75 Questions to Ask Before Marriage: Money, Kids, Sex & Deal-Breakers

Many couples spend six months planning a wedding and about one afternoon discussing the marriage. The questions below are the afternoon, organised so you can take it one topic at a time: money, children, sex, family, career, where to live, conflict, values, independence and deal-breakers. Ten blocks, 75 questions, and after each block a short note on why that topic keeps showing up in the arguments couples have later.

These are not questions to score. Two people can answer differently and marry well; what does not marry well is finding out the answer three years in, with a mortgage and a child already in the picture. If you are earlier in the process and still deciding whether to propose at all, our questions to ask before getting engaged come first. This list is for after the yes.

How to use these questions

Take one block per evening, ten evenings in total, not the whole list in one sitting. Answer separately first, on paper if you can, 10 minutes each, then compare. The interesting conversations start where the answers differ, so treat a mismatch as the beginning of a topic, not the end of one. And write down the two or three answers that surprised you; those are the ones worth coming back to 12 months after the wedding, when the honeymoon answers have had time to meet real life.

Money

1. What does "enough money" mean to you: a number, a feeling, or a lifestyle?
2. Do we keep one joint account, separate accounts, or a joint account plus personal ones?
3. What purchase would you want to discuss first, and what can either of us buy without asking: 100, 500, 2,000?
4. How much debt does each of us have today, and how do we feel about carrying the other person's?
5. If one of us earns twice as much, does that person get more say in money decisions?
6. Would you rather save aggressively and live modestly now, or spend now and save less?
7. Who would handle the bills, the taxes and the paperwork, and would that be fair or just convenient?
8. What is your honest reaction if I lost my income for a year?
9. Do we lend money to family or friends, and how much before we say no together?
10. Have you ever hidden a purchase or a debt from a partner? What would make you do it again?

Why this matters. Money is where different ideas about safety, freedom and fairness meet, and bills arrive every week. Question 3 is the practical one: agreeing on a concrete threshold can turn a vague argument about spending into a rule both people understand. Question 5 exposes whether "equal partners" survives a paycheck that is twice the size of the other, and it is better to find out before that paycheck exists.

Read also: Questions to Ask Before Getting Engaged

Children

11. Do you want children? Not "someday"; a real answer for the next five years, with a number.
12. If we cannot conceive, what would you consider: treatment, adoption, or a life without children?
13. How would we divide the first year of a baby's life, including who steps back from work?
14. What did your parents get right, and what would you never repeat?
15. How would you feel about a child who turned out very different from you?
16. What role should religion, or its absence, play in raising a child?
17. If one of us wants another child and the other does not, whose "no" wins?
18. How much would your parents be involved in our children's lives, and is that what you want?

Why this matters. Children are the one decision that cannot be undone or halved. Couples who disagree here often assume the other person will come around within a year or two; question 17 forces you to say out loud what happens if nobody does. Question 13 is the second most avoided: the first 12 months of a child's life are where career and money plans get rewritten, usually for one partner more than the other.

Sex and intimacy

19. How often would you want to be intimate, three times a week, once a week, twice a month, and how would you feel if we settled somewhere different from that?
20. How do you want me to tell you when something is not working for me?
21. What does affection outside the bedroom look like to you: touch, words, time, gifts?
22. Is there anything you have wanted to try and never said?
23. What would count as cheating for you, including online, emotional and physical?
24. How would you want us to handle a long stretch when one of us does not want sex: illness, a new baby, grief?
25. Can you tell me you are not in the mood without either of us treating it as rejection?

Why this matters. Most couples negotiate this part in silence and then wonder why it went quiet. Long marriages often include periods when illness, childbirth, stress or grief changes sexual desire. Talking about how you would handle those periods before they happen can make the subject easier to revisit later.

Family and in-laws

26. How often do you expect to see your parents, every Sunday, once a month, twice a year, and how often do you expect me to?
27. If your parents needed care in their seventies, would they live with us? What about mine?
28. Where do we spend the holidays, and who decides when families disagree?
29. What is one thing about my family that already worries you?
30. Would you take my side against your parents if you thought I was right? If you thought I was wrong?
31. How much do our families get to know about our problems?
32. Are there relatives you would not want at our wedding, and why?

Why this matters. You do not marry a family, but you do schedule your life around one: 52 weekends and roughly a dozen holidays a year, every year. Question 30 is uncomfortable on purpose: it asks whether loyalty is automatic or earned, and both answers have consequences.

Read also: Questions to Ask Before Getting Serious With Someone

Career and ambition

33. Where do you want to be professionally in ten years, and what would it cost the two of us to get there?
34. If I were offered a job in another city, would you move? Would you expect me to move for yours?
35. Whose career takes priority when they conflict, or do we take turns?
36. How many hours a week is too many, 45, 55, 70, and what would you say if I crossed that line?
37. Would you support me leaving a secure job for something uncertain?
38. What does retirement look like for you, and at what age: 55, 65, never?
39. How would you feel if I earned much more than you? Much less?

Why this matters. Question 34 becomes much harder when the job offer is already on the table. Discussing the principle before either career forces the decision gives you more room to think.

Where and how to live

40. City, suburb or countryside, and is that a preference or a requirement?
41. Would you live abroad? For two years, for ten, for good?
42. Rent or buy, and how much of our income should housing take: a quarter, a third, half?
43. How clean is clean enough, and who decides?
44. Do you need your own room, desk or corner in the house?
45. Pets: yes, no, how many, and who walks them at 6 a.m.?
46. What would our ideal ordinary Tuesday evening look like?
47. Would you be comfortable with my friends staying over for a week? A month?

Why this matters. Question 46 is the quiet one. A wedding is one day; a marriage is about 250 ordinary Tuesdays in its first five years alone, and two people who imagine those evenings very differently will feel it within the first month of living together.

Conflict and communication

48. When you are angry, do you need to talk within 10 minutes or to be left alone for 10 hours first?
49. What did I do in our last serious argument that made it worse?
50. Is there anything I do that you have decided to put up with rather than mention?
51. Would you go to a couples counsellor if I asked, even if you thought we were fine?
52. What is one topic you avoid bringing up with me, and why?
53. How do you apologise, and how do you need to be apologised to?
54. Have you ever ended a relationship of more than a year without explaining why? What happened?
55. When we cannot agree and it matters, who decides?

Why this matters. A disagreement is often less revealing than what happens during it: whether either person shuts down, escalates, apologises or comes back to the conversation. Question 50 is the most valuable on this list and the one people least want to ask, because "putting up with" is where resentment is stored. Question 48 is the cheapest to act on: knowing whether your partner needs 10 minutes or 10 hours before talking changes the shape of every argument you will ever have.

Read also: What Couples Need to Discuss Before Getting Engaged: But Usually Don't

Religion, values and politics

56. What do you actually believe, and how much of it do you want to practise together?
57. Would you want a religious wedding, a civil one, or both?
58. Are there political views I hold that you find hard to live with?
59. What would you do if I changed my beliefs, or lost them, ten years from now?
60. Which traditions from your upbringing do you want to keep, and which do you want to drop?
61. What is something you consider morally wrong that other people treat as normal?
62. Do you want our home to have rules that come from faith, and which ones?

Why this matters. Values rarely cause daily friction, until a child is born, a parent dies, or the third December in a row goes to the same family. Twenty years is long enough for beliefs to change. Question 59 asks whether the relationship can accommodate that possibility, and it is a fair thing to know in advance.

Independence and time apart

63. How much time alone do you need in a normal week, and does it feel like rejection when I need mine?
64. Would you travel without me? For how long would that be fine: a weekend, two weeks, a month?
65. Which friendships do you intend to keep exactly as they are, and are any of them with exes?
66. How much do you share about us with your friends?
67. Would you want one night a week that is entirely yours, and which night?
68. Is there a hobby or habit you expect me never to interfere with?
69. Do you want to know where I am, and do you want me to want to know where you are?

Why this matters. Closeness is easier to talk about than distance, which is why distance causes more surprises. Question 63 gets at the difference between "I need one evening a week" and "I do not want to be with you", a difference that both partners have to learn to hear. Question 64 has a number hiding in it: for some people a week apart is a holiday, for others it is a crisis, and you want to know which before the first work trip.

Deal-breakers

70. What would make you leave, no discussion?
71. What have you forgiven in past relationships that you would not forgive again?
72. Is there anything about yourself you expect me to accept and never ask you to change?
73. Is there anything about me you are quietly hoping will change after the wedding?
74. If we had this exact conversation in ten years, in 2036, which answer do you most hope will have changed?
75. What is the one thing you need to hear from me before you can say yes to all of this?

Why this matters. Deal-breakers named in advance are boundaries; deal-breakers discovered later, in year four or year nine, are exits. Question 73 is the honest one: almost everyone has a private hope that something will change after the wedding, and the marriage goes better when that hope is on the table instead of under it. Question 74 is worth writing down and sealing; open it on your fifth anniversary.

What to do with the answers

You do not need identical answers to use this list well. The number of disagreements matters less than what they are about, how strongly each of you feels, and whether there is room for compromise. The couples who use a list like this well do three things. They notice which of the ten blocks produced the most silence, because that is the topic they have been avoiding. They keep the surprising answers rather than the comfortable ones, ideally in writing, dated. And they come back after the first anniversary and ask five or six of these again; answers move, and knowing how they moved is a good habit to start early.

If you are wondering how two people's underlying temperaments fit before any of these conversations, that is what SoulMatcher's compatibility profile is built to show, and our research on the gap between self-perception and structured personality assessment is a useful reminder that how we describe ourselves is not always the whole picture. For the stage before this one, start with questions to ask before getting serious; for the stage after it, the would you rather questions for couples are a lighter way to keep the habit going.