Getting married is obviously a wonderful thing if you’re in love and having the time of your lives together. But there are certain conversations every couple should have before swearing ’til death do us part.
The future
What are your goals and visions? How might you support one another in going after them? It’s ok to have very different paths ahead, and it’s important to identify commonalities and areas you can work at as a team.
Money
Explore together what your expectations are of money, your uses for it, how you like to save and spend. No answers are wrong, but it’s important to avoid surprises (and also conflict) down the road.
Intimacy
Beyond sex, intimacy is the real foundation of a successful relationship. Explore what you’d like together, and how you would like to build on what you have. This is the vulnerable stuff, and it may take some bravery to open up. If you’re both willing to deepen your connection, your relationship will only continue to bloom.
End of life
This should be an ongoing discussion, but it’s really never too early to learn about your partner’s preferences for care if they were very ill. This is something you can speak about with your entire family, actually, and it provides more peace of mind as the sickness and health part of the vows plays out.
You will be a family unit of your own
Getting married means you’re blending two families, along with their traditions, expectations and dynamics, so it’s important to talk about this ahead of time. Define how your new family will celebrate occasions and how you will choose to spend that time. Recognise that you are now a team and a family unit of your own.
Children
Talk about your expectations around when, and if, you’ll start a family, how you would approach raising your kids, and what sort of home you would like to build around them. Talk about expectations around raising them, who will be the one taking the career hit? will one of you support the other whilst they stay home and raise the children?
Sex
The only time that sex really becomes an issue in a relationship is when there are differing expectations about how much of it should be had. The important thing is to talk about how much of it is normal in your relationship and if you’re on the same page, because sex waxes and wanes in a long-term relationship.
Fighting
It’ll serve you well to talk about how you each approach conflict. This means designing how you’ll approach conflict and deciding on some strategies to employ while you’re still in agreement that work for you. For instance, it doesn’t work for all couples to resolve their conflicts in order to not go to bed angry; sometimes you won’t be able to address it all before bed, and will have to agree to continue your discussions in the morning.
Fidelity
This is a really important topic, even if a couple agrees that they’ll be monogamous, there may be varying ideas about what that actually looks like. Is one partner expecting that their spouse will never again speak to a member of the opposite sex, or is it ok to kiss old friends when meeting them after a long time? Make sure that you talk about this beforehand.
