45 questions to ask before getting engaged, organized by the research

Three rules, borrowed from how researchers and counselors actually run these conversations:

• Write alone first. For the big ones, each of you writes your honest answer privately before you talk. Joint conversations produce negotiated answers; separate writing produces true ones. This is the core design of our assessment, and it comes from decades of clinical practice.
• One topic per sitting. Forty-five questions in one night is an interrogation. One category over dinner is a conversation.
• Understanding before persuading. Round one of every topic is only for understanding what your partner actually thinks. Save the negotiating for round two, another day.

Why before the engagement? Because a 13-year study that followed couples from courtship onward (the PAIR project) found that the patterns visible while dating already predicted who stayed married, who stayed happy, and how quickly failing marriages ended. The information exists now. After the ring, sunk costs make it harder to use.

1. What is the most money has ever stressed you?
2. What is your earliest memory involving money, and what did it teach you?
3. What do you actually earn, owe, and have saved? Have we ever said the real numbers out loud?
4. If one of us earned three times what the other earns, how should spending decisions work?
5. What would you do with a surprise $20,000: save, invest, spend, give, or some mix?
6. Is there any money behavior of mine that quietly worries you?

7. Do you want children? Not "someday, probably": what is your honest current answer, including "I am not sure"?
8. If yes, roughly when, and what would need to be true first?
9. If we could not have biological children, what would we want to do?
10. Where do you want to be living in five years, and how negotiable is that?
11. Whose career takes priority if they ever directly conflict, and how would we decide?
12. What do we do when a parent of ours needs long-term care?

13. What did conflict look like in your childhood home, and what did you learn to do when it started?
14. What do I do during arguments that makes things worse for you?
15. How do you know when you are too flooded to keep talking, and what should I do then?
16. After a fight, what actually helps you reconnect: words, touch, space, humor?
17. Is there a disagreement we keep having that never gets resolved? What is it really about?
18. Can you remember a time I tried to make peace mid-argument and you accepted it? A time you could not?

Why this section is here: observational research by Gottman and Levenson found that how couples conduct conflict, especially whether contempt appears and whether repair attempts get accepted, distinguished the couples who lasted from those who did not. Read more in our guide to the Four Horsemen.

19. What would you do if your parent repeatedly criticized me?
20. What does "putting each other first" mean once we are married, concretely, with your family?
21. How often do you imagine seeing each family, and what do holidays look like?
22. What is one pattern from your family you are determined not to repeat?
23. Is there anything about my family that worries you? (Ask this one gently, and mean it.)

24. What does a fair division of housework actually look like, in hours, not vibes?
25. How important is religion or spiritual practice to you, and what do you hope it looks like in our home and for any children?
26. What would you consider a betrayal, besides the obvious?
27. How much money can either of us spend without checking in?
28. What does a great ordinary Saturday look like to you in ten years?

29. Are you happy with our physical relationship? What would you change if you could?
30. How do we handle it when our desire levels differ for a season?
31. What makes you feel most loved, and are you actually getting it from me?
32. When I am talking and you pick up your phone, what is usually going on?
33. What is something you have wanted to tell me but have not found the moment for?

34. Are you building your future plans around this relationship, or alongside it?
35. Is any part of you keeping options open? (Hard to ask. Worth it.)
36. Do you believe I am fully committed? What have I done that makes you sure or unsure?
37. When things get really hard someday, what do you commit to doing before considering leaving?
38. Why marriage, for you? What does it add that we do not already have?
39. What would make you proudest about us at our 25th anniversary?

Why this section is here: across 43 longitudinal studies, perceived partner commitment was among the strongest predictors of relationship quality, stronger than personality traits. Believing your partner is all-in is built from hearing it, not inferring it.

40. If I never changed a single habit you dislike, would you still choose this?
41. Is there anything you are hoping marriage will fix?
42. Have you told me the hardest thing about your past that affects us?
43. If my answer on children turned out to be the opposite of yours, what would you do?
44. What would you need to see in the next year to be certain?
45. Are we choosing this, or has it just been the next step? How do you know?

Questions surface positions. They do not show you the thing research says matters even more: how the two of you behave when the answers collide. That is why our assessment pairs a questionnaire with six guided scenario conversations, where you each write your honest response privately, reveal them at the same moment, and then talk, with the behavioral patterns from that conversation feeding your results. A list is a very good start. A structured conversation is the real diagnostic.

Turn this list into an evening

The Marriage Blueprint is a free, research-grounded assessment you take as a couple: questionnaires across eleven dimensions, then six guided scenario conversations, then a couple profile, conflict portrait, and action plan. No account, no email; answers stay on your devices. Take the test together, or start solo with the 3-minute pattern quiz.

When should we ask these questions?

Before the engagement, while the decision is genuinely open. The research is blunt on timing: courtship-stage patterns already predict long-term outcomes, and it is easier to act on what you learn before the ring changes the stakes.

Do we need to agree on everything?

No. Most couple conflicts are perpetual and get managed, not solved. What you need is to know where you differ, whether any difference sits on a dealbreaker (children is the big one), and whether you can discuss the differences without contempt or shutdown.

What if the answers scare us?

A scary answer found now is a gift compared to the same answer at year five. Most gaps are workable with explicit conversation or a few sessions with a counselor. True dealbreaker misalignment deserves honesty, not hope.

Related reading

Does premarital counseling work? · How to talk about money before marriage · Living together before marriage: what the research says