4 Wrinkles You Have to Iron out Before Tying the Knot
How to get on the same page with your future spouse.
You’re engaged to be married.
You found your soulmate, and you’re desperately in love. So in love, in fact, you’re confident a happy life awaits you — your love will see to it.
But love alone can’t hold a marriage together. You need much more than love to overcome the challenges life throws at you. You need to be on the same page about the important stuff.
Here are 4 wrinkles you absolutely have to iron out with your future spouse before tying the knot:
How to handle finances
Too many people avoid talking about money. They believe it’s impolite, or that it’s an invasion of their privacy when their partners have a glimpse on how much they make and how they spend their money.
The reality is that discussing personal finances with a stranger can be rude, but your future spouse is not a stranger (hopefully).
Your future spouse is the person you’re building your life with. They are the person who’s about to vow to always have your back no matter what. This person deserves full transparency about your life.
You both need to talk about your finances openly, and how you plan to handle expenses, emergencies, and build wealth together.
Money troubles break too many couples up, and the firsts step to avoid money troubles is to discuss finances before you have any serious issue to deal with.
What you both expect from your sex life
Sex is an important part of a marriage.
After having lived through what was essentially a sexless marriage, I have to say it’s not a bit fun. Not having sex means a lot of things, but it definitely makes you feel lonely, rejected, and forgotten.
Talking about your sex life with your future spouse means discussing things like, do they expect more sex now that you’re husband and wife, or do they expect not having to do it as much since now you’re… husband and wife?
These things matter. It’s not like you’re going to sign a contract to do it 3 times a week or something, but it’s an agreement to at least talk about what’s wrong if you drop your sex frequency below a certain threshold that bothers you.
How to resolve conflict
Conflict is part of any relationship.
As much as you may want marriage to be the beginning of a life of harmony, love and understanding, it’s impossible to never disagree with your spouse.
You can’t come up with a solution for every conflict you may have in the future before you get married, but you can work on guidelines for how to approach conflict so that you never lose respect for each other in the process.
How to handle your respective extended families
Parents, siblings, uncles, in-laws… your extended family can offer a helping hand and be a source of comfort, but they can also be a complication.
As a rule of thumb, you should handle your extended family and let your spouse handle theirs. You can support your spouse in handling their family, but interfering in how that dynamic works is always dangerous.
Take the opportunity before you marry to talk about difficult topics, such as what are your plans for your parents once they can no longer live by themselves? Can they they move in with you? Can they support themselves in retirement? Should you start saving funds to pay for caregivers should it come to that?
When you have kids, how much will you let your respective parents play a part in raising them?
Now that you and your future spouse are about to become a family, that’s the perfect time to put family matters on the table.
Why being in the same page with your spouse is important
Being on the same page about these big issues will get your marriage started the right way.
Being on the same page is about being ready to face the issues when they come up, it’s about forming a cohesive unit to stand up to the challenges of live.
That’s what a happy marriage is all about.
