1. Do you want to have children?
This is a very common “Deal Breaker”. If you can’t agree on if, when and how many children you want
you’re in for a rocky ride after you get married. Don’t delude yourself into thinking this is something that can
be resolved after you’re married. Also don’t make the mistake of thinking you can circumvent you’re future
spouse’s desire not to have children after you’re married by sabotaging the birth control methods you plan to
employ during your marriage. This would be a terrible trust eroding ploy that would foster resentment and discord in you marriage.
2. What
about sex?
How often do each of you think you need to engage in sexual activity?
If your need
for sex is less than that of your future spouse, will you be willing to meet your future spouse's needs without complaining?
What are your
sexual fantasies and will you future spouse be accommodating to those fantasies?
What kind of sexual activity
is agreeable to you? Different positions? Different locations? Oral sex? In the dark or in the light? Is porno O.K.? What
about sex toys?
Do you feel all sexual activity must culminate in intercourse and an orgasm or is cuddling
O.K. too?
What kind of birth control, if any, will you use?
3. How will we manage our finances?
First of all, can you talk with each other about money issues without
the discussion degrading into a shouting match. If not, than postpone your wedding until you can jump this hurdle.
If you can discuss
money matters maturely, than you can deal with the following money management topics:
Will we maintain separate
or a single checking account?
Will we agree to save some money every month for a “rainy day”? If so, how much?
Will we have
a written budget or will we just “Wing it” (not recommended)?
Will we agree on the use of
credit? How much will we go into debt and for what purpose, i.e. do we go into debt for “wants” or “needs”?
Who will be responsible
for paying our bills.
Will we have a retirement plan other than that provided by our employer’s? If so how
much of our monthly income will we set aside for retirement?
4. What about your in-laws?
Most
in-laws pose few problems for marriages; nonetheless it would be worthwhile to discuss the following:
Will any in-laws
be living with us now or in the future?
What are the boundaries when it comes to the frequency of visit by
or with the in-laws.
What role if any will the in-laws be allowed to play in your finances, child rearing and
other aspects of your marriage?
5. Who will do what around
the home?
Many marriages are entered into with assumptions about who will be doing what around the house. In day’s gone
by when it was the norm for the husband to be the primary “Bread Winner”, it was common to assume that the wife
would perform the so-called “domestic duties” while the Husband handled home maintenance issues. That may not
be true in the 21st Century, so among many things related to chores around the house, it
would do you both well to discuss the following:
Who will do the cooking?
Who will clean what and how
often?
Will the bed be made up every day and if so, by whom?
Who will do the laundry and how often?
Who will do the
grocery and household supplies shopping and how often?
Who will do the yard work?
Who will do home
maintenance and repairs?
6.
How will you spend your leisure time?
Better get this one resolved
before you tie the knot. If you don’t come to an understanding about the following issues, you could be setting yourself
up for discontent later:
Do you always have to be having fun? What is fun? Can you stay at home and read together
and have fun doing something as mundane as that, or do you have to be going places and doing so-called new and exciting
things?
Is one of you a “homebody” while the other is a “party person”? If so, will you be able
to compromise on how to spend your free time?
How often will either of you be spending your time with your friends
with and without your spouse?
How frequently will you be entertaining in your home, if at all?
How much is too
much when it comes to watching TV, playing computer games or participating in sports and other organized team activities
without your spouse?
7. Are you a match when it comes to orderliness and personal hygiene?
If you’re a neat freak
and the other thinks its perfectly O.K. to live in a house that looks like the inside of a dumpster, your headed for trouble,
unless is perfectly O.K. with you to spend the rest of you life picking up after your spouse.
Then there’s
the personal hygiene and grooming issues. Some think it’s O.K. to brush your teeth once a month and flossing is for
sissies, while others see these as twice and sometimes 3-times-a-day or more activities. Can you happily live with someone
who only baths every other Saturday whether they need it or not? Do you expect your spouse to change their underwear everyday
or only when government officials declare the garments to be a bio-hazard? Are beards O.K.? What about a mullet? Is it “un-natural”
for a woman to shave her legs and underarms? Is deodorant considered to be a luxury item? You’d better understand where
each of you stand on these things before you get hitched.
8. What about God & Worldviews?
How will you deal with your future spouse’s
avowed atheism if you’re a practicing orthodox Jew. What if one of you is an adherent to the teachings of Jesus Christ
and his bold claim to be God incarnate and the only way
to heaven and the other is a Buddhist? What if one of you is a Muslim and the other is a Hindu? What if one of you believes
man’s salvation will be found in aliens from outer space and the other believes that if man needs any salvation it will
come through religious participation in environmental activism. If you both have shared worldviews regarding man’s place
in the cosmos and God's existence and his relationship with man, then you have a good chance of avoiding conflict in your
marriage over this question. If you don’t share a common worldview on this issue than you need to deal with the answer
to the following questions before you get married:
If we have kids, which worldview will be imparted to them, when and
how?
What kind of conflicts do we have regarding this issue and can they be resolved within the context of a marriage?
If so how?
9. Drugs and Booze?
Does your future spouse enjoy a glass of wine with
dinner or does he/she feel the need to get “wasted” with alcohol or drugs at least once a day? Understanding whether
your future spouse has the potential for an addiction problem can help you avoid a life of misery induced by addiction related
legal and financial problems. Discuss these issues:
Is it O.K. to use alcohol? If so, how frequently and is using it to
the point of intoxication acceptable?
Is it O.K. to use illegal drugs? If so, how frequently and are you
willing to share in the risk of doing so?
Is it O.K. to smoke. If so, will the smoker be allowed to smoke inside
the home? If the smoker is the wife, will she smoke while pregnant?
10.
Is there a potential
for abuse in your relationship?
Has your future spouse ever hit or otherwise physically abused an ex-spouse or ex-girlfriend/boyfriend?
Does the person you plan on marrying try to control who you can see, where you can go and what you can do? Does he/she always
insist on giving their approval for any activity you engage in? Does he/she fall into fits of uncontrollable rage? Does he/she
have a criminal record? These are all danger signs for an abusive personality that you will ignore if you're really,
really stupid. Don’t think that you can “Fix” him/her after you’re married. These types of behavior
require professional counseling and sometimes even that is futile.
11.
Is fidelity
in your marriage important?
Most couples reject the idea of an “Open Marriage” and so-called “Swinging”,
but if this is what you expect in your marriage you’d better get it out in the open beforehand. Other questions to ask
are:
What constitutes flirting with the opposite sex, and is it acceptable?
Is having a good friend of
the opposite sex acceptable? Is spending time with that friend in the absence of your spouse acceptable?
What about emotional
infidelity? Is it O.K. to be more non-physically intimate with a member of the opposite sex than with your spouse?
12. What
are your plans for the future?
This is an important topic, since different expectations about the future can cause a great
deal of strife in a marriage. For example, if your spouse in content to remain in the lower middle class until death, but
you expect each of you to strive for progress up the social and economic ladder the lack of ambition in your spouse will be
a constant source of resentment. Other issues related to this topic are:
Will either of you be continuing your education?
If so will one spouse be supporting the other while the other is obtaining the education?
Will you be living
in an apartment in 10 years or will you be saving to buy a house?
Will you continue to live in the same city/state
or do you share a goal of moving somewhere else.
Do you plan on retiring someday? If so how comfortably and where? What
preparations will you be making to achieve your retirement goal?
Time spent
talking about these eleven questions and coming to an understanding of each others expectations regarding them will result
in your entering into marriage with a better chance of staying together until “Death do you part”. Conversely,
if you go through these questions and realize that maybe you just aren’t right for each other, it is far better to call
off a wedding than go through a divorce, especially one with children involved.
