<p>It’s poignant to read this. I am not certain my wife and I discussed any of those things before we got married, including sex (which was a part of our relationship as soon as we acknowledged that we liked each other that way). And if we had discussed many of them before we got married, we easily could have gotten the wrong idea, as both of us had our ideas re-shaped by life and by each other over the years. We did know each other very well – when we married, we had been friends for seven years and lovers for five, although we had only spent maybe 20 months living in the same place during those five years. I think we trusted each other’s heart a lot.</p>
<p>Our biggest problems over the years came from our different ways of resolving problems. My family practiced the talk-it-all-out-until-midnight, yell-at-each-other, then-hug method, at which we were all fairly good. My wife’s favorite technique was to sulk in silence for, oh, four or five years, never mention the problem, then acknowledge that she wasn’t that mad anymore. Obviously, we had compatibility issues there. They were pretty much insuperable . . . except by my wife’s method.</p>
<p>I don’t think I had the maturity to give an opinion on many of these topics when I was 25 and got married. A lot of my answers would be different now. I’ve been married 20+ years and just recently realized how much self-awareness I lacked when it came to identifying my own needs and how that has led to emotional detachment. It’s so easy to say I wish I knew then what I know now. </p>
<p>Sometimes I think JHS and I were twins separated at birth.</p>
<p>I don’t think dh and I discussed anything, but we’d known each other for seven years before we got married though we’d spent four years of that time on opposite coasts. I come from a shouting family, dh from the sulking one, but we’ve muddled into understanding each other most of the time. It’s true that we have grown and changed, mostly together! Though I still can’t figure out how my husband stopped being a nightowl and he seems to have gotten neater while I’ve gotten messier.</p>
<p>Talking about the difference in time sense.
One may plan for things and allow extra time, the other doesnt.
Its helpful to discuss strategies to deal with different approaches.</p>
<p>Discussing ways of being in the community may be more theoretical, when couples are young and they are busy with school and friends.
But some people consider themselves primarily members of their own household and their immediate friends and relatives, others need the larger community, whether that be a neighborhood, city, or even the entire global community. You dont need to have identical views, but it is helpful to be able to discuss them.</p>
<p>The best questions from our premarital counseling 25 years ago were these:</p>
<p>“What do you like most about your partner/relationship? How would you feel if those things were to change?”</p>
<p>Because it’s likely some of them will. That’s more of a meditation on the “for better or worse” idea than a question you can necessarily answer, but I’ve thought about this a lot over the years. </p>
<p>I can’t think of any of the answers to those questions posted up above I would have given right before getting married that would have ended up being very accurate to how our lives turned out. I mean, I would have answered the finance questions so differently, but I didn’t realize how our finances would turn out. The kids things? Raising kids turned out to be much more improvisational than I would have guessed. etc…</p>
<p>I’m really glad D1s fiance has no college debt, like her. He’s from a different family. She says no children, now, but she’ll change her mind. He says the same, but he’ll change his mind, too. </p>
<p>“Are you willing to allow each other to change your minds about things?”
“Can you compromise?”
“How do you approach conflict resolution?”
“How did your family forgive each other? Did they? How would you like to approach this?”
“How do you express love and affection? what do you need in this area?”</p>
<p>Of course these are really “the” questions, but I only see it after nearly a quarter of a century of marriage.</p>
<p>I guess we wouldn’t have done so well on your list of ten things, abasket.</p>
<p>We didn’t discuss most of those things, but briefly chatted about children and religion. He wanted four (or was it six), I wanted none. He was Catholic, I was an Atheist.</p>
<p>Good thing we could compromise. Two kids, and pretty much Agnostic, 26 years of marriage as of today, I think compromise is the most important thing. Always been able to work everything out. Nothing has ever been a deal breaker, as there was never anything more important than our marriage and our kids. I think if some of the little things (or even the big things) are all important or deal breakers, it’s a pretty weak marriage.</p>
<p>Yes. Some years ago, a friend’s father unilaterally decided to get a large dog who is too large for the apartment they live in without any prior consultation with the rest of the family. Father ended up not taking full ownership of the responsibility to care and feed the dog and his children…including my friend resent him and the dog for having the tasks fall upon them. My friend’s mother isn’t exactly thrilled about the situation, either. </p>
<p>All of this is having an effect on the poor dog. It is so bad that despite my slight fear of large dogs(bigger than some German shepherds and is part dalmatian) due to a bad childhood experience, I made it a point to be friendly with him and even took him on a couple of long walks with the family’s permission and gratitude. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, their distance from me and our schedules make it difficult for me to be more than an occasional visitor. </p>
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<p>One sub-topic on this which needs to be hashed out, whether the SO concerned has any feelings of entitlement about volunteering other people for their community causes without prior consultation. </p>
<p>This has been a sore point with several married couples I’ve known and one I’ve felt of sorts due to my parents attempts to volunteer me once after the fall term of my first year in college…only to find out I had prior commitments to work late for an old employer. </p>
<p>Too bad for my parents and the student and parents who felt entitled to free SAT help and inexplicably thought it would help on the NIGHT BEFORE the actual exam date. IMO…serves them all right. </p>
<p>Personally, I’m cool with SOs having community commitments and causes. That is…so long as she asks PRIOR TO volunteering me to help others. Not only is this respectful of me on free agency grounds, it is also respectful in not assuming I’d enjoy or worse, agree with a particular cause.</p>
<p>For instance, I’ve known spouses who IMO unconscionably volunteered their spouses to help out with political campaigns of parties they KNEW their spouses were vehemently against. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be a happy camper if I ended up in such situations due to a lack of consideration in a form of timely communication PRIOR TO being volunteered. </p>
<p>My family laid it out straight and DH’s just didn’t go there. Despite living together for several years, I didn’t realize this stylistic difference would magnify as our responsibilities did. No sulking, just confusion, for a while. We got through it.</p>
<p>But the bullet I wanted to add, poetgrl and busdriver mention: compromise, how to make a win-win. It can happen so easily when you’re young and fancy free, but the need grows.</p>
<p>Thank goodness my husband and I didn’t discuss anything or we would never got married. But according to the priest who married us she suggested some kind of survey for marriage counseling. What came out of the counseling was that we should remember to give each other space and high income people tend not to have many discords. We were in the high income category. It’s true we rarely fight about money, but we did have discord about the way we raise children. Now we are empty nested, there is no discord.</p>
<p>Student loans worry me the most. Just read a dear abby entry, someone’s gf of 5 years has a debt about $150K. What do you do? They are probably too invested emotionally to do anything about it.</p>
<p>DW and I took a UCLA extension course “So You Want to Get Married” before we got married. In addition to what others have written above, they had us do several things - each fill out a questionnaire separately and then share with each other and discuss. Among them:</p>
<p>How much would you be comfortable spending or having your partner spend without having to consult the other first? (I think we said $50, but that was in 1982)</p>
<p>Where do you want to be (in all senses of the word) in 1 year, in 5 years in 10 years?</p>
<p>Is there something special (trip, experience, etc.) you really want to do in the next 10 years? (I said raft the Grand Canyon, which I haven’t done yet.)</p>
<p>We’ve been married over 31 years, so we must have passed the course.</p>
<p>When it comes to chores, some people may not be all that cognizant of what they are going to expect once married. I once read that our expectation tends to be based on our own parents’ model, so observing the other individual’s own parent and family dynamic can tell you a lot. Before H and I married he was all “sure, we’ll share the chores, etc. etc.” Turned out that meant he would shovel snow, tinker with home repairs, and mow the lawn and I would do everything else. </p>
<p>Of course, he also wanted a modern woman who worked at a paying job as many hours as humanly possible.</p>
<p>That might be something to discuss, or at least get some indication about underlying attitudes, ahead of time. </p>
<p>I also agree about the debt and spending questions, although sometimes that’s hard to ascertain if the couple is young. I previously have posted about a close aquaintance whose marriage dissolved within two years because of student debt and undisclosed credit card debt related to gambling.</p>
<p>But some of the things on that list are going to be tricky to “tweeze out” without damaging the romance. Children and religion can be big deals with people.</p>
<p>The point about whether and how someone compromises is rather critical, I think, but it’s hard to get at it because before marriages it usually revolves around what concert to see or which sporting event to attend. Afterwards it sometimes involves things that people care about a lot more (sometimes inexplicably )</p>
<p>Expectation on child’s education. (since this is CC.)</p>
<p>I met a couple who have a drastically different expectations about parents’ responsibility about the contribution to children’s college education.</p>
<p>The wife is willing to send their children to top private colleges (if they get in.) The husband believes there is no value of attending any top private college - and actually believes that if the children have what it takes, they should be capable of working to earn their college education expenses by themselves while attending a public college just like him when he was a college student.</p>
<p>He grew up from a family that had never helped him on this front, and she was from a family (of new immigrants) which sent her to the best secondary school district in the city and a flagship college and her parents paid for everything.</p>
<p>I also met a couple: the husband somehow seems to be unable to find a job. He mostly relies on her income which is not that high either. They could possibly inherit something from his parents in, say, several decades though. He wants to move to a much cheaper area as the employment prospect for him in this hi-tech job concentrated area may not be good for him. But she wants to stay in the area they are at now due to a good school district and plenty of job opportunity for her. (Maybe kind of house rich - thus heavy tax burden, but cash poor?) They have been living with his parents in a wealthy area. She is a new immigrant (all by herself as her parents/siblings are not here - I actually do not know how she got into this country as she did not go to a college here), but his family has been living here for at least two generations. She occasionally complained that her in-laws (who seem to have retired) are more willing to spend money on their own vacations rather than helping them and their young grandchild financially. It seems every family has their own challenge.</p>
<p>But oftentimes, children have different views than their parents.
My inlaws didnt think it was necessary for kids to attend college, but we did and even sent both kids to private school, for at least several years. ( & they are both college graduates, obviously without any help from inlaws)</p>
<p>So glad someone mentioned pets. I love animals, and my husband really doesn’t. I’ve somewhat “won” the battle, and we’ve had a couple of dogs in over 25 years of marriage. But it took a lot of persuasion. I did wise up though and for our second dog we got one that is smaller, very smart and obedient, and doesn’t shed. My husband seems a lot more amenable to dog #2. Dog #1 was a golden retriever that needed attention 24x7 and thought my husband was just the one to give it to him.</p>
<p>I do expect this will be the last dog we have since the kids are almost out of the house, and they were very helpful in the persuasion department.</p>
<p>My dog is 7. Hope he has a long life span. My husband says when he dies, I’ll probably get a lot of cats. It’s true.</p>
<p>LOL! Same here, just different traits. My husband used to be late to everything, now he’s early. When did that happen? </p>
<p>We didn’t explicitly discuss any of these things before we got married. We dated 7 years before marriage, lived together for two. I know we never talked about money, but never thought twice when we pooled our resources and opened joint accounts after marriage. I think we got together so early (we were both in college), that we were able to deal with things as they came along and figured out very quickly that we shared similar values. We had the luxury of time to do that – I understand it’s different with couples who meet later in life and get married after a couple years.</p>
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