Some Issues You Both Need to Sort Out Before You Marry
A few days ago, I had the chance to have a videocon meeting with an unmarried couple at our church to catch-up and to pray. The call was occasioned by what was a mutually perceived need on their part for godly counsel and guidance on the future of their relationship. This is a good thing and we need to encourage this kind of dialogue and access to pastoral support for the people in our churches. But since I am by no means a seasoned ‘Dr Love’ with decades of wisdom and experience to share, I came up with some talking points for us to consider as we discussed their situation and concerns.
I first asked them both to list seven words down as handles on the issues that they need to be talking about and sorting out as a couple serious about the prospect of getting married one day (upon further reflection, I added two more to the list so there’s seven now): Faith, Fondness, Finances, Family, Fidelity, Future, and Favorites. And then beside these words I asked them each to give a number rating based on a scale of one to five with five being ‘we are in complete agreement on this’ and one being ‘we are in complete disagreement on this.’ The point of the exercise was to reveal their answers one by one as we proceeded with our conversation so as to identify areas that needed more or less sorting out. The aim, of course, was to arrive at at least a number four or five agreement on these issues. All human relationships, after all, are a study in compromise and accommodation.
At the end of our call together both of them said that the approach that I employed had been helpful. Thank God! So, in that vein, allow me to share these seven issues that I believe a man and a woman in an exclusive relationship, and thinking about the prospect of marriage, ought to sort out before they marry.
1. Faith
This is the no most basic and most ‘no brainer’ of the issues that a Christian couple needs to sort out. Do you believe the same things? Are you both committed to Christ, His gospel, His mission, and His church? In my opinion, a level 5 agreement on this issue is imperative. If you guys don’t believe the same Christ and are not both united to Him by faith, then what kind of union do you expect there to be between the two of you down the road? No, sort out your faith issues well in advance of even any prospect of being together, let alone marrying!
If you guys don’t believe the same Christ and are not both united to Him by faith, then what kind of union do you expect there to be between the two of you down the road?
Less urgent but also important on this front is, after sorting out that you both are faithful Christians seeking to live under the gracious reign of Christ, working out differences in terms of your respective church traditions (if any). A prominent example might be differences in the way that you both might view the place of children in the church and how that might touch on the validity of baptizing covenant children. Trust me, this does come up and is rightly a deal-breaker.
2. Fondness
This one, too, is rather self-explanatory and basic. If you are going to be in a relationship that will one day lead to marriage, you better be sorting out how much you really want to be together and how much of each other you’re willing to live with. So, dear sir, are you fond of her? How about you, dear lady, do you like him? Is this real life or is this just fantasy? Do you have a genuine self-giving love toward each other under Christ? Answer 5 here before moving on.
3. Finances
Here we begin to get into more nitty-gritty practical considerations. How similar are you in your views on topics such as insurance, savings, and stewardship? If there is a financial/economic disparity between your current situations, have you talked about how this is going to play out in the future and are there plans in place to be sustainable and sufficient as time progressess? Do you have existing dependents who would continue to need your support once you are married? Do you have outstanding debts and what are your plans of paying these off? Also sort out how you value different things differently. The aim here is to arrive at the same ‘money-sense’ moving forward. Let me also register here, at this point, my objection to the idea of unmarried couples pooling their financial resources together as if they were married. This is a big no-no that is deeply unwise and will only result in the problem of blurring the lines between the two of you. You are, until married, two distinct individuals with distinct identities and resources. You may share these resources but you must never merge them until you marry because that would be tantamount to overstepping the line to ‘playing married couple’. You must always refrain from stealing from your prospective married life no matter how near you are to the day or desirous of the reality.
You are, until married, two distinct individuals with distinct identities and resources. You may share these resources but you must never merge them until you marry … You must always refrain from stealing from your prospective married life no matter how near you are to the day or desirous of the reality.
4. Family
Two aspects reveal themselves here on this point. Firstly, the issue of how your respective families view you relationship. Are they supportive? Are they opposed? Do they have good grounds to be opposed? When objections are coming from the people that are closest to you and who love and care for you the most, you must take them seriously. Often the root of these objections are fears. If you think that their fears are ungrounded (or even if they have reason for these based on past or present concerns) how are you working to allay these fears? I am not saying that their opinions on this matter are absolute, and you must not allow anyone to bind your consciences (only the Word of God can do that for us!), but, you must hear them out and you must take the weight of their opinions in stock. Maybe seek to dialogue with them and demonstrate to them your respect and desire to honor them whatever your final decisions may be? The second issue that you will need to sort out is more futuristic. How do you both envision the prospect of family life to be? How many children do you want to have? How do your respective upbringings and parenting styles differ? You must be careful here not just to mindlessly privilege your own background because that’s how you were brought up. Rather, discuss this and work out what is good, what is bad, and what you can both agree on.
5. Fidelity
If you are serious about getting married someday, then you will both have to be open about your past relationships. This could possibly be a painful and uncomfortable conversaion but it is one that is absolutely vital to be had. You need to come clean with your partner about any past sexual histories and how those have affected the way you percieve your future as a prospective married person. Other concerns under this heading would be the question of who your friends (or foes?) are. Are there people that you are trying to hide from? Why? Are there loose ends that need to be tied up? Do you need to seek reconciliation with a family member, a relative, a certain individual or group of individuals? All these need to be brought to the table and you need to both be in agreement that, in light of these revelations, you are still committed to stay together.
6. Future
One of the biggest mistakes that Christian couples in an exclusive relationship can do is to import the future into their present. What I mean by this is that they begin to ‘play married couple’ with the man demanding that the woman follow his lead on things while the woman, meanwhile, tries to practice submitting to him. This, in my opinion, is not only completely unwise and misguided, it is also totally wrong and has no Biblical warrant. It is good to talk about the future and what your plans and vocations may contribute to this future, but there must be no imposition of how your future as a married couple should be now. No woman must be made to submit to unlawful authorities in her life and no man should demand authority over those over whom the Lord has not placed them as authority figures. We are all to submit to our leaders in government, in church, and in the home. But what is true in the last sphere of the home does not carry for an exclusive relationship between a man and a woman who are yet unmarried. And so when it comes to plans about your future you need to discuss this as a brother to a sister and a sister to a brother considering the prospect of marriage, and not as a married couple would. So, for example, if one of you feels called to be a full-time missionary in North Korea, the other should not feel pressured to buy-in to this same burden or mission. You must sort this out together and allow each of your vocations and plans to be heard and considered. Compatibility also needs to be seen in how you percieve your future lives and vocations to be.
7. Favorites
This last one deals with your preferences. Like I mentioned above, relationships are a study in compromise and adjustments. There may well be certain preferences or favorites of your partner’s that are not yours. We are not talking about sinful tendencies or issues here (there should be no compromises on that front!) but simply the little things that are yours by force of habit or by simple like or dislike. Do make sure to talk about these things and to see if these are the kind of things that you could live with or even learn to like yourself.
The above seven items, of course, do not represent the totality of the things that you need to get sorted out before you marry. It may well be that in the course of your conversations other issues may crop up that also need to be sorted out. That’s okay—that’s the point of the whole process of communicating together. Key here is your intentionality to seek to talk about your issues together. To pray about them and to discuss them in a spirit of charity, humility, and patience. If you do this, then you will be better preparing yourself for a lifetime of journeying together once you marry.
On a final note, I’d like to share the single most important pre-marital advice that I have ever been given. This comes by way of an older pastor friend of mine who sat me and my then-girlfriend (now wife) down to talk about our plans and prospects for the future. Here’s the secret to a good Christian marriage, said he: ‘always be quick to forgive and to ask for forgiveness.’ Very simple words that bear deep Gospel wisdom and practical import. We are to forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven us. The bedrock of a successful marriage (and by extension, every Christian relationship we have in the Body of Christ) is the twin virtues of willingness to ask for forgiveness when we sin and readiness to forgive when those who sin against us ask for it.
‘Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.’ —Ephesians 4:31–32
