1. How many kids do you want?

Marriage isn’t about celebrating the way you feel about one another on a particular day in June. If you want sex, do it.

Whatever. If you want to live together. Do it. Whatever, but don’t get married just because you think you’re in love. That feeling won’t last without a very good reason to make it last. What I mean by that is that the feeling of overwhelming infatuation that young couples experience is part of a natural process in the brain where binding chemicals are released that make you addicted to one another. You make those chemicals for about two years as you’re growing closer together. Then, as they say, the honeymoon is over, and the chemical release stops and the routine gets boring. At seven years, you actually become resistant to it. It’s a cruel flaw in the design, but you actually start to become repelled by one another. This is the seven year itch, and it is when many couples start to collapse — fall out of love. That’s why marriage should not be about celebrating your love.

It’s an institution designed to bring about future generations, and raise them in stable and healthy environments where their needs, including their discipline, come first. If you enter into a marriage with the idea that it is going to be happy forever, then first of all, you’re going to be disappointed and eventually leave the marriage, and two, you’re going avoid having children. Children aren’t always fun. They are a time sink, they stink, they cry, and they never mind you. Why would anyone want something that horrible?

So if you’re thinking of getting married, it needs to not be about love, or fun, or happiness, but with the realization that at some point, you’re probably going to want kids

With that thinking in mind, this person who you love, enjoy, and who makes you happy, could you imagine them as a parent? If you can’t, or if the thought of raising a child with that person scares you… you need to rethink this because whether you’re ready or not, if their beloved doesn’t have faith in them to be parents, then they aren’t ready to be someone’s spouse.

How many kids do you want?

2. What kind of house will we live in?

May be she want the convenience of the city, you go for country side because you are farmer, work at home, you own workshops etc. Again you want a house by the lake… 

When you start talking about the kind of house you want, what you’re really asking is what kind of lifestyle you imagine yourself in. This matters because if you can’t design a home together, you can’t design a life together either.

You need to have conversations about the size of the yard, as that tells you what you kind of neighborhood you want and what you want to use the yard for. You need to ask about pets, if you want them and if your S/O is a “part of the family” person. You need to find out if they prioritize a scrapbooking room, a hunting trophy room, or a gaming entertainment center. You need to know about the number of bedrooms because of that kids question, but also if they are the types of people who plan on having guests stay over often or will treat your family badly.

There needs to be a common vision for what daily life should look like, a goal which both partners can set their sites to. From there, it will be easier to work towards that goal and no disastrous surprises that come when you find out what the other one really wants. Both of you need to have the exercise of planning out your dream house together, not necessarily drafting it out on paper, but know it in your minds. If the two of you can’t agree on that abstract, or if the two of you can’t imagine living together in that way, then you’re heading in two different paths on your journey through the rest of your lives.

3. Do you want to bless the meal?

Religion is important. It’s important if you have it. It’s important if you don’t. Holding two separate existential realities in a house is a recipe for disaster in the marriage.

….. Inter faith marriages rarely last. Maybe yours did, but your testimony doesn’t fit with story of most other people.

For example, one book, Til Faith do us Part, a study on nothing but interfaith marriages, shows that such marriages are on the rise, but that there are many problems that come with such unions. What stood out, was the books findings on happiness and divorce.

Couples in interfaith marriages are, on average, less happy than same-faith ones. In certain faith-combinations they are more likely to divorce. While roughly a third of all evangelicals’ marriages end up in divorce, that climbs to nearly half for marriages between evangelicals and non-evangelicals. It is especially high for evangelicals married to someone with no religion–61%.

Most of our world view is informed by our understanding of the transcendental. If we hold certain beliefs, we will come to certain assumptions about everything from human nature to how we vote, to our individual purposes in this world, to how we should discipline our children. If two people are fundamentally different in this regard, they will arrive at fundamentally different, often dangerously contradictory ways of making decisions. As our marriages are nothing but a constant process of solving thousands of tiny problems in the pursuit of the lifelong goal of mutual prosperity and fulfillment, all of those little philosophical crash points are sources of friction in the marriage.

This is not even considering the consequences of stress in negotiating the actual problems of faith themselves. If you love your husband, an atheist(doesnt believe in God), but you are a Christian, it would pain you to imagine not experiencing eternity in heaven. If you’re an atheist, you hate the idea of your wife giving her time and both of your money to a charity based on what you believe as lies and superstition. Both of you don’t want your kids to believe as the other believes. That’s going to cause a major rift in your marriage.

And this confusion and anxiety is only going to add profound stress on the children, again, the point of what marriage is about.

This isn’t saying that you shouldn’t be friends with people of different religions, or different denominations, or who simply go to a different church, or no church at all.   

You don’t have to be married to them. There are few things that I would honestly say do not do but I would strongly recommend not entering into a marriage with someone who does not view the existential meaning of the universe the way you do.

If you are young, you may not think that much about it, but as you age, as you have kids and see a world around them that scares you, and as you near the end of your own journey; religion, God, faith, and what lies beyond will be something you think about more.

You’ll want someone who you’ve given your life to be able to walk with you on that journey, and not be someone who’s walked into eternity heading in a different direction..

4. Should we split the bill?

You’re at dinner on your first date. Before the meal is over, a ritual is played out to test your values. Who pays? Will he insist on paying, or will she not be owing to a man?

Fine, but what about after you say, “I do”? Who pays then?

Today, a family finds it hard to survive with only one partner working while the other manages the home. To afford the “necessities” of today, including a home, two vehicles, cell phone plans, internet plans, and Premium Tv packages. This is before we even consider credit card and college loans. Who pays for all of this?

I know that this isn’t for everyone. This is especially true today where divorce looms before the nuptials even begin and not entering into the institution without a prenup is considered unwise. There are questions to be answered. If she incurred tens of thousands in college debt, why should he pay for that? Of course, then she must get a job which will make it harder for children. What if he has a gambling problem? Is she supposed to pay that, or is it just his problem? In a world where equality is everything, how can two people ever truly be married, when inequalities between the two are certain?

Likewise, in such a marriage where there are separate accounts, who really owns the assets?

What must be answered, however, is if you would trust someone with your money. Is this person responsible, or will they be a financial burden for the rest of your lives? Will you be supporting them unjustly, or will they contribute meaningfully to the marriage in a way that money can’t measure?

These are rhetorical and we aren’t looking to see how you solve those problems. It’s just making the point that marriage means a marriage of the finances, or at least accounting for them as something that needs to be considered along with everything before two are wed.

5. Would you die for me?

So this question is especially looking to the women. If you were to ask the man you’re considering the role of your husband, as well as the father of your children, would you have faith that he would place his life second to yours?

What it is asking, is if this person can make themselves second to the marriage. Is a person so selfish that they only think of themselves, and if choosing between themselves or their family, which do they choose?

Think of it this way. Say, you have something simple, like a new job opportunity. Say it is a great job, a dream job, but say that it damages the other person, say by taking them away from nearby family, a job they love and have opportunities within, or would upset the stability of the family by moving children from schools where they are successful, growing, and happy? What that means is, would this opportunity only be good for them?

Something very difficult for modern people to grasp is that death is a necessary part of marriage.

We have the possibility to grow into many people. Our choices branch out into many different potential choices, on and on. Depending on the choices you make, you might end this life a completely different person, perhaps a near infinite number of different people.

But to be in a marriage, you must not only be two people able to live as one on your wedding day, you must remain people who can love each other and work together for the rest of your lives. What this means is that many of the potential yous which you could grow into, those which would be damaging to your marriage, must be removed as possibilities. Marriage means closing doors to keep others open.

What’s especially difficult is the prospect of what it takes to stay a successful marriage; to kill off those potential selves you might become. Just as important, both of you must engage in this act every day. Both of you must kill off the potential selves which will eventually grow from every choice you will ever make that doesn’t lead to a stronger, healthier marriage. If you can’t manage to do that, to face that little death of a potential path you willingly give up for a lifetime with another, you can’t be married. And just as important, if you can’t know that that other person places being in a lifelong commitment to you than whatever they will become, that they aren’t so in love with themselves to place you and your marriage before themselves, then you can’t be married to them. They can only be married to themselves.

If the person you’re set to be married can’t willingly die to the potential of a life that isn’t best for the both of you, if it only serves them instead of what you’ve created together, if they can’t kill that part of themselves… or if you can’t do the same, you’re not ready for marriage.

• Can I be happy with this person?

Dating shouldn’t be about finding someone “who makes you happy.” Happiness is fleeting(lasting for a very short time.). It’s directly proportional to the amount of butterflies you get in your stomach when she looks at you.

You want to know why you get butterflies in your stomach? It will be a let down. It isn’t because you love each other. Butterflies is what happens after your brain receives a sudden hit of adrenaline. It tells your stomach to process faster, because it predicts it will need the energy soon. Your brain is responding to her face the same way it would a threat in the wild or the possibility of a big kill. You’re scared. You’re excited. But that isn’t love.

You see, eventually, your body will get used to this experience and know exactly what is necessary for it. You won’t get butterflies anymore because your parasympathetic nervous system will no longer view her gaze as magical anymore. Likewise, all the other changes in your brain will take place too, making you grow chemically cold to one another. There can still be happiness, but you won’t respond to that person like a drug. You won’t feel that passion like a hit and you’ll miss that.

If that was all you were basing your future on, the celebration of the temporary state of bliss… your marriage won’t last as bliss itself is a fleeting thing.

Do I really love this person?

So a much more important question is if this person is someone who can pass the other tests, the real tests that produce the kinds of threats to a marriage that break them.

While bliss (perfect happiness; great joy) dies, love grows with time, if you can survive together long enough for that love to nurture from a kindling puff of smoke to a long burning coal keeping you warm deep into winter night’s cold. It’s cold and it’s heartless, but the most loving thing you can do to someone may be to let them know why you can never be.

Perhaps they will change and grow, so that they can be someone right for someone else.

But to marry someone who isn’t right for you, who isn’t ready to be married, that doesn’t show you really love them or even that you love yourself. It shows that what you love is the idea of being married, and that’s selfish, and self destructive.

I feel like if more couples get these questions right, then marriages will be better, stronger, and longer lasting. In turn, society will be better off, as fewer people will be trapped in misery and children grow up with better values. Couples might even be happier as major sources of friction in marriage will be removed. Life isn’t about happiness, and marriage isn’t even about love. Those are pleasant side effects of knowing what your purpose is and working towards it with someone who cares as much as your purpose as you do, and whose purpose you care about as much as your own.

Marriage isn’t about celebrating the way you feel on a certain day. It’s about seeking a mutual vision found from both of you knowing your purposes for being, and just as importantly, sharing in the goal of helping those you bring into this world find theirs, as well.

End.

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