Questions to ask before you get married

Before anything practical, there is a question that shapes everything else: what do you each want marriage to be? Not the ceremony, and not the life you are expected to build — but the thing you are actually hoping for.

Some people want companionship above all. Some want a family. Some want to grow in their deen with someone beside them. These are not the same, and they are not automatically compatible just because two people like each other.

If you can answer this honestly with each other before the nikah, most of the harder conversations become easier.

How you each practise matters more than how you each describe practising. Ask what a normal week looks like: the prayers, the habits, the things you do when nobody is watching.

Ask, too, how you each want faith to live inside the marriage. Who leads. What you expect of each other when someone is struggling. Whether either of you would want Islamic study in the home.

Do not look for perfect matching answers. Look for honesty — and for whether you can talk about it kindly.

Money is one of the most common sources of later conflict, and one of the least often discussed before marriage. Ask who will handle what, and how decisions get made about big spending.

Ask about debt, about savings, and about what each of you considers a reasonable purchase. Ask about your expectations of support toward your families of origin.

These conversations are uncomfortable for about ten minutes and then they are useful for years.

You are marrying into a family, and if you are honest, so are they. Ask how much say your families have in your decisions. Ask what traditions you each want to carry forward and which ones you quietly do not.

If your families are from different cultures, ask the harder thing: where do you expect friction, and what will you do when it comes?

Ask how you each behave when you are angry. What you needed most in your own family growing up. Whether either of you has been badly hurt before, and how you would want that to be handled.

Ask what you would do if there is difficulty having children, or if a parent becomes ill, or if one of you has to move for work. You will not have answers. You do not need answers.

You need to know that you can have this conversation with the other person, because you will have versions of it many times inside the marriage.

Marriage is not a decision to find someone who agrees with you. It is a decision to build something together with someone you can talk to, and keep talking to, for a very long time.

If the conversations before marriage are honest and kind, that is the best evidence you have about how the next fifty years will go.