100 Questions Before Marriage Blog

Marriage is a huge commitment and many times people rush into without thinking. This decision should be made through a lot of thought and soul searching. Also you need to make sure you know your partner well enough to make the commitment in the first place.

Spend some time getting to know who the other one is. Participate in activities together. Meet each other’s friends and families. Have long talks with each other. Discuss job and personal goals so you know what each of you want in life.

There is so much information you should know before getting married. Too much to just accidently find it out about your partner. You will have to resort to asking questions to learn some of it. Asking these questions can be fun if you do it the right way.

Just throw a few questions in every so many minutes throughout your conversations. Make this flow natural in what you are talking about though. Then your partner will not feel put on the spot.

Come up with questions that give you the answers you need though. You don’t want frivolous fun questions here. The questions you want to ask get to the heart of who your partner is. Below are just some of the questions to ask your partner to see if he is the right marriage partner for you…

Questions to Ask Before Marriage:

1. Have you had a physical lately to make sure you are totally healthy? You may not think this is important but it is.

2. What do you think of prenuptial agreements? Are you for or against them?

3. Will you want to make a family with me after we have been married for a while? If so how many children would you like to have? These are two questions you need to be in sync with.

4. What is your financial situation at present? Where do you plan for it to be in 10 years? You need to know if your partner has any bad debts because you will be sharing in the problem after you are married.

5. Who do you think should handle the checkbook in our marriage? You could also add that you think it should be jointly handled so your partner knows your side of this.

6. Do you want to get a bigger place after we get married? This is especially important if your partner’s place and yours is small.

7. Do you feel comfortable sharing a closet with me? Some people have strange closet habits.

8. Will you feel comfortable with a large wedding ceremony and elaborate reception? Your partner may want a small affair while you want a big one, compromise is the key here.

9. You bed or mine, which one will we sleep in? The other can of course be kept in the guest room if you have one?

10. Do you snore, if so, how loud? You may have to buy some earplugs!

11. How do you physically make love? Sex is bound to come up sooner or later you might as well discuss it and see what the other one thinks about it.

12. Are you close with your family like I am with mine? (Or if you are estranged from your family, ask that instead of your partner.) You will need to know how much you will need to interact with each other’s family. That is part of marriage too.

13. Do you believe in us even cleaning the house together? The woman needs to know if the man is willing to do his part with the household chores.

14. Are you a heavy drinker, smoker, or drug user (prescription or illegal)? Hopefully your partner should be honest about this. You should have spent enough time together to know the answer to this question already though.

15. How deeply do you actually love me? Love is important, but even more important is the question, do you like me?

16. What do you like to do when you are not working? Do you like to be active or just stay home? These answers could be important to how you spend leisure time together.

See what important facts you can find out before you get married. Some of the answers to these questions could make you change your mind all together. Then again they could also reaffirm your decision to get marries is the right one. Surely you will find some other things you want to know to make questions on too.

Early Responses in Children to Parents Divorcing

Divorce is extremely upsetting for any age group of children. Most children are not ready for the divorce their parents are about to go through.

A 1980 study discovered that not even ten percent of the children received help from adults outside the structure of the family during the initial part of the process for divorce.

Children feel the pain as they lose the parent who does not have custody and this leaves them feeling quite vulnerable.

Many times, children don’t know the marriage of their parents is having problems. The children can even be angry about the family being disrupted in this way.

Many stressful situations happen to children throughout their lives, for most of these adults look into getting counseling for the children.

However when it comes to divorce adults are either unwilling or do not understand that the children need help to cope with this too.

Developmental Issues with Children

Children can have different issues depending on the age group. Certain issues the children have in common within their age groups.

Ages 3 to 5 can see the children regress in their development. Restless sleep patterns and episodes of fear at being separated from the parent with custody can be exhibited too. Missing the non-custodial parent constantly can also happen.

Ages 6 ½ to 8 usually openly mourn the parent that has departed from the scene due to divorce. This age group can fantasize about their parents getting back together. They have a hard time realizing that the divorce is final.

Ages 8 to 11 tend to feel angry and having no power to handle the situation. They too mourn the family as it once was. This age group can also consider one parent bad and the other one good and try to take care of the parent ignoring their needs.

Ages 12 to 18 can have a variety of feelings from depression to violent actions to suicidal ideas. This age group can be judgmental on the divorce issue. These teens can also develop doubt over what their romantic relationships will be like in the future.

But this age group can comprehend more about what is going on and therefore have more compassion for their parents.

How Divorce Affects the Child-Parent Relationship

Many times the custodial parent goes through a transition period that can involve being a somewhat disjointed parent. This can lead to poor parenting as they try to get their lives together. Many times, the children wind up in the caregiver position with the parent, trying to make sure the parent does not get depressed.

The Result of Paternal Involvement with the Children Post Divorce

Paternal involvement or lack of it does not severely impact the children according to studies. Their grades and behavior stay about the same. But these studies have many limitations such as low paternal contact for one with children. This does show that increasing paternal contact may not always have more positive results. More steady contact all along is probably the ultimate answer.

Long-term Results

The results for the long term depends on how well adjusted children are after the divorce. This includes how good the child-parent relationship is too. Children can go on into adulthood with fears and anxieties over their love or marital relationships possibly not working out.

We live in a time where people have begun to live together before marriage more and more. They do this for many reasons.

Some swear that it has made their relationship stronger because they choose to be together without the need of the marriage license. Others acknowledge that it can cause a feeling of less security.

Couples say they are cohabiting without being married for a variety of reasons. Some do it for the convenience of being able to see each other more.

Others do it because they have had bad marriages in the past and they want to test the their relationship before tying the knot again.

Then there are the ones that just want to test their relationship out before making any commitment for no other reason than that.

While in the religious community premarital sex is frowned upon, living together quite often encourages more of it to happen.

This is a sin according to most teachings anywhere in the world. Sex without the right commitment can lead to unwanted children and the problems that go with them.

So is it wise for a couple to live together before marriage? Do they really make their relationship stronger by doing so? We need to look at some information that actually says it is not good to cohabit prior to marriage.

The studies actually prove couples are better off to wait until after they are married to live together.

Other than the fact that premarital sex is a sin there are 7 other main reasons not to live together before being married. These 7 reasons are listed below along with explanations and statistics.

Living Together Before Marriage:

1 – It has been reported that a couple that cohabits together prior to being married are less likely to get married to one another. Forty percent of the people that liver together without the benefit of marriage will breakup before ever marrying.

2 – Even if these couples wind up marrying they have a higher rate of getting separated and/or divorced. This fact was reported in the Journal of Marriage and Family. This journal stated that the couples that lived together prior to marriage had an astounding 50 percent higher rate for disruptions in their marriage than those that did not. Reports from studies done in several universities report these rate to be 50% to all the way to 100% higher.

One study has reported that the divorce rate is higher for those that lived together before marriage opposed to the couples that did not. Also that the longer these couples did live together before getting married the risk of divorce was even higher.

3 – The observation of 10 studies on cohabitation showed that the couples that did it without marriage did not have as high a quality of a marriage than those that waited. They also had a higher right of the marriage dissolving. It also showed that these couples that lived with each other without being married had more marriage counseling, separate more, and did not hold marriage in as high of regard, as the couples that waited to be married to live together.

4 – Some of the studies showed that the people cohabiting prior to marriage have a higher rate of arguing and even violence. Couple tend to be not as positive and more negative in these relationships when trying to solve disputes with one another. There is also more aggressive verbal behavior in these couples due to poor communication skills.

5 – Sex is not the best either in these relationships that involve premarital living together. A leading national institute for researching healthcare report that the couples that wait to have sex until after marriage and who are faithful in the marriage have a more satisfying sex life compared to the ones that lived together before marriage.

6 – The couples that live together prior to being married have and higher amount of behavior issues. The have higher rates for:

1.      Issues with alcohol

2.      Aggressive behavior happens twice as much.

3.      More marital insecurity and instability.

4.      Triple the amount of depression.

5.      More violence against the women.

7 – The children can also get negatively impacted when the parents are not married and living together. Because these couples have all the problems mentioned here this just naturally seeps down to the children.

There can even be a higher rate a child abuse in these couples, or when the mother is living with a boyfriend without being married. The children can have more behavior issues and lower scores in school too.

As you can see by this information it is better to wait until after marriage to live together.

Get free questions on dating, love and relationships by downloading your free copy of the 100 Questions Before Marriage sample eBook or 1000 Questions For Couples.