20 Serious Questions to Ask Before Marriage (and Why a Therapist Asks Them Too)

Getting engaged is exciting, and it usually comes with a flood of decisions: the venue, the guest list, the dress. What often gets less attention are the deeper questions to ask before you get married, the ones that shape the emotional bond you'll be building your life on.

If you've started searching questions to ask before getting married, or wondering what you actually know about your future spouse beneath the day-to-day, you're already asking the right kind of question.

I'm Sherriden Brown, a Registered Psychotherapist in Mississauga specializing in premarital counselling through an Emotionally Focused Therapy lens. Before couples are tying the knot, I like to sit down with them and explore the questions that don't come up naturally during wedding planning: not just what you'll decide, but how you'll turn toward each other emotionally while you're deciding it.

These aren't trick questions or a pass-fail test, and the research backs up why they're worth asking: couples who go through structured premarital education have measurably lower divorce rates in long-term studies than couples who don't. These 20 questions are an invitation to get honest about the emotional needs, fears, and patterns that quietly shape a marriage.

In this guide, we'll walk through 20 key questions to ask before marriage, organized into eight areas that come up again and again in premarital counselling, starting with the emotional bond itself, then conflict, money, family, day-to-day life, intimacy, children, and your shared vision for the future. Along the way, I'll explain why a therapist asks these particular questions, not just what to ask.

Why a Therapist Asks These Questions Too



It might seem like these are just conversation-starters you could cover over dinner. In premarital counselling, my focus isn't on collecting your answers like a checklist. It's on understanding your emotional bond: how you each experience closeness, what you're afraid of losing, and the interaction cycle you fall into when one or both of you feels threatened or unheard.

A dinner conversation tends to stop as soon as things get a little uncomfortable. In a session, I can slow things down, notice what's happening underneath the words, and help you both stay in the conversation long enough to actually reach each other, especially on the topics you'd normally avoid.

From an attachment perspective, a lot of what makes a marriage work isn't about agreeing on every logistical detail. It's about knowing how to reach for each other, and respond, when it matters most. That emotional responsiveness is what I'm really listening for as you work through these questions together.

Some of these are essential questions almost every couple benefits from, regardless of how long you've been together. Others will feel more or less important depending on your specific relationship. Either way, the goal isn't a perfect scorecard, it's a habit of honest emotional conversation you'll keep using long after the wedding.

Questions About Your Emotional Bond and Attachment Needs

Before the practical logistics, I like couples to sit with the questions underneath everything else: how safe you feel reaching for each other emotionally, and what you each need to feel that safety.

1. What do you need most from me when you're hurting or afraid, even if you can't say it directly in the moment?

2. How do you know when I need reassurance, and how would you want me to actually ask for it?

3. What happens for you, emotionally, when you feel like I've pulled away, even briefly?

These questions get at your attachment needs directly, the things that, left unspoken, tend to resurface later as the emotional cycle underneath your conflict.

Most couples have never actually put these into words before, even after years together. It's not because the need isn't there, it's because daily life rarely creates space to ask something this direct. Premarital counselling, or simply a slower conversation at home, can create that space.

Questions About How You Handle Conflict

Conflict style is one of the first things I explore with any couple, not the topic you fight about, but the emotional pattern, or interaction cycle, you fall into once the fight starts.

4. What do you usually feel underneath the anger when we argue: hurt, fear, dismissal, something else?

5. When you feel criticized, what's your instinct: to defend yourself, go quiet and withdraw, or something in between?

6. When we disagree about something big, how do we want to handle it so neither of us feels dismissed?

Every couple experiences conflict. What separates healthy relationships from struggling ones isn't the absence of disagreement, it's whether both partners feel safe enough to stay in the conversation instead of falling into a pursue-withdraw pattern, where one partner reaches and the other retreats, and both end up feeling more alone.

This is also where premarital counselling helps most concretely. Most couples don't need to learn to never disagree. They need to recognize their own cycle early enough to interrupt it.

In practice, this often means learning to name the softer emotion, the hurt or fear, underneath the anger, out loud, in the moment, rather than after things have already escalated. That single shift changes how most arguments unfold.

Questions About Money and Financial Values

7. What does financial security actually mean to your sense of safety in this relationship, not just the numbers?

8. How were money and financial security talked about, or not talked about, in each of our families?

Money conflicts are rarely just about money. They're often about security, control, or fairness, emotional needs worth naming clearly before they show up disguised as an argument about a credit card statement.

Couples with very different financial upbringings sometimes assume their partner shares the same instincts around saving, spending, or debt. Naming those differences directly, and the feelings attached to them, tends to prevent a lot of friction later.

Questions About Family, In-Laws, and Support Systems

9. What does support from each other look like when one of our families is going through something hard?

10. How involved do we each want our extended families to be in our day-to-day life?

Family relationships don't disappear once you're married; they become part of your shared emotional world. This is also a good place to talk honestly about past relationships, not for the details, but for what you each learned about your own attachment patterns.

Questions About Roles and Day-to-Day Life

11. What makes you feel supported by me day to day, versus feeling like you're carrying things alone?

12. What core values do we each want to guide us, on both the big stuff and the small stuff?

These can feel like the most practical questions on this list, but underneath them is the same emotional question as everything else: do I feel like a team with you, or like I'm managing this on my own?

Shared values often show up more clearly in these day-to-day questions than in the big philosophical ones. How you actually spend an ordinary Tuesday evening says as much about your emotional priorities as any conversation about long-term goals.

Questions About Intimacy and Feeling Loved

13. What's your love language, and how would you like me to show up for you on an ordinary day?

14. What makes you feel most loved, especially when nothing special is happening?

15. How comfortable are we talking honestly about our sex life, now and as it naturally changes over time?

Intimacy isn't only physical. Feeling loved often comes down to small, specific things, a particular kind of attention or reassurance, that are easy to miss if you've never actually asked. Learning each other's love languages, and using that information day to day, is one of the simplest ways to keep reaching for each other emotionally, even in ordinary weeks.

Questions About Children and Family Planning

16. Do we both want children, and if so, roughly how many?

17. If we can't have biological children, how do we feel about paths like adoption or surrogacy?

Even couples who feel aligned on wanting kids sometimes discover, once they actually sit with these questions, that they've been picturing different timelines or family sizes without ever saying so out loud.

It's worth being specific here. “We both want children” can still mean very different things if one of you is picturing one child and the other is picturing a much bigger family. Specificity now saves a harder, more emotional conversation later.

Questions About Your Shared Vision for the Future

18. What does building a life together actually look like to each of us, five and ten years from now?

19. Are there any deal-breakers, for either of us, that we haven't said out loud yet?

20. What would it mean to us to still feel emotionally like a team, decades into this marriage?

This last set of questions is often the most emotional, and the most important. It's less about having identical answers and more about knowing you're building toward the same emotional bond, and are willing to keep reaching for each other as life changes.

It also helps to talk about what you'll each need emotionally when life doesn't go according to plan, a job loss, a health scare, a move you didn't expect. You can't prepare for every scenario, but you can agree on how you want to show up for each other emotionally before you're actually in one.

Frequently Asked Questions About Premarital Questions

What if we don't agree on the answers to some of these questions?

Disagreement isn't a red flag by itself. What matters more is whether you can talk through it with respect and stay curious about your partner's perspective instead of trying to win.

Do we need to ask all 20 questions in one sitting?

Not at all. Spread them out over several conversations. There's no rush, and rushing tends to produce shallow answers that don't hold up later.

Should we do this before or after getting engaged?

Either works. Some couples prefer these conversations before getting engaged; others wait until wedding planning is underway. What matters is having them before the wedding, not after.

What if one of us feels ready for marriage and the other doesn't?

That's worth exploring together, ideally with support, rather than pushing past it. Feeling unready isn't the same as being wrong for each other.

Is premarital counselling only for couples with problems?

No. Many couples I work with have healthy relationships and simply want a strong emotional foundation before life together gets more complicated.

How many sessions does premarital counselling usually take?

It varies by couple, and I'd rather adjust to what you actually need than promise a fixed number upfront. Some couples want a handful of focused sessions; others prefer a longer process.

What if we're already living together, does this still matter?

Yes. Living together answers some day-to-day questions but rarely covers the deeper emotional and attachment questions that these are designed to surface.

Getting Ready for the Rest of Your Life, Together

These 20 questions won't cover everything you'll eventually face as a married couple, nothing could. But working through them together, honestly and without rushing, gives you real practice at the thing that actually predicts a healthy marriage: staying emotionally reachable for each other, on the big stuff and the small stuff alike.

Whether you call it premarital counseling or premarital counselling, the research is consistent: couples who do this kind of preparation tend to enter marriage with clearer expectations and a stronger emotional foundation.

If you'd rather work through these questions with support in the room, premarital counselling gives you the space to do that. Learn more about premarital counselling at My Growth Counselling, or explore relationship counselling more broadly.

Ready to talk it through? Book your free 15-minute consultation, and let's talk about what preparing for marriage together could look like for you two.