Things people forget to discuss with their SO before marrying?

[Anonymous]

THis is why it helps to live together before marriage. A lot of this will sort itself out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my experience it’s:

-Student loan debt
-Kids v. No kids

For some people it's weird to ask about kids because the grew up in a culture were kids are assumed -- I mean do people discuss if they will have sex or discuss if they will live together -- somethings are just assumed.

I'm sure student loan debt is just "I'll keep paying my loans, they are my problem" without realizing how it can affect joint accounts.

When my husband I started dating we talked about ideal sex frequency. It is a pretty normal thing to discuss.

[Anonymous]

I know this isn't something that most people want to discuss before marriage but in addition to having kids or not, what is the plan if you are having trouble conceiving. I have a few friends who have gone through this and they all seem to differ from their spouse on the plan for this (i.e. one is ok with adoption, the other is not). One couple actually divorced over this issue.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think people forget as in “I the store and forgot milk”, I think it’s more you just don’t know.
I knew I wanted kids when I met my husband but I also knew that I wanted to marry a person and if we couldn’t or didn’t have kids, I’d still want to be with him.
He
Wanted to live in the city, though he hadn’t, and so did, who doesn’t like to go out to eat and have food brought to you, then go on home and hop into bed. Neither of us had thought of parking issues, things we might prefer our future kids not see, the fact that kids aren’t going to just sit quietly while you eat and then entertain themselves when you and your husband go to bed.

We live in the suburbs now, in an hoa, a place my husband swore he’d never live.
We’re going to a Cub Scout meeting next weekend and if you’d told me when we were dating that “your daughter can join Cub Scouts” I’d have thought you were crazy because when we married, girls couldn’t join Cub Scouts. If my husband had said over dinner “I want our kids, boy or girls to join Cub Scouts” I would have been wondering if this was who I wanted to marry, the world has changed that much.
Church, on paper we’d probably fit into a liberal church. We did try it and weren’t happy for reasons I won’t go into. Point is, we weren’t happy and nobody lives on paper. We found a more conservative church and while sometimes I shake my head, it’s better for all of us again for reasons I won’t go into. If my husband had said when we were dating “I want a wife who is a member of that religious group” I’d have gotten up and left. No man was going to tell me what to believe. Ditto for staying home with kids, I was in college when we met, I truly believed I’d work and send our kids to daycare. Why would I want to spend my days changing diapers and speaking in the high baby talk voice “Isn’t it nice today, let’s enjoy the pretty sunshine” when I could do really cool work and get paid to do it. I did for a time and really didn’t like sending our kid to daycare, nor did I like the stress it created on our family. Our kid didn’t either. The kid is a teen now and I heard her tell her younger sibling “Daycare sucks, be glad Mom is home with you”. If my husband had told me to stay home once we had kids, 3 human beings wouldn’t have been born, I know how to use birth control.

All this to say, nobody lives on paper. People are willing to do things that they say they aren’t. My husband really enjoyed the pool last weekend. Sure, I could have taken him to a pool to “see how he did” when we were dating, but why? There are certain groups you just don’t fit into unless you have what it takes and parenthood is the prime example” “Which kid is yours, he’s playing so well with my son” “um, none of them, we just want to see how it looks to be a parent” would have gotten the pool to clear out faster then a baby Ruth bar.
Marry who you want, with love you can figure it out, and if you need to divorce, that’s also an option. As I tell my kids and I say this as a conservatively religious mom “the best thing about marriage is the divorce”.