Conversations to have before marriage

Episode Summary of “Conversations to have before marriage”

Welcome to another enlightening episode of The Communicate & Connect Podcast for Military Relationships, your go-to source for deepening connections and enhancing communication with your partner. I’m your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, a dedicated military marriage counselor, and I’m thrilled to have you join us for episode 21. Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s pivotal for anyone on the brink of marriage or looking to strengthen their existing relationship: “Conversations to Have Before Marriage.” As we step into the vibrant wedding season, it’s more important than ever to lay a solid foundation for your marital journey.

Whether you’re planning a wedding, in the early stages of marriage, or have been together for years without addressing these crucial points, our comprehensive guide is designed to foster open communication and enhance your partnership.

Free Relationship Pattern Assessment

Many couples assume they have a communication problem when they’re actually stuck in a relationship pattern that keeps creating the same conflict.

Take the free Relationship Pattern Assessment to discover what pattern may be keeping you stuck and learn what to focus on next.

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Episode Transcript for “Conversations to have before marriage”

Liz [00:00:02]:
This podcast is sponsored by Communicate and Connect Counseling, where we have a team of therapists who provide individual, couples, and family therapy services, all tailored to meet the needs of military and veteran families. To learn more about our services, visit www.communicateandconnect.com.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:00:28]:
Welcome to the Communicate and Connect Podcast for Milit Relationships with your host, Elizabeth Polinski, a military marriage counselor. If this is your first time listening to the Communicate and Connect podcast, please take a second to go, rate, review and subscribe to make sure you get all our future episodes. We also really want to know what it is you love about our podcast. And if for some reason you’re not loving it, we want to know that too, because we’re committed to providing the best quality content to help you improve your relationships.

Liz [00:00:58]:
Foreign you’re listening to episode 21, conversations to have Before Marriage. Hey everyone, I’m Liz. Welcome back to the Communicate and Connect podcast. Today we’re going to talk about conversations to have before marriage and I’m just going to start off with talking a little bit about how this episode came to be. So for starters, it’s wedding season now and that’s kind of exciting, especially for everybody who postponed their weddings due to Covid.

Now that people are getting vaccinated more, you know, people are traveling and doing all the weddings and in fact I just got back from a wedding earlier this week and a couple weeks ago I had a wedding photographer reach out to me asking me to provide some tips for couples who were getting married on how to kind of prepare for marriage and start their marriage on the right foot. And so I actually created an entire checklist for her. And that is what kind of, I don’t know, motivated me to do this series.

Liz [00:02:20]:
If you want to get the checklist and download it, you can see this episode’s show notes that’ll be downloadable for you there. Again, go to communicateandconnectpodcast.com and just look for episode 21 and you can download it. But I’m going to do an 11 part series on the podcast going over these things that I think are pretty foundational things to do as a couple to start your marriage off on the right foot and get ready to do to do marriage and do it well. So that is how this all started.

And so I, I think this can be really helpful for people even if you’ve been been already married for a long time because it is kind of shocking to me how many people come to see me in couples therapy and they haven’t talked about some of these things. That I would have thought would, would be kind of foundational things that they would have discussed before they got married. This is a surprisingly common thing. So if you are still married the, or are currently married, these can be, still be applicable to you.

Liz [00:03:33]:
And I think oftentimes it helps to kind of go back to the beginning and the beginning foundational blocks when wanting to also repair a relationship. So today we’re talking about conversations to have before marriage. This is important because I, I’ve seen a lot of couples get either divorced or they break up if they weren’t married because one person wanted kids and another one didn’t. I’ve also seen it where one person wanted to get married and the other one didn’t.

And that was really important to the person who wanted to get married. I’ve also seen couples break up because one person wanted to be non monogamous and the other one wanted to be monogamous. So there are lots of things that are kind of not really able to come to, you know, a middle ground on, I don’t know that there’s a huge middle ground space on whether or not to get married or whether or not to have kids or whether or not to be monogamous. Those are often very deeply held views that, that people have.

Liz [00:04:51]:
So they are good to talk about before you get married. And in fact I, I even had a relationship that ended because of this. So I, I, it was before my husband, but I was dating somebody and for me it was career. So career, my career goals are something that I’m really passionate. Had told my partner at that time, you know, I want to go work at this place. This is my dream job. This is what I’m trying to go do. But then it took me, I would say a year and a half, maybe two years to get that job.

Liz [00:05:30]:
He was all on board for moving with me to pursue that job right up until it was time to move. And then he decided no, he didn’t want to move, he wanted to stay where he was. And he had originally said he wanted kids and then told me he didn’t want kids. And so I am, you know, kind of glad that I found those things out before we got married because both of those are really important to me.

And clearly that relationship would not, would not work if he didn’t want kids and he was not up for, for following me in my career goals. So again, these are things to know ahead of time. And so there are three, three conversations that I think are, are really important to have. And just because I Feel like it’s so important.

Military Couples Career Planning

Liz [00:06:24]:
I’m going to start off with career goals and career flexibility because I think this is also really important for military couples. And like I. Like I just said, career goals are really important to me. And this is something that my husband and I had to talk a lot about before we got married, both the two of us, and then also with our premarital couples counselor, because I really like what I do and I want to keep. Keep doing what I’m doing. So things to talk about in this area are, what are each of your career goals?

So let’s just go with assuming somebody’s in the military for, for the purpose of this. So does the military person, do they want to retire from the military, or are they looking to leave the military after a few years? If they’re going to leave, do they have an idea of what they want to do afterwards? Do they have an idea of what career they want to pursue if they don’t stay in the military?

Those are important to know. And then for the person who is not in the military, what are your career goals? If you’re, if you’re still trying to figure out what you want to do, then that lets you guys have a lot of flexibility.

Liz [00:07:45]:
But if you know, like, I want to do this, how can you pursue that goal while you are married to somebody in the military? Some people can. Thankfully, I am, I am able to, at least as a marriage counselor for that part of my career dreams, I’m able to do that anywhere in the United States. And so that’s really nice for me that I can still pursue, that I can move around and still follow, follow most of my career goals.

But other people can’t do that. They have less common career choices or that it’s harder to find an employer in different areas based on what you do. And so those are things to be thinking about. Let’s say that you, your partner, does leave the military. How open are they to following you in your career goals versus how much do they want to start a new second career outside of the military? These are things to know as well.

Liz [00:08:51]:
I know. I’ve also seen couples where one person, it was really important that they be around family, and the other person got like a super amazing dream job opportunity. And it was a source of stress and conflict for the couple whether or not to move and be away from family in order to support this, this person’s career dreams. And so how flexible are both of you to moving for one person’s career goals? How flexible is your career Goals? Can your dream job move with you?

Can you do that wherever you are or not? Yeah, this is. This is just a really big thing that I think is incredibly important to talk about because it does have to do with a lot of personal fulfillment and individual identity. And those are important things to continue to have even in a marriage. So the second thing that I think is really important to talk about is kids. And it is surprising how many people don’t talk about this before they get married.

Essential Pre-Marital Talks: Kids & Secrets

Liz [00:10:06]:
So knowing whether or not you both want to have kids is important to know. If one of you really does not want to have kids, that’s important to know. I think it’s also really important to talk about what if you cannot have kids for whatever reason? Some people feel really strongly that they want to have biological kids. And so if you can’t have biological kids, are you open to being a foster parent? Are you open to adoption? Are you wanting to just not have.

Have kids? What is the plan together if you can’t have biological kids and how you both want to handle that? And then the third conversation that I think is really important to have before you get married is getting rid secrets. It’s just so much more painful, I think, after you get married to then find out there was a big secret in the relationship. I know that, that bringing secrets to light can be very challenging and hard and painful for both people.

And if it feels like you can’t really do that on your own, then I would go see a couples counselor or a premarital couples counselor so they can help you work through that and heal from a secret and discuss how you might navigate that in your marriage.

Liz [00:11:29]:
And so there are lots of different types of secrets. I think, you know, the kind of obvious one would be cheating or affairs. That is something that ideally it would be so lovely if you could heal from that before you get married. So that way you’re starting the marriage part of your relationship off really strong and in a healed place. Other types of secrets, though, are. Could be financial secrets, gambling problem, having a lot of debt that you guys haven’t talked about, things like that. That is probably pretty important to talk about. Habits, habits around money.

Liz [00:12:12]:
This is like a little side caveat are something to talk about as well. And I’m going to do a whole episode on money in a couple of. In a couple of episodes and talk about a couple finances. But for sure, if you’re keeping a secret around money, you probably want to talk about that and get that out in the open before you get married. Other Secrets have to do maybe with substance use.

I knew one person who everything was great and then they got married and then they discovered that their partner was using a lot of drugs. And so, you know, there, there are times where there is no way to know whether or not your partner has kind of laid it all out on the line for you and giving you all the information you need to know in order to get married. And that can be, that could be frustrating to then find out something later on after you guys are married.

Liz [00:13:10]:
But I think, I mean, if you’re listening to this podcast, then I’m assuming you’re being really intentional about your relationships and hopefully the two of you are having a lot of these conversations going through this checklist I created in your getting ready to get married phase. And if both of you are investing and transparent, then hopefully you can get all the secrets out ahead of time and heal heal from any of them before the marriage starts.

Other things to talk about would be sex, specifically the monogamy or non monogamy type of conversation. If you guys are open to having romantic or sexual encounters with other people outside of your marriage or not. Kind of having a baseline for how you both feel about that. Sometimes people’s feelings about that change over time, but kind of just knowing ahead of time is a positive. Along with that would be just getting used to talking about sex. Sex can be a very difficult conversation for couples to have.

Balancing Sex Life After Kids

Liz [00:14:24]:
How do you guys want to handle sex when, when you guys first have kids? If you’re having kids? Because that is a time where it’s really challenging for couples and sex can get put on the back burner. What do you want to do? Do you, you just want to make sure it’s an conversation that you guys are having. What feels like a healthy sex life for you in a marriage versus one where either of you would feel really deprived. Those are, those are things to talk about as well.

And so your action item for this episode is to talk with your partner and discuss kids, career, sex and money. And you’ll want to look out for my upcoming episode that’ll be all about couple finances to help with your conversation around money. But this is what I want you to go talk about with your partner. Whether you are, you know, engaged or married, in a long term committed relationship, or have been married for many, many years, these are things to talk about.

Liz [00:15:33]:
So go talk about them. And if you want to work through the checklist faster, then you can again see the show notes, download the Getting Ready for Marriage and Starting off Marriage well checklist. And yeah, until next time.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:16:00]:
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so Please take a second to go rate, review and subscribe so you get all of our future episodes. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for our FREE 10-week relationship email course.

This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it. While I am a therapist, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not considered therapy and it should also not be a replacement for therapy. If you think you need a professional of any kind, you should definitely go find one. Until next time.