Couples who have these conversations before committing face far fewer surprises in the first year. Each one is uncomfortable once, and expensive to skip.
1. Money #
Who earns, who manages it, and what happens when there is less of it. Whether both of you will work, and whether that changes when children arrive. How much is sent to parents, and whether that is negotiable. Any debt, including student loans, and any obligations already carried.
The point is not to agree on everything. It is to know where you differ before it becomes an argument about something else.
2. Where you will live #
City, and whose family you will be near. Whether living with parents is expected, for how long, and by whom. What happens if work takes one of you elsewhere. Whether either of you intends to move abroad. This is the conversation most often assumed rather than had, and the assumptions are usually different.
3. Children #
Whether you both want them, roughly when, and roughly how many. What happens if it turns out to be difficult. How you would want them raised - which language at home, which school, how much religious education and who provides it.
4. Family and boundaries #
How often you would see each set of parents. Who is consulted on decisions and who is only informed. What happens when a family member disapproves of something you have both agreed. Whether either family expects to be involved in your finances. Most first-year conflict between otherwise well-matched couples is about this, not about the couple themselves.
5. Conflict #
How each of you was raised to handle it. A household where disagreements were shouted and forgotten produces a very different adult from one where they were never mentioned and never resolved. Neither is wrong, but the two together, unexamined, go badly: one person thinks a raised voice is normal, the other thinks it is the end.
How to have these conversations
Not all at once, and not as a test. One at a time, over separate conversations, with the wali or family informed that they are happening. If a question cannot be asked at all, that is itself the answer to a different question.
The one that is not on the list
Ask what they think marriage is for. Answers vary far more than people expect - a partnership, a religious duty, a way to have a family, a settling down, an escape from something. Two people can want to marry each other for entirely different reasons and not discover it for years. If you have not met anyone yet, the events are listed on the browse events page.
