Marrying the love of your life feels like a fairy tale come true. So, what could go wrong, right? The simple answer is a lot because relationships are complicated and successful relationships require commitment and work.
Whether you’re planning a big wedding or a small one, there are important discussions to have before saying “I do”. Here are five discussions to have with your partner before you tie the knot.
Finances:
- Discuss how you’ll manage finances and remember that there’s no right or wrong answer here and different arrangements work for different couples. Will you each financially contribute to household expenses by 50%? Will one partner/can one partner be the primary breadwinner while the other focuses on child-rearing? Will you contribute based on a percentage of household earnings if one partner makes more than the other?
- Discuss how you’ll go about making financial decisions. Will you make every small and big financial decision together? Will you manage your own investments independently of one another or take part in every decision together?
- Have a plan for financial transparency. Make sure you are sharing all relevant financial information with your partner, this includes debts, investments, and income changes. Create a plan for regular financial check-ins.
Children:
- Discuss whether or not you want children, and how many when you wish to start having children.
- Discuss how you wish the children to be raised, this includes any religious involvement, what types of education you’d like for them to attend, and how involved will grandparents/extended family members be in raising the children.
- Have a conversation about overall parenting styles and how you’d go about sharing parenting responsibilities.
Household Responsibilities:
- Discuss household responsibilities. Sharing a home with a partner means having a different person in all your personal spaces. We are all different and do things differently.
- Does one partner enjoy folding laundry? Does the other not mind doing the dishes? What about when something breaks down? Will one of you take the lead on household chores? Discuss how you’d go about sharing regular and extraordinary household responsibilities.
Communication and managing conflict:
- Conflict is a normal part of relationships. Healthy relationships are not conflict free. Instead, focus on having healthy respectful disagreements and the repair process.
- Discuss how you’d go about resolving conflict. Does one partner need space after a fight and the other need reassurance? How do you validate one another while still managing disagreements?
- Discuss your communication styles and work to improve where needed.
Closeness and emotional intimacy:
- This is the good stuff. Love. That’s what it’s all about right? How do you maintain your emotional connection?
- Discuss how you would meet one another’s needs through the changing times.
- Make a plan for when things get tough. Would you both be willing to seek support from a couples’ therapist to work through issues that life may bring?
Lastly, consider pre-marital counseling. Most people enter a marriage with the best of intentions, to share a life with a partner and grow old together. But the high divorce and separation rates indicate that couples may benefit from better awareness and understanding of what it takes to make a marriage work for the long term. Many religious leaders and institutions provide pre-marital counseling as a service. But many psychotherapists are also able to help you navigate these discussions, get on the same page and create better awareness and understanding.
