by your partner.
The money conversation, in order
- Current balances and current debts, on both sides, with the figures visible
- Income now, and what each of you expects it to be in five years
- Whether accounts will be joint, separate, or a mix, and who pays what from where
- The threshold above which either of you would consult the other before spending
- Anything either of you is already committed to: a loan to family, maintenance, a guarantee, money lent that may never come back
- What you would each do with a windfall, and what you would do with a redundancy
- Whether either of you expects to inherit, and whether that expectation is being planned around
Answers that need a follow-up
Agreement that arrives too fast
Instant agreement on housework, in-laws, or money usually means the question was not really considered. Ask a concrete version: not whether chores will be shared but who cleans the bathroom, and how often. If the second answer contradicts the first, the first was politeness.
The number that does not exist
If he cannot say what he owes, what he earns, or when he wants children by, that is not evasion so much as something never worked out. It is fixable, but it has to be fixed before the plans that depend on it get made.
The subject that keeps sliding
Notice which question gets deflected twice. Humour, a change of topic, or a promise to talk about it later are all the same signal. Name it plainly and calmly: say which subject you keep not finishing, and ask to finish it.
Differences that are not negotiable
Some of what surfaces here has no middle position, particularly children, faith practised seriously, and where you live when a parent needs care. Compromise language does not apply to these, and treating them as though it does is how people spend years hoping the other one changes.
What goes wrong
- Asking these after the engagement, when every honest answer costs more to give
- Accepting a vague answer because the evening was going well
- Treating agreement in principle as a decision. Principles do not tell you who is at the bins on Tuesday
- Reading his hesitation on a hard question as doubt about you rather than as thinking
- Arguing about a difference in the same conversation it appears in. Name it, stop, return to it
- Only asking. If he answers twenty questions and you answer none, you have run an interview, and he will remember it that way
- Deciding a difference will resolve itself after the wedding. Nothing on this list gets easier once it is legally binding