You know how your partner takes their coffee. You know which show they’ll agree to watch when neither of you can decide. You probably know which side of the bed they’ll claim at every hotel for the rest of your lives.
But do you know how much debt they have?
Whether they expect to combine finances after marriage?
How often they expect to see their parents?
What happens if one of you wants children and the other isn’t sure?
Who is going to get up with those hypothetical children at 3 AM?
Couples can know each other incredibly well and still enter marriage with important expectations they’ve never actually discussed.
That’s one reason premarital counseling isn’t only for couples who are having problems. It gives happy, committed couples an opportunity to talk intentionally about the life they’re about to build together.
At Beach Cities Psychotherapy, we use PREPARE/ENRICH for premarital counseling because it helps couples move beyond generic conversations and explore the strengths, differences, expectations, and potential stress points within their particular relationship.
Here are ten conversations worth having before you say “I do.”
1. How Will We Handle Money?
Talking about money can feel surprisingly intimate.
Before marriage, couples should have a clear understanding of each other’s financial situation—including income, savings, debt, spending habits, and financial goals.
But the conversation shouldn’t stop with numbers.
Money has meaning.
For one person, saving may represent safety. For another, spending money on experiences may represent freedom and enjoying life. One partner may have grown up in a family where money was constantly discussed; the other may have been taught that talking about money was inappropriate.
Consider questions like:
Will we combine our finances?
How much debt are we bringing into the marriage?
What do we consider a “big” purchase that should be discussed first?
How much do we want to save?
What are our long-term financial priorities?
The goal isn’t to have identical attitudes toward money. It’s to understand the differences before they start showing up as conflict.
2. Do We Want Children?
“Do you want kids?” is a good starting point.
It’s not the whole conversation.
If you both want children, how many? When? What happens if getting pregnant is difficult? How do you feel about fertility treatments, adoption, or other paths to parenthood?
And then there is the enormous question of what happens after children arrive.
How do you imagine dividing childcare?
Will both partners continue working?
How would you feel if one person wanted to stay home or reduce their work hours?
What kind of parenting did you experience growing up, and what would you want to repeat—or do very differently?
You don’t need to have every detail of your future parenting plan decided before getting married.
You should know whether your visions of family life are compatible.
3. What Does a Fair Division of Labor Look Like?
Nobody puts “Who cleans the bathroom?” in their wedding vows.
Maybe they should.
Household responsibilities can become a surprisingly significant source of resentment, particularly when one partner feels responsible not only for completing tasks but for noticing, remembering, planning, and delegating them.
Who cooks?
Who cleans?
Who schedules appointments?
Who remembers birthdays?
Who notices that you’re almost out of dog food?
Who plans vacations?
If you eventually have children, who keeps track of school forms, pediatrician appointments, soccer schedules, birthday presents, and the hundred invisible tasks involved in running a family?
You don’t need a spreadsheet assigning every chore.
You do need to talk about what partnership and fairness mean to each of you.
4. What Role Will Our Families Have in Our Marriage?
When you marry someone, their family doesn’t disappear after the wedding.
How often will you see each other’s families?
Where will you spend holidays?
What happens when both families expect you for Thanksgiving?
How much information about your marriage is okay to share with parents or siblings?
How would you handle a family member criticizing your spouse?
What happens if an aging parent eventually needs financial or physical support?
Family boundaries can become particularly difficult when partners grew up with very different ideas about family closeness and obligation.
One partner may talk to their mother three times a day. The other may call their parents once every two weeks and consider that perfectly loving.
Neither is necessarily wrong.
But those differences are worth understanding.
5. How Do We Handle Conflict?
The question isn’t whether you fight.
It’s how you fight.
Does one of you want to talk immediately while the other needs space?
Does someone shut down?
Do disagreements escalate quickly?
Does one person apologize just to make the conflict end?
Do either of you become sarcastic, critical, defensive, or dismissive when you’re upset?
And perhaps most importantly: How do you repair after a disagreement?
Healthy couples aren’t couples who never experience conflict. They’re couples who can disagree while maintaining respect and eventually find their way back to connection.
Premarital counseling can be particularly useful here because couples can identify their conflict patterns before years of resentment reinforce them.
6. What Do We Expect From Sex and Intimacy?
Couples often assume that because their sexual relationship works now, they don’t need to talk about it.
But sexuality changes over the course of a long-term relationship.
Work stress, pregnancy, parenting, health issues, medication, aging, hormones, body image, and relationship conflict can all affect desire and intimacy.
Can you comfortably tell your partner what you want?
Can you talk about differences in sexual desire without either person feeling rejected or pressured?
What does physical affection mean to each of you?
What does fidelity mean?
What boundaries do you have around pornography, flirting, friendships, social media, or communication with former partners?
Talking about sex before marriage isn’t pessimistic.
It’s practicing the kind of communication you’ll need to keep having throughout your relationship.
7. How Important Are Our Careers—and What Are We Willing to Sacrifice for Them?
Imagine one partner receives an incredible job offer in another state.
Who decides whether you move?
What if one person’s career consistently requires longer hours?
What happens if one partner earns significantly more?
Would either of you be willing to relocate for the other’s career?
How would you feel about financially supporting your partner while they attend graduate school, start a business, or change careers?
Career decisions rarely affect only one person once you’re married.
Talking about ambition, work-life balance, financial expectations, and sacrifice now can reveal assumptions you may not have realized either of you held.
8. What Does Marriage Mean to Each of Us?
This sounds obvious.
It isn’t.
Ask ten people what being a “good spouse” means and you may get ten different answers.
Marriage might mean spending most of your free time together to one person and maintaining considerable independence to another.
One partner may expect frequent date nights and travel. Another may picture evenings at home and building family traditions.
Talk about what you actually imagine.
How much time do you expect to spend together?
How much independence do you need?
What makes you feel loved?
What makes you feel neglected?
What do you expect to change after the wedding—and what do you expect to stay exactly the same?
Unspoken expectations have a way of eventually becoming disappointments.
9. What Are We Bringing With Us From Our Families and Past Relationships?
None of us enters marriage as a blank slate.
We bring our childhoods with us.
We bring the relationships we watched growing up, the ways our families handled conflict, how affection was expressed, what happened when someone was angry, and what we learned about trust, money, gender roles, vulnerability, and love.
We may also carry wounds from previous relationships.
Perhaps you’ve been cheated on.
Perhaps you’ve experienced abandonment.
Perhaps conflict makes you anxious because of what fighting looked like in your childhood home.
Perhaps you learned that needing other people was dangerous, so independence became a form of protection.
Understanding where these reactions come from can make it easier to respond to your partner with curiosity rather than assuming the worst about each other.
10. What Kind of Life Are We Actually Trying to Build?
This may be the most important conversation of all.
Not:
What kind of wedding do we want?
But:
What kind of life do we want?
Where do you want to live?
Do you want a big house in the suburbs, a small place near the beach, or the freedom to move around?
Do you want children?
How important is travel?
Religion?
Community?
Financial security?
Adventure?
Time with family?
Career achievement?
Friendships?
What do you want an ordinary Tuesday night to look like ten years from now?
You don’t have to share every goal or interest.
But marriage involves building a shared life, and it’s worth talking intentionally about what you hope that life will feel like.
What If We Don’t Agree About Everything?
You won’t.
And that’s not the purpose of these conversations.
Premarital counseling isn’t designed to determine whether you’ve found a person who answers every question exactly the way you do.
The goal is to understand where you’re aligned, where you’re different, and how the two of you navigate those differences together.
Sometimes the most valuable discovery isn’t:
We agree.
It’s:
We don’t agree, but now I understand why this matters so much to you—and we know how to talk about it.
How PREPARE/ENRICH Takes These Conversations Further
You can—and should—start having these conversations on your own.
But there’s a limitation: you don’t always know what you don’t know.
That’s where a structured premarital counseling program like PREPARE/ENRICH can be especially valuable.
Rather than relying on a generic list of questions, PREPARE/ENRICH begins with a comprehensive assessment designed to look at your specific relationship.
It explores areas such as communication, conflict resolution, finances, personality, relationship roles, intimacy, family and friends, values, expectations, and other areas that can affect long-term relationship satisfaction.
The results aren’t about giving your relationship a passing or failing grade.
They’re a starting point for conversation.
You may discover that you’re particularly strong in areas you hadn’t appreciated.
You may uncover a difference neither of you realized was significant.
You may recognize a conflict pattern you’ve already started repeating.
Or a question in the assessment may prompt you both to say:
Wait. We’ve never actually talked about that.
That’s exactly the point.
Premarital Counseling Isn’t About Looking for Problems
Couples sometimes worry that premarital counseling is going to uncover something terrible.
But the goal isn’t to convince you not to get married.
It’s to help you enter marriage knowing each other—and yourselves—a little better.
Think about the amount of preparation that goes into a wedding.
Months of planning. Thousands of decisions. Significant amounts of money.
Premarital counseling asks you to devote some of that same intentionality to what happens after the wedding is over.
Because eventually the flowers are gone, the photographs are framed, and nobody remembers what was served for dinner.
You’re left with the marriage.
That’s the part worth preparing for.
PREPARE/ENRICH Premarital Counseling in Hermosa Beach
At Beach Cities Psychotherapy, Julia Callas, AMFT, offers PREPARE/ENRICH premarital counseling for couples who want to enter marriage with a stronger understanding of one another and practical tools for the future.
Julia’s approach is warm, engaged, and direct. Premarital counseling with her isn’t about sitting silently while a therapist analyzes your relationship. It’s an active process designed to get you talking about the things that matter—and sometimes the things you didn’t realize you needed to talk about.
Our office is located in Hermosa Beach, serving couples throughout the South Bay, including Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, El Segundo, and Palos Verdes.
You don’t need to be struggling to come to couples counseling.
You can be completely in love, excited about your wedding, confident about the person you’ve chosen—and still recognize that a successful marriage deserves preparation.
If you’re engaged or considering marriage and looking for premarital counseling in Hermosa Beach or the South Bay, contact Beach Cities Psychotherapy to learn more about PREPARE/ENRICH with Julia.