100 Things Every Newlywed Couple Should Talk About

Get a legal pad and a Tuesday night. Work through ten of these, then stop, even if you're on a roll. Ten a week for ten weeks and you'll have covered more ground than most couples manage in their first five years.

A warning from experience: two or three of these will land badly. Somebody will get quiet. That's not a sign you married the wrong person, it's a sign you found the thing you'd both been carefully not mentioning since the rehearsal dinner. Stop for the night, go get ice cream, come back Thursday. The conversation you want to skip is the one paying the highest interest.

Nobody finishes this list in a weekend. Don't try.

Money, in actual numbers

1. What your combined take-home pay is, after taxes, written on one sheet of paper.
2. Joint accounts, separate accounts, or both, and the reason for whichever you pick.
3. The dollar amount either of you can spend without checking first. Pick a real number. A hundred bucks is a fine place to start.
4. Every debt you own. Balance, rate, minimum payment. No rounding down out of embarrassment.
5. Your credit scores, out loud, without flinching.
6. What money felt like in the house you grew up in, and what that taught you to fear.
7. How much cash needs to be sitting in savings before you sleep well.
8. Who pays the bills each month, and what happens the month that person has the flu.
9. Giving and tithing. How much, to whom, starting when.
10. Whether you'd rather own an eight-year-old truck outright or make payments on something nicer.
11. The sentence "we can't afford that this year," and what it takes for one of you to say it.
12. What a real vacation actually costs, versus what you've been telling yourselves.
13. Retirement accounts and beneficiary forms, updated if a last name changed.
14. The CPA you'll call before any big tax move, and the fact that you'll call one.

Faith, before it drifts

1. Which church, and the date you stop "visiting places" and start belonging to one.
2. Whether you pray out loud together, and who goes first.
3. What each of you honestly believes about grace, sin, and being forgiven.
4. What you'll do when one of you goes dry for a season and doesn't want to go Sunday.
5. Whether Sunday morning is going to be a scramble or a slow one. It's a choice you make Saturday night.
6. Where your two families' traditions differ. Grace before meals, Advent, Lent, which hymns mean something.
7. What you'll teach a child about God before that child can read.
8. The older couple you'd call at 11 p.m. for counsel. Have them over first, so it isn't awkward later.
9. Whether you serve somewhere or just attend.
10. What you're doing with the Bible somebody gave you as a wedding gift.
11. How to disagree about a sermon without it turning into a verdict on each other.
12. Any practice you want to keep on purpose. A Sabbath afternoon. Phones in a drawer.

In-laws and holidays

1. Thanksgiving and Christmas for the next three years, decided in January when nobody's emotional.
2. How many nights counts as a visit, and how many starts counting as living here.
3. Who delivers hard news to which parents. Always the blood relative. No exceptions.
4. Whether you accept money from family, and which strings you'd hand it back over.
5. What you call each other's parents.
6. The joke your family makes that stings your spouse. Say it now, while it's still small.
7. The holiday travel budget, and whose miles.
8. Drop-ins. Some families knock, some walk in. Decide which house you're running.
9. What gets shared in the family group chat and what stays inside the marriage.
10. What you'd do when a parent gets old and needs someone. That call comes.
11. The recipes worth writing down before the person who knows them by heart is gone.
12. What you genuinely love about their family. Say it out loud more often than the complaints.

The house you're running

1. Who cooks, who cleans up, and who takes the trash out without being asked twice.
2. The one chore each of you truly hates. Trade accordingly. This is free happiness.
3. Dishes soaking overnight, or done before bed.
4. The thermostat. Settle on a number. Sixty-eight at night and stop relitigating it.
5. Weekday bedtime and weekday wake-up.
6. Shoes on or off at the door.
7. Where the tools live, and who's replacing the ones that wander off.
8. The ten-minute version of cleaning, for when someone's pulling in the driveway.
9. Laundry. One load of everything, or a system with rules.
10. Who owns the calendar, and whether it's shared on both phones by Friday.
11. What "clean" means to each of you, with one concrete example. Use the kitchen counter.
12. Furnace filters every 90 days, gutters twice a year, and whose phone holds the reminder.

Fighting well

1. What your parents' arguments looked like, and which parts you refuse to repeat.
2. The agreed phrase that means "I'm done for tonight, we finish this tomorrow."
3. Whether either of you can actually sleep angry. Most people can't.
4. The silent treatment is off the table. Say it now, on a calm night.
5. You never threaten divorce to win a point. Not once, not as a joke.
6. Who tends to apologize first, and whether keeping score is going to be a problem.
7. What forgiveness looks like the next morning, in behavior, not in words.
8. Which subjects are banned from text messages.
9. What each of you needs afterward. Twenty minutes alone, or a hug immediately.
10. Who you don't vent to. Coworkers, exes, and your mother.
11. The point at which you'd sit down with a counselor. Decide that before you need it.
12. The joke that breaks the tension in your house. Every good marriage has one.

Kids

1. How many, how soon, and how flexible those answers really are.
2. What you'd do if it doesn't come easily.
3. Adoption. On the table or not.
4. Discipline. What you got as a kid, what you'll keep, what you won't.
5. Whether one of you comes home to raise them, and what that costs in dollars.
6. Names you love, and the one name that's vetoed for reasons you'll explain later.
7. Public, private, or homeschool, and which grade you have to decide by.
8. Screens. What age, how long, and whose phone they're using.
9. The 3 a.m. rotation, agreed on in daylight.
10. Grandparents as childcare. A gift you ask for, not a schedule you assume.
11. What you want a 30-year-old to say about your marriage someday.
12. Date night survives the baby. Put it on the shared calendar and defend it.

Work and ambition

1. The hours you'll really work, and what time dinner is on the table.
2. Whether you'd move for a job, and how many miles is too many.
3. What "enough" is, as a number. Most couples have never said it out loud.
4. The risk one of you wants to take in the next five years.
5. Who's the primary earner right now, and whether that's permanent or just current.
6. The plan if somebody gets laid off on a Friday afternoon.
7. Whether you'd start a business together. Be honest about this one.
8. The maximum nights a month either of you travels before it's a problem.
9. The degree or the trade certification one of you still wants.
10. Retirement, and not the money part. What you'd do with a Tuesday at 65.

Each other

1. Affection that isn't romantic. A hand on the shoulder walking past the sink.
2. What makes each of you feel wanted and noticed. The answers are usually smaller than you'd guess.
3. Health. Lifting something heavy twice a week, walking daily, and a doctor you both actually visit.
4. Alcohol. How much is normal in your house, and who says something if it stops being normal.
5. Family medical history from both sides, written down somewhere you can find it.
6. Phones charging in the bedroom, or in the kitchen.
7. What you're willing to post about each other, and what stays private.
8. Guarding the marriage. Friendships, old flames, closed office doors. Set the rule while it's theoretical.

The hard things nobody plans for

1. Where the water shut-off, the breaker box, and the fire extinguisher are. Walk to all three tonight.
2. Wills, guardianship, powers of attorney. Ask an estate attorney, not a search bar.
3. Firearms in the home. Storage, training, and who's signing up for the class.
4. The first ten minutes of a house fire, including the exact spot in the yard where you meet.

The fun part

1. The one splurge each of you will defend to anybody. Let the other person have it.
2. A tradition you invent this year and intend to still be doing in 2075.
3. Ten things you want to do in five years, written on paper, one crossed off every year.
4. The story you'll tell about this first year. Then go live the version worth telling.