You may think that you and your fiancé have talked about everything...but have you discussed the issues that will make your marriage work? Author Susan Piver reveals the questions you and your partner should answer before you say "I do."
Question 1: What percentage of our income are we prepared to spend to purchase and maintain our home on a monthly or annual basis?
Question 2: Who is responsible for keeping our house and yard cared for and organized? Are we different in our needs for cleanliness and organization?
Question 3: How much money do we earn together? Now? In one year? In five years? Ten? Who is responsible for which portion? Now? In one year? Five? Ten?
Question 4: What is our ultimate financial goal regarding annual income, and when do we anticipate achieving it? By what means and through what efforts?
Question 5: What are our categories of expense (rent, clothing, insurance, travel)? How much do we spend monthly, annually, in each category? How much do we want to be able to spend?
Question 6: How much time will each of us spend at work, and during what hours? Do we begin work early? Will we prefer to work into the evening?
Question 7: If one of us doesn't want to work, under what circumstances, if any, would that be okay?
Question 8: How ambitious are you? Are we comfortable with the other's level of ambition?
Question 9: Am I comfortable giving and receiving love sexually? In sex, does my partner feel my love for him or her?
Question 10: Are we satisfied with the frequency of our lovemaking? How do we cope when our desire levels are unmatched? A little? A lot? For a night? A week? A month? A year? More?
Question 11: Do we eat meals together? Which ones? Who is responsible for the food shopping? Who prepares the meals? Who cleans up afterward?
Question 12: Is each of us happy with the other's approach to health? Does one have habits or tendencies that concern the other (e.g., smoking, excessive dieting, poor diet)?
Question 13: What place does the other's family play in our family life? How often do we visit or socialize together? If we have out-of-town relatives, will we ask them to visit us for extended periods? How often?
Question 14: If we have children, what kind of relationship do we hope our parents will have with their grandchildren? How much time will they spend together?
Question 15: Will we have children? If so, when? How many? How important is having children to each of us?
Question 16: How will having a child change the way we live now? Will we want to take time off from work, or work a reduced schedule? For how long? Will we need to rethink who is responsible for housekeeping?
Question 17: Are we satisfied with the quality and quantity of friends we currently have? Would we like to be more involved socially? Are we overwhelmed socially and need to cut back on such commitments?
Question 18: What are my partner's needs for cultivating or maintaining friendships outside our relationship? Is it easy for me to support those needs, or do they bother me in any way?
Question 19: Do we share a religion? Do we belong to a church, synagogue, mosque or temple? More than one? If not, would our relationship benefit from such an affiliation?
Question 20: Does one of us have an individual spiritual practice? Is the practice and the time devoted to it acceptable to the other? Does each partner understand and respect the other's choices?
posted
Sounds more like a business plan, by the time you got through that lot you probably won't want to marry anyone. Whatever happened to growing together and working things out as each stage of life as it comes along. People change as they mature and your ideas on many of these things will change as well. Such a plan leaves not room for growth.
Posts: 3809 | From: Paradise | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I agree these questions are necessary but they also remind me why knowing each other and living together prior to marriage is so ideal to so many (if religion and/or society allows). Sometimes just discussing these key points doesn't allow you to see how your partner handles hot point issues that arise without warnings in a marriage. Also, some people quit marriages so easily anyway it seems...I definitely wish there was a class we were forced to take prior to marriage (all of us, not just one nation in particular). Kind of like that baby belly they make the teenage girls wear to see how it feels to be pregnant to warn them against it in the west, put prospective couples together for a couple of weeks and give them financial problems to deal with, in-law issues, baby issues, housework issues, sexual issues, communication issues, etc. Let them see how they would handle the situations. Not so easy when put to work, looks really nice on a marriage contract though, eah? Posts: 13440 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
I agree with Penny, life is not a contract, if things were meant to be that way then why would we have children, after all we seriously know diddly squat before we have them dont we? would we still go ahead and have them if they could answer...
1. What time do you expect to wake up in the mornings?
2. Do you insist on puking after every bottle?
3. On average how many hours do you intend to cry and between which hours?
4. Are you aware of the importance of chosing good friends?
5. Are you going to be strong willed or shy?
6. How offensive will your nappy/diaper be, scale of 1-10?
7. Will you love me, and show your love, and if so how?
8. Will you appreciate my hard work and not challenge me in any shape or form?
9. Are you going to be a tidy child and happily clean behind your ears?
10. Finally are you going to be nice and easy and challenge free?
Life just isn't like that, and wouldn't it be boring if it were, I'm not saying marry a complete stranger but over half that list talked about money, if control and financial stability is at the top of anyones list before marriage then they should stay on their own.
Do they take a lie detector test with this questionnaire too?
Posts: 644 | Registered: Jul 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Penny: Sounds more like a business plan, by the time you got through that lot you probably won't want to marry anyone. Whatever happened to growing together and working things out as each stage of life as it comes along. People change as they mature and your ideas on many of these things will change as well. Such a plan leaves not room for growth.
I agree.
Maybe this "list" was meant to help retarded people get married.
"Are we going to eat together?" ??
Ofcourse not, I eat at the dinner table and I chain my wife to the wall in the basement & throw her a can of dog food, doesn't everybody??
Posts: 2404 | Registered: May 2006
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posted
I was thinking the same, in the west you might live together prior to marriage and this list is kind of not needed, but perhaps in a situation where you don't know each other well, some of the things listed could be helpful. I would particularly like to add one:
* who will be responsible for killing crawling insects
Posts: 13440 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Many of the items in that list become very big issues for couples who don't discuss them at some point. I don't think sitting down and going over the list in one session is ideal, but over time, I think it would be quite beneficial to know many of the answers to the questions on the list. It could sure save couples some trouble later.
Easier to find out and try to do something about anything that doesn't work right for both partners before marrying than to find out after you're married.
Posts: 1283 | From: Cairo | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
How about these questions, cause I definitely should have asked them before I got married.........Do your underwear qualify as hazardous material?? DO you really expect me to wash them, you nasty bastard??? Are you gonna flake out 15 yrs down the road, quit your job, start drinking heavily, and file for bankruptcy leaving me 165,000 dollars in debt with 3 kids and 17.00 in the checkbook??? Do you have undiagnosed mental health issues??? Can I shoot you If you do???? Would he have answered yes??? NO...Would I still have married you if I had this crappy questionaire in front of me when we started dating?? HELL NO!!!!! Thank you for allowing me to vent, and Im 100% sure this questionaire is absolutely freakin useless! Posts: 1121 | From: Too crazy to look at a freakin map to find out.. | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
@rumi - ouch! actually the financial questions do seem pretty sound to me, given that 15 yrs later you found yourself in that mess. just think, if you had filled it out, you could've whacked him over the head with your laminated copy screaming "that's not what you wrote on the form!!" ;-)
Posts: 2182 | Registered: Oct 2002
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posted
You'd also have to double check you were asking the right guy the questions as you might wake up and find it was someone else you married....... simple mistake .....sorry couldn't resist it!
Posts: 3809 | From: Paradise | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Nevertheless figuring out the compatibility by going along I made one stated agreement: boys can but girls will under no circumstance be mutilated with fgm.
quote:Originally posted by Penny: Sounds more like a business plan, by the time you got through that lot you probably won't want to marry anyone. Whatever happened to growing together and working things out as each stage of life as it comes along. People change as they mature and your ideas on many of these things will change as well. Such a plan leaves not room for growth.
I agree.
Maybe this "list" was meant to help retarded people get married.
"Are we going to eat together?" ??
Ofcourse not, I eat at the dinner table and I chain my wife to the wall in the basement & throw her a can of dog food, doesn't everybody??
That's actually a big issue in the States. Many studies show that families that eat dinner together are closer to one another, communicate well, and the kids don't get in much trouble as teens.
Eating meals together might be taken for granted in other cultures, but not in America when kids have 2 different sports teams to practice for, as well as other extra curricular activities. Not to mention homework.
Posts: 8794 | From: 01-20-09 The End of an Error | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:Originally posted by LovedOne: Many of the items in that list become very big issues for couples who don't discuss them at some point.
I agree. Sex and money are the two biggest issues that break up marriages (in the U.S. at least). Don't people here discuss these types of issues with their romantic partners? Maybe not in such a laundry-list kind of way. But surely some of this stuff comes up in conversation? I know it did for me.
Did my husband believe in spanking kids? Would he be OK with any children we have celebrating Christmas at my parents' house? Did he understand I wanted to continue working? Who did he think was in charge of the household, if anyone? Or did he believe in a partnership? What place did religion hold in his life? What might make that change?
You learn a lot about a person talking about these things...
Posts: 8794 | From: 01-20-09 The End of an Error | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
These questions are pretty darn good, and wish that I had discussed them more in detail prior to marriage - as opposed to afterwards. I just assumed that he thought like I did...big mistake, and its taken a while to get it all in line.
LOVE the bit that Smuck added - * who will be responsible for killing crawling insects !! thats easy...I scream loudly, and he comes running, then gets all kinds of pissy when he discovers that its just a bug !..NOT ! Thats my phobia.
Posts: 1103 | From: 6th of October | Registered: Jun 2007
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posted
oh, and another thing. Egyptian men seem to change when they move back here to Egypt. so beware. The most logical of men do illogical things when they get home. Some of the crap and way of thinking still throws me for a loop.
Posts: 1103 | From: 6th of October | Registered: Jun 2007
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posted
The difficulty with any type of list of premarital questions is the way the answers are heard, especially when dealing with cross-cultural relationships. The answers to questions need to be interpreted from the individual's own cultural background and with all the nuances that puts on the answers. An answer of: "Of course I'll do that," may be taken as a definite response to a westerner, but to an easterner it can mean: "I'll do it as long as nothing comes along to make it difficult for me to do it."
As an example, I got into a tricky situation once when someone from the Arab world was asking me to do something that was important for them, and, as I knew that I may not be able to do it all due to time and situational constraints, I said, "I will do my very best to do it." Meaning that if it was at all possible, I would everything I could to do it. The person turned round and said, "That's not good enough, I want you to say that you will do it." They would have had more peace of mind if I had said that I would do it, even if I wasn't able to complete it in the end.
Another thing about discussions of this type is that that theory doesn't always match practice; people may answer questions giving what they honestly feel is how they would respond in that situation, but when they actually become a "husband" or a "wife" a lot of instinctive responses and expectations appear that people didn't always know that they had. People may want to be different from their parents and the culture that they grew up in, especially when they go into a cross-cultural marriage, but once they have settled into the relationship - after after the initial two-year honeymoon period - you will often see them falling back into traditional cultural/familial patterns, despite whatever they said in the pre-nuptial discussions.
So yes, these discussions do have some value to get a general impression of intentions, but they cannot be relied upon 100% as if they are written in stone.
Posts: 4576 | From: Cairo | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
I came across this posting on the net last night - part of a discussion about marriage in Egypt. This is what one Egyptian male posted It made me laugh so much! (All the ... in here were posted by the man, not bits cut out by me.
" well...this topic is hot.marrying an egyptian girl is not bad ..but the egyptian girls are not all good .you have to pick your wife pricely as they are all faking being a good reasonable girl to marry..egyptian girls knows how to take the mind of a poor,mindless egyptian male...they are all decivers..they plays the role of goodness,that makes you fell the word"that's it".and when it's done ...she takes off the innocence mask and you finds out a monster... she might be a shopping monster,an eating monster ,clothes monster ...any monster....she will pull you out... "
So I guess the questions should include are you a shopping monster or a clothes monster I have no idea what he meant by 'she will pull you out'.
Posts: 5593 | From: Egypt | Registered: Dec 2005
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