These are not a test. There is no score, and disagreement on any single one of them is not a warning sign. Plenty of strong marriages run on two people who want different things and know it.
The risk is not having discussed them. Most couples meet these questions for the first time in year two, in a kitchen, at the worst possible moment, with money or a job offer or a pregnancy test already on the table. Have them now, when nothing is at stake.
1. Whose money is it, and who decides what happens to it?
Not budgeting. Ownership. If one of you earns three times the other, does that buy a bigger vote? A real answer sounds like a number: the amount either of you can spend without checking. Couples who have agreed that number argue about money far less than couples who have agreed to be reasonable about it.
2. What does a fight look like in your family of origin, and did you learn that or reject it?
Some people were raised to raise their voice. Some were raised to go quiet for two days. Both feel normal to the person doing them and like an attack to the person receiving them. A real answer describes what your parents actually did, and then says which parts of it you are still doing.
3. Children. How many, when, and what happens if the answer turns out to be none?
The first two parts most couples cover. The third they almost never do. Infertility arrives in roughly one in eight marriages and it arrives without warning. A real answer includes how far you would go, what you think about adoption, and whether a marriage without children is still the marriage you want.
4. Whose career moves first if the two do not move together?
An offer in Denver. A promotion that means eighteen months of travel. A business that needs two lean years. A real answer names a default and names the conditions that would change it, because deciding in the moment means deciding while one of you is excited and the other is scared.
5. How much time apart is healthy, and how much is a problem?
One of you thinks a weekly night out alone is oxygen. The other thinks it is the beginning of something. Neither is wrong. A real answer sounds like: two evenings a week is fine, four is not, and a trip without you is fine if I ask first.
6. What do holidays look like, and whose family gets which one?
This is the argument that shows up in November of year one, every time. Decide it in advance and it becomes logistics. Decide it in November and it becomes loyalty. A real answer covers alternating years, and covers what happens when one family takes the decision badly.
7. What role does faith play on an ordinary Tuesday, not just at Christmas?
Couples describe their faith at the level of identity and then discover they meant different things by it. A real answer is behavioural. Do we pray together. Do we go somewhere on Sunday. What are we raising children into, and who is doing the raising into it.
8. How do each of you know you are loved? Say it out loud.
Most people give love in the shape they want to receive it and then feel unseen when it comes back in a different shape. One of you empties the dishwasher. The other wanted twenty minutes of undivided attention. A real answer is specific enough to act on this week.
9. What debt exists right now, all of it?
All of it. Student loans, cards, the car, the money borrowed from a parent that nobody calls a loan. Debt discovered after the wedding does more damage than debt disclosed before it, and the damage is about the disclosure rather than the number. Write the total down and show each other the page.
10. What does rest look like for you, and does your partner's version of rest annoy you?
One person rests by leaving the house. The other rests by nobody leaving the house. Sunday afternoon is where this gets settled, week after week, for decades. A real answer admits the irritation out loud, because the irritation is the useful part.
11. Who do you go to when the marriage is hard, and is it someone who wants the marriage to survive?
Everyone has a person they call. Some of those people are loyal to you and indifferent to your marriage, and their advice will reflect that. Name your person now. Ask whether your partner is comfortable with them holding the hard version of your marriage.
12. What would make you say we need help?
Set the threshold while things are good, because once things are bad the threshold moves. A real answer is a trigger you would both recognise: three months of the same argument, a week of not speaking properly, either of us feeling alone in it. Agree that either of you can call it and the other does not get to overrule.
How to actually do this
One question at a time, not twelve in an evening. Write your answers separately first, then read them to each other. The gap between the two pages is the conversation.
Written by Matt Perry, wedding officiant and Lead Pastor of Love Church San Diego.