Before marrying or moving in together, partners may find discussing the following questions of value. People who are individually aware of the traits, skills, and wishes they bring to a relationship may be more likely to negotiate a conscious, enriching partnership.

The questions are worded to take turns asking each other. For long-term partners, exploring these questions and renegotiating some of their answers may be helpful.

1. Let’s begin with the end in mind.

If marriage is under consideration: Why are we getting married? Or, why did we get married?

Marriage originated as a practical matter to build political and economic alliances, to control property ownership, and to ensure legitimate heirs to that property. (The first recorded evidence of marriage is from Mesopotamia in 2350 BC). Cultural beliefs came later.

Are we planning on building a dynasty? If not, if we have no great alliances to forge and no great wealth to pass to heirs, we could be life partners without marriage. By considering marriage, are we unconsciously complying with cultural norms? Why, exactly, are we doing this/did we do this?

2. What are your beliefs, assumptions, and expectations about yourself, the other, and how marriages work?

Why ask? One of the greatest challenges faced by couples is that each partner can hold the unconscious belief that the other person can read their hearts and minds, knows intuitively what the partner needs and wants, and will naturally do what they want and agree with them out of love and respect. Sometimes, unspoken cultural beliefs about “how marriages should be” are in play.

When one partner doesn’t do as expected or wished, the other partner might feel any number of feelings, including feeling surprised, hurt, betrayed, resentful, misunderstood, disrespected, and unloved.

Becoming aware of one’s unconscious beliefs prior to becoming partners can help prevent unnecessary misunderstandings and provide awareness, recognition, and clarity when problems arise.

What are your beliefs, assumptions, and expectations in the these categories?

3. Ideally, the combined power of partners working together is greater than the power of each working separately.

a) What will be our division of labor? Will we do tasks together, take turns, have assigned tasks based on skill or preference? How will we accomplish tasks neither of us wants to do?

b) In what areas are we willing to hire paid services to do household tasks? Housecleaning, cooking, accountant?

c) In what areas do you see the potential for us creating synergy together? How might we do that?

4. Ideally, partners in a partnership are able to talk about everything; no subject is taboo. What are some subjects that are more uncomfortable for you than others?

Maintaining household order, sanitary conditions

What level of order is expected and where? Who cleans what? How often?

Bathroom

Do you leave the lid off of the toothpaste tube? If you leave the lid off, and the other partner prefers it on, how would you propose resolving this?*

Toilet seat up, down, toilet paper roll facing outward or inward, bidet handle one way or the other?

When we are getting ready in the morning or at night, will we be in the bathroom together or separately? If we’re in there alone, bathroom door open, closed, sometimes open, sometimes closed? What will be the reason?

Bedroom

How will we handle dressing, undressing, and nudity?

What are you shy about?

What are your expectations for frequency of intercourse? Other forms of sexual intimacy?

Money

Do you track your spending? Do you know how much it costs to be you?

We are individuals and a partnership. How will we allocate and budget individual money and partnership money?

At what number in your bank account balance (savings/checking) do you start feeling nervous or are starting to relax a little?

What is the monetary threshold for making unilateral monetary decisions? At what level does a partner need to confer before they buy?

Do you turn off the lights when you leave an unoccupied room? Why or why not?

Health, substances, behaviors

How often do you go to the dentist? How often do you get a physical?

What is your purpose for using substances? Caffeine (tea, coffee, energy drinks), nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, other substances? What is your level of use of the internet, gambling, pornography?

Us

Do you tend to over-function or under-function in relationships?

What will be our strategy for negotiating to find common ground when we have differing views?*

What will be our strategy for addressing one partner bringing something new to the partnership? If one of us is offered a new job, develops a new hobby, or wants to go back to school, how will we address the impact of one person’s preferences or situation on the  partnership? What if one of us develops a troubling behavior or returns to one? What if there is an unexpected pregnancy? What if one of us is diagnosed with a serious illness? How do we negotiate newness?*

How often will we communicate via text, phone, and/or email? At what length? What subjects are okay for text and which ones are better left to talking in person?

What is your definition of privacy? What about us are you open to me talking about with co-workers, friends, and family members?

How often will we have a “date night,” time for us to be together, just us, without friends, family, or children?

How often will we have a “housemates’ meeting” to talk about how the household is running and to talk about, and plan for, future purchases?

What do you think about our ages? Are we close in age, far apart in age? What impact do you think this has now? How about in the future?

Baby

If the baby vomits or the baby’s diaper leaks, who cleans up the mess? Both equally often, one more often than the other? Why?

If a baby, toddler, small child, child, teenager does something that you don’t wish it to do, how do you handle that? What is your discipline policy?

Other people

What is your policy about looking at and/or talking with members of the same sex? The opposite sex? In our friend circle? At work? What is your definition of an affair?

Hardships

If something upsetting has happened, do you tend to internalize (blame yourself) or externalize (blame others)?

If you have had a shock, loss, or experienced a trauma, do you prefer quiet time, to cry, to talk immediately, or something else before we talk? Are there words of comfort you find particularly helpful that I might offer you?

If you are sick, do you prefer alone time, company, or a mix of alone time and time with someone else? In what proportions?

If the biological consequences of illness have made a mess, can you usually clean it up yourself?

If you feel angry, what do you do? Do you hold it in? Do you let it out? When you let it out, what do you do? Do you throw things? Do you hit? This has to be asked: Will you hit me?

Thinking process, values, and dealbreakers

How do you decide the difference between a fact and an opinion?

What are the three most important values to you?

What three traits in your partner do you most hope will remain constant throughout your shared lives?

What actions on the part of your partner might cause an irredeemable breach in the relationship and end it?

(Doing these values and priorities exercises together might be interesting and helpful.)

General

What are three reasons almost anyone would want to stay with you?

What are three reasons almost anyone might find staying with you problematic?

*The Most Important Question of All

How will we navigate and negotiate change, disagreement and conflict?

. . . . .

Other questions and resources for couples

Illustration by Derek Zheng

Last updated 2024-10-26

All content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. Consult a qualified professional for personalized medical, health care, and professional advice.

Consider the following formulation for creating new possibilities for effective relationships, particularly partner relationships.

One person and another person. Each person is a separate, self-aware entity, a whole self, comprised of a true self, a personal history, and beliefs held about relationships taught by family, culture, and the media.

Each person is responsible for identifying and stewarding their own needs, wants, preferences, strengths, values, and priorities and discovering and discarding unhelpful beliefs about relationships.

The relationship. Each person contributes a portion of his/her/their whole self – ideally components of the true self – to mutually co-create a third entity, the relationship. Instead of attempting to shape or transform (or force) oneself or the other to meld personhoods into oneness, the contributions of each work together in synergy to create a novel, separate relationship that enriches each and both.

(Pronoun for both singular and plural, used hereinafter, is they/them.)

Inputs. Each person attempts to add to the relationship what helps it, not hurts it. Each person self-monitors what they contribute to the relationship.

Conflict. Conflict naturally arises from difference. To both protect and foster the co-created third entity – the relationship – each person maintains awareness of self, other, and the relationship, and speaks up when something is awry.

Negotiation. The purpose of negotiation is to – in mutual, well-intentioned synergy – decide what inputs each person can add or remove to protect and foster the relationship. Each person focuses on themselves and their experience of the relationship, rather than on fault-finding or blaming. (Each person’s insufficient self-awareness or relationship-awareness can often be sources of unhelpful inputs to the relationship.) Rather than “working on the relationship,” each person works to become aware of their own helpful and unhelpful inputs to the relationship.

In a relationship where both partners seek and practice self-awareness, sentences using “I” would often outnumber sentences using “you.”

Sources of conflict

Imposition of unconscious, unexamined beliefs about how self, others, and relationships are or should be is a primary source of conflict in relationships. Beliefs can be held so strongly that they are perceived as facts.

(The “power of love” to change people is a common belief in many cultures. Another one is, “They should know what I’m feeling or thinking without me having to tell them.” If we do the numbers on the human condition, particularly on the human brain, we pretty much don’t stand a chance. If we don’t tell them, the odds are enormous that they don’t know.)

Attempts to control or change the other person – to attempt to make them 1) do what is desired, or 2) not do what activates anxiety or fears – is a source of conflict in relationships.

Expectations – non-negotiated, unspoken, and/or mismatched – about the frequency, duration, and method of contact are another source of conflict in relationships.

Unilateral decision-making is a leading cause of relationship discord. Unilateral decision-making is the act of making a decision – the results of which might impact the other person – without, at minimum, prior notice, or, optimally, prior negotiation to increase probabilities of maximizing benefits and minimizing costs for both parties and the relationship.

Unilateral decision-making by one person often activates intense feelings and either-or thinking in the other person. Although perhaps not intended, statements such as these may be implied or perceived:

• “My priorities are more important than your priorities.”
• If I “didn’t think to tell you,” “forgot” to tell you, ghosted you, or no-showed: “You are forgettable and non-important.”
• If I was “afraid to tell you”: “I avoided telling you the truth because my concern for my feeling of fear weighs more heavily than my concern for any troubled feelings you might have.”
• “You can count on me as long as what you want from me is what I want to do.”
• “I care for you less than you care for me.”
• “I have more power in this relationship than you do.”
• “Although we have a spoken or unspoken contract, it’s okay for me to breach it and not say or do as I promised because my needs and wants come first.”
• “It is all about me.”

What the other person may feel, think, and do as a result of learning of, or experiencing the making of a unilateral decision:

• Primary feelings: sad, afraid, mad, surprised
• Secondary feelings: feeling hurt, overwhelmed, disoriented, discounted, de-identified, de-prioritized, devalued, betrayed, used/misused, excluded, deprived, full of rage, resentful, unsafe, doubtful, wary, humiliated, lonely
• Actions: withdrawing, withholding, and shutting down; accusing and criticizing; moving from active, to passive, to indifferent; contemplating exiting the relationship and/or enduring it for reasons other than regard.
• (Primary and secondary feelings are defined in this glossary.)

Why one person may make a unilateral decision without informing the other

• The subject is within the person’s rights to make a solo decision.
• The subject was new to both parties’ awareness and had not been discussed or negotiated.
• In a relationship where people are attempting to change or control the other person – rather than mutually negotiate a relationship – the subject may have been avoided to avoid the other person’s objections or counter-control efforts.
• Deficits in self-awareness and relationship-awareness, unacknowledged disinterest, or intention to hurt may result in unilateral decision-making.

Caveat: Regardless of the reason, unilateral decision-making can be a dealbreaker for relationships. Some relationship thinkers posit the existence of a relationship “bank account.” A single withdrawal that results in a significant sense of unsafety, distrust, or non-mutual power-sharing may require manifold deposits to replace.

To address conflict

• Approach reality and acknowledge the data.
• Are both parties able to agree on what constitutes data, facts, and reality? Is there an attempt to convince, contest, or defend? Since a relationship is based on mutual understanding, further progress may be unlikely.
• For pain caused by insensitivity, apologize.
• Examine intentions. Does each person have the best intentions for the other, regardless of whether or not the relationship exists? What is the purpose of each person’s engagement in the relationship?
• Examine outcomes. Is synergy occurring? Does each person, for the most part, experience their personhoods and lives enriched by engagement in the relationship?
• Attempt to mutually negotiate next steps.

Of possible interest

• Gottmans’ research on dealbreakers in relationships
• Gottmans’ research on antidotes

In addition to other sources, the above text is informed by cognitive theory, the concept of dialectical synergy born of “Opposites can both be true,” a concept central to dialectical behavior therapy, invented by Marsha Linehan, Ph.D., work by the Gottmans, and relational self-awareness theory, formulated by Alexandra Solomon, Ph.D. The accompanying hand-drawn diagram is adapted from Alexandra Solomon’s “My Stuff + Your Stuff = Our Stuff” slide from her training Loving Bravely: Helping Clients Who are Single, Dating, & Single-Again.

This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical or professional advice. Consult a qualified health care professional for personalized medical and professional advice.