5 Questions To Ask, Before You Say 'I Do'

With approximately 42% of UK marriages ending in divorce, you’d think people would be interviewing their future spouse with all the vim and vigour of Miss Marple before taking the plunge.

More often than not though, we make decisions based on feelings, rather than facts. We ignore the red flags and get lost in the romance of a perfect wedding day, often to have reality come crashing down on us before the confetti has all been hoovered up.

It’s not all bad news though; divorce has been in decline since it hit its high in the early 1990’s. Research points to this being largely down to people now marrying later in life, usually after cohabiting or even having children. They’ve done the test-drive, so to speak.

Whilst nobody has a crystal ball and can ever be completely certain that their marriage will fall into the 58%, do we think that people really do their due diligence?

Well I’ll put my hands up here and say; no, I absolutely did not. For a start I was a baby, just 24 years old when I got engaged. I said yes because I thought it was the next sensible stage of my life. I said yes because I was very excited about the prospect of a wedding. I said yes because my best friend had just got engaged and I thought it would be fun to plan weddings alongside each other. I said yes because I’d had a very disrupted childhood and the man asking me was safe as houses. I said yes because it was the done thing. I said yes far too quickly and without much deep thinking at all.

Whilst I’ll never regret saying yes - because from that marriage my three beautiful sons were born, there is a part of me which feels very sad for 24 year old me, and all the years she was about to commit to being unfulfilled.

If I could go back in time, what are the questions I’d ask her to ask herself before she walked down the aisle? Well there are so many aren’t there? But let’s start with the deal-breakers…

1)    What will our life look like together?

You might love him. You hopefully also love yourself. But are you going to love the life you make together? If one person wants a very high-flying career, two top of the range cars on the drive and several swanky holidays a year, whilst the other person is happy to just, well, be happy… the cracks are going to show very early on. You therefore have to ask yourself what your ambitions for your life are, and whether those ambitions align with your partners.

There are the huge things, which you probably will talk about. Will you have children? Where will you live? Who will reduce their hours or take a career break if/when kids come along?

But there are also a million tiny things which are easily overlooked, but which make up how your life together will look. Who will be the one to always ring in sick when the kids are ill? Who will do the lions share of housework and life admin? How will you divide up the work of caring for teenagers and ageing parents at the same time? How much will you see of your friends and families going forward?

Don’t go into it blindly thinking that love is enough. It isn’t. You have to have a shared vision of what your future will be like.

2)    What are your politics?

Now if someone at 24 had asked me what my politics were and how they might affect my future marriage, I’d have answered that I was definitely a leftie, but what the hell did my politics have to do with marriage!?

It turns out; quite a lot.

If you’re both fairly apathetic and disengaged from the political climate then you might just about escape this one. But it’s rare to find adults without strong political opinions in this increasingly divided society in which we live.

What I never took into account is how differing politics can change altogether how you view a person. What you really think of them. And more worryingly, how that can be passed down onto your children. On balance I think if your views are largely aligned on politics, it makes for a less fractious, fractured marriage.

3)    What are your views on shared finances?

With one quarter of couples stating that conflict around money is the most significant challenge in their relationship, it’s no surprise that differing financial views are a big predictor of divorce.

So specifically, what do we, as women, need to know about a mans view on money, before we enter into marriage?

Well, apart from the obvious transparency couples should have around income, assets and debt; we need to observe and get the measure of a person with our own eyes; sometimes what they say they feel about finances is very different from how they actually feel.

Are they a spender or a saver? Whichever side of the spectrum they fall, is it to the extreme and in a way you could see it impacting your life long term?

What are their financial priorities - does buying nice clothes and having fabulous holidays mean more to them than saving for a house? How do they see your future finances working out, especially if your career and earning potential may be impacted by having children? Will the larger financial decisions always be made by the larger earner or do you trust you can truly be a team when it comes to big decisions?

4)    Why do you need to get married?

This one’s a biggie, and I’d encourage you to really explore it. ‘Because we want to’, and you’ve guessed it, ‘because we love each other’ isn’t a satisfactory answer.

It’s perhaps easier to see the importance of this question, and all the nuances around it, once you’ve been through it and emerged from a previous divorce battle-hardened and/or giddy with relief. But really ask yourself why you are doing this? What will the ring on your finger and the piece of paper bring you. It’s certainly a conversation to have with each other, but more importantly, have the conversation with yourself. The answers, or lack of them, might surprise you.

The rise in cohabiting long term has perhaps made us question the unique benefits of marriage; coupled with greater opportunities for women in the workplace, the old-school financial reliance on a man which came as part and parcel of marriage has now all but disappeared in some cultures.

To counter that, marriage is still seen by many as an institution which is a symbol of commitment and permanency… and of course it comes with added tax benefits, legal protections and inheritance rights which you don’t get as an unmarried cohabiting couple.

We could talk for days about this… but what’s your why?

5)    Do you genuinely fancy the pants off him?

I remember many years ago sitting in a pub with a friend of mine, talking about the state of our marriages. I was doing that surreptitious fishing you do when you want information which verifies what you’re thinking in your head but don’t want to say it out loud.

The narrative I was trying to convince myself of was, ‘all wives of my age are knackered and borderline hate their husband and will do anything to avoid being intimate with them’.

So I put the feelers out carefully with my friend and I will never forget her response… it was the beginning of a real shift in my thinking about what marriage and long-term relationships needed.

She told me yes, sometimes she hated him, couldn’t bear to look at him, questioned why she’d married him… but then, she said, he would walk into the kitchen and she’d take one look at his shoulders or his jaw-line and just want to throw herself at him and snog his face off.

This was genuinely a revelation to me. I had fully convinced myself that being so disconnected from my partner physically was a normal part of married life, something to be accepted.

Sure, physical attraction is going to wane over time. You won’t want to rip his clothes off forever. But I do think a strong underlying physical attraction and a fulfilling sex life can work wonders when it comes to keeping you close as the years go by and helping you come back together after a bump in the road.

If you’re not sure you fancy the pants off him even before the wedding, it’s unlikely that will grow over time.

So there they are, the 5 questions I wish I’d asked, the conversations I wish we’d had. Your questions might be different… there are hundreds we could cover. And they’re not easy things to bring up, by any means.

But divorces are expensive y’all… Speak now or forever hold your peace.