50 Premarital Counseling Questions to Ask Before You Say I Do

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Counseling before marriage presents an opportunity for couples to address potential conflict areas in their relationship. It enables couples to prevent petty issues from becoming a crisis and also helps them recognize their expectations from each other in the marriage.

A licensed therapist usually provides premarital counseling questions; in some cases, even religious institutes offer premarital counseling.

While answering your questions before marriage, a pre-marriage counselor may help you reach an agreement over problematic issues and establish open and honest communication with each other.

What is premarital counseling?

Pre-marriage counseling is becoming more common, partly due to the high divorce rates that have plagued us in recent years. Most relationship therapists begin with a list of premarital counseling questions.

There’s no guarantee that such a premarital counseling questionnaire can help you perfect your marriage, but it sure can help you to build a strong marriage with good compatibility.

This is because your answers give the therapist more insight into you as individuals and as a couple. Plus, they open up communication about issues that will be a part of married life.

What should premarital counseling cover?

The questions to ask in premarital counseling usually cover all aspects of a relationship that can become a cause for concern in the future. The attempt is to help the couple understand each other better and discuss the issues where their ideas or plans don’t align. 

Usually, pre-wedding counseling questions broadly cover the following topics:

1. Emotions

This category of premarital counseling questions is where the couple examines the emotional strength of their relationship and how compatible they are on an emotional level. Marriages with strong emotional compatibility thrive as the spouses comprehend each other’s emotional needs.

Related Reading: 10 Benefits of an Emotional Connection Between Loving Partners

2. Communication

Pre-marriage questions about communication help a couple realize how they would reciprocate their partner’s exchange of emotions, desires, and beliefs. Furthermore, answering these premarital questions to ask aids them in resolving any past, present or future conflicts.

3. Career

Many people compromise their career aspirations for the sake of their marriage. However, it impedes their personal and professional growth. Couples who fail to understand how demanding their career can be, often find themselves fighting and arguing with each other later on.

Answering pre-marriage counseling questions about their career aspirations allows them to set some expectations and create a balance with their partner’s input.

4. Finance

Before getting married, couples should handle the aspect of financial planning and discuss each other’s financial habits and expectations.

Financial planning before marriage might help you save some time and money and asking each other money-related questions to answer before marriage will help you and your partner prepare for any unexpected crisis.

5. Household

As insignificant as it may sound, answering marriage counseling questions before marriage about the allocation of household chores and duties can help you manage the stress level in your marriage.

Set expectations and manage the household chores efficiently so that these are shared and properly executed.

For this, you may:

• Divide the chores between the two of you
• Take turns doing different tasks on a weekly or daily basis

Take a look at what marriage expert Mary Kay Cocharo has to say about the importance of both pre and post-marriage counseling sessions:

Related Reading: How to Divide Household Chores Fairly in Marriage

6. Sex and intimacy

From understanding what intimacy is in a marriage to knowing about your partner’s sexual desires, questions about sex and intimacy can help you familiarize yourself with your partner emotionally and physically.

If you are going for a pre-wedding preparation before your church wedding, then asking pre-cana questions in your sessions on this topic is necessary as well to improve intimacy and sex in your marriage.

7. Family and friends

Answering marriage counseling questions before marriage about how each of you would manage your time between your spouse and your respective family and friends can help you set certain expectations and avoid uncomfortable conversations in the future.

8. Children

Premarital counseling questions on family planning can help you weigh the issues that might be an obstacle to childbearing. Analyzing your values and motives for having or not having kids can prepare you and your spouse for future challenges.

9. Religion

Counseling questions centered around one’s religion can aid couples in understanding the extent of their religious compatibility. For example, Christian premarital counseling questions or Jewish premarital counseling questions would also be helpful for Christian and Jewish couples to differentiate between faith and religion.

It can also guide them on how to respect their partners’ choices and express their spirituality.

Going over these questions with your soon-to-be spouse can help you gain valuable insight into how you feel about important issues and how each of you will handle them.

50 premarital counseling questions you can ask

The marriage counseling checklist usually has a series of questions to help the couple better understand each other. It helps them arrive at a common vision for their marriage that accommodates their individual needs, views and desires. 

The following is a sampling of important premarital counseling questions worth answering together.

1. Emotions

• Why are we getting married?
• Do you think marriage will change us? If yes, how?
• Where do you think we will be in 25 years?
• Do you have any pet peeves?
• How would you describe yourself
• What do we want out of our lives

2. Communication and conflict

• How will we make decisions?
• Do we face difficult topics or avoid them?
• Do we handle conflict well?
• Can we talk openly about everything?
• How would we help each other improve?
• What are the things we disagree about?

3. Career

• What are our career goals? What will we do to reach them?
• What will our work schedules be like? How might they impact our time together?
• How are we going to try to maintain work-life balance?
• What are our expectations from our respective careers?

Watch this video to learn whether being in love makes you less productive at work:

4. Finances

• How is our financial situation, i.e., all debt, savings, and investments?
• How will we manage our finances?
• How will we divide the household bills?
• Will we have joint or separate accounts?
• What will our budget be for fun stuff, savings, etc.?
• What are our spending habits like? Are you a spender or a saver?
• What is your credit score?
• What amount is acceptable to be spent on non-essentials each month?
• Who will pay the bills in the relationship and who will plan the budget?
• What do you want to be a major expenditure in the next 1-5 years?
• Will the two of us work after marriage?
• When should we plan to have kids and start saving for it?
• What should be our retirement goals?
• How do we plan to set up an emergency fund?

5. Household

• Where will you and your fiance live?
• Who will be responsible for what chores?
• What chores do we enjoy/hate doing?
• Who will be doing the cooking?

6. Sex and intimacy

• Why are we attracted to each other?
• Are we happy with our sex life, or do we want more?
• How can we make our sex life better?
• Are we comfortable talking about our sexual desires and needs?
• Are we satisfied with the amount of romance and affection? What do we want more of?

Related Reading: Love, Sex and Intimacy – Change the Way You Feel by Changing the Way You Think

7. Family and friends

• How often will we see our families?
• How will we divide the holidays?
• How often will we see our friends, separately and as a couple?

Related Reading: 12 Things to Never Tell Your Friends About Your Relationship

8. Children

• Do we want to have children?
• When do we want to have children?
• How many children do we want?
• What will we do if we cannot have children? Is adoption an option?
• Which one of us will stay home with the children?

9. Religion

• What are our religious beliefs and how will we include them in our lives?
• How will we maintain/combine our different religious beliefs and traditions?
• Will we raise our children with religious beliefs and traditions? If so, which of our beliefs are different?

What is the success rate of premarital counseling?

You might wonder what the success rate of premarital counseling is before trying to answer the questions mentioned here. One study shows that there is a 31 percent reduction in divorce rates for couples that choose to go down this path as compared to the ones that don’t. 

Final takeaway

The questions mentioned above are just examples of the things couples are asked when they attend pre-marriage counseling. Talking about these issues before marriage can help you both feel better prepared for marriage and the responsibilities and issues that come with it.

Answering these questions together lets you learn more about each other to help avoid any surprises that could later lead to serious conflict in your marriage.