Marital Advice: What I Think Every Couple Should Do Before They Get Married

What’s the best wedding advice you could provide to a newly engaged couple? My non-financial advice is simple: Make sure you are marrying the right person. In order to help you decide if he or she is the right person I suggest buying a book like The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say “I Do.” The book helps you discuss a range of topics that will impact your future lives together. Everything from the simple questions like how many children you want to have, to more difficult questions like how you will care for your aging parents.

I wouldn’t exactly call the questions in this book ‘hard,’ but I do think that talking aloud about issues like money, children, careers and families should certainly be a requirement before marriage. After all, you want to know where your significant stands, what he or she believes and what may become points of contention later on in your marriage.

Shortly after getting engaged I purchased this book and kindly convinced my husband to answer the questions with me as we drove the six hours to North Carolina. Hopefully, you’ve already discussed these topics with your significant other. Hopefully you discussed them long before you were engaged, but if not books like this will help you open the door to some of the significant decisions you two may face together.

I know I felt a lot better about getting those difficult subjects into the open and talking in detail about the issues that really matter. Although we didn’t agree on all of the topics it certainly helped to see where each of us stood. More importantly, as our marriage grows it’s also interesting to see how our ideas have changed.

The key is to keep the lines of communication open long before you’re married and well into your marriage. I still feel as open and honest with my husband as I did so many years ago. I hope that our communication continues to remain strong throughout our marriage.