21: Awkward Questions You Need to Ask and Answer BEFORE You Get Engaged

**Trigger Warning: Sex and Adult Situations**

Do you want to avoid potential disasters in your future marriage? You may be wondering what questions you should be asking before getting engaged. In this episode of the Positioned Podcast, we dive deep into the awkward questions you need to ask and answer before saying "I do." This episode is for you if you want to ensure a strong foundation for your relationship and avoid unnecessary pain down the road.

Top reasons to listen to the entire episode:

• Learn the significance of pre-engagement discussions.
• Discover the awkward questions you must ask to avoid future relationship struggles.
• Identify potential areas of conflict and find ways to lay the groundwork for a healthy and harmonious marriage.

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

During one of my position for love coaching sessions, the question came up regarding what we should ask and answer before we get engaged. Because while these questions may be awkward and hearing the answers may not be what we want to hear, it is so much better to hear them now than later. And while some of them may actually lead to ending an engagement or the possibility of being engaged, it is much less painful than a divorce. So I hope that you pay attention and pray attention to this episode because the marriage you save may be your own. Then girl, you've come to the right place. I'm Kimberly Knight, and this is the Position Podcast. As a certified coach, consultant, author, and speaker, I've had the privilege of helping women to position themselves for success in life, love, and business. So if you're ready for some wisdom wrapped up in a little bit of girlfriend, join me and other experts each week as we give you the conversation coaching and keys you need to take you to your next steps. Hi, and welcome to the Positioned Podcast. I am your host, Kimberly Knight. And today we are going to talk about the awkward questions you need to ask and answer before you get married. Now, this is definitely one of those headphone wearing episodes. So if you have children, if you're in public, if you're at work, you definitely need to put the headphones on today because we are going to take a deep dive into some adult stuff today. Oh, yes, this is for mature audiences only. So let's dive in on the deep side of the pool. Let's talk about sex. When I say talk about sex, I don't mean sitting there and fantasizing with each other. You're not married yet. There's no sense of tempting y'all to sin. There's no sense of doing this in a dark room or anywhere where this is just going to lead you down a path to falling into sexual temptation. I am talking about having the discussions about practical issues, practical issues around sex, the kinds of things that trip us up, because it's not the hot, steamy, romantic candlelight dinners that trip people up. It's the discussions they didn't have before those romantic candlelight dinners that trip them up. As a matter of fact, if you want to get to that stuff, if you want to get to the hot, steamy stuff, it's much more hot and steamy when you've talked about these practicalities and gotten them out of the way. So let's do that now. You want to ask and answer are there sexual proclivities or curiosities that you still want to explore or have explored? And if you still want to explore them, do you want to explore them with me or with someone else? So you need to know this. Don't assume that just because there is still curiosities, that that means they want to explore them with you. And you need to pay attention to what those curiosities are. Are you interested in those things? Are you willing to explore those things? Do those things scare you or repulse you? You need to know. You need to know. You don't want to get to your honeymoon and find these things out. Also, how often would you like to have sex? And what do you want to do if one of us is not in the mood or we're not able to have sex as often as you would like? Also, what sexual practices are off limits for you, to you, and with you? What would make you change your mind about that? Also, are you willing to get STD or STI tested? Now I am going to say this to you. Even if both of you are air quotes virgins, you want to go ahead and get tested. Why? Because sometimes people lie and you want there to be no doubt because there are diseases now that could cost you your whole life. They can literally kill you. So you want to know. The other thing is for some reason, people don't think that anal and oral sex are sex. And you can get STDs and STIs, sexually transmitted diseases and sexually transmitted infections from anal and from oral sex. So some people still consider themselves a virgin because they've only had oral sex. Okay, so it says sex. I won't even go into that. I'm just going to say get the test and exchange reports. When you exchange reports, you actually want a physical piece of paper that you look at from that other person. This is not one of those just trust me, nothing came up issues. This is a trust and verify issue. So yes, I trust you. Now give me the paperwork so we can verify it. Hallelujah and amen. And I can guarantee you, without a doubt, that at least one, two, or maybe 10 of you are going to write me and say, I am so glad I asked to see the report. I'm telling you what I know for sure. Oh, and by the way, even for those of us who have haven't been sexually active for a long time, so you're not a virgin, but you have been abstinent for a long period of time, you still want to have that testing done because there are some diseases that lay dormant and can lay dormant for a long time. So there may be things lurking that you don't even know about. So definitely get those tests and exchange copies of the reports. So let's talk about lifestyle. What are your views on marital fidelity? What constitutes cheating to you? What about opposite and gender friendships? Where do you stand on that? You want to know what are your views on gambling, drinking, smoking, and drugs? Here's a hotbed topic right now. What are your basic political beliefs and how would you feel if I vote differently from you? Politics is a really hot topic right now. You need to know if you're having a differing view is going to cause a problem in your future marriage. What about your health? Both mental and physical health, right? So in your physical health, is there anything from your past in your present or in your family line that we need to know about and consider? There are some things that if you carry the gene for it coming together, your children will then be more likely to experience that health concern. I'm thinking things like colorblindness and sickle cell anemia, right? If the both parent carries a trait, then the child is likely to have it. You need to know that. Also, mental health. Have you ever struggled with a mental health concern? Are you currently on medication? How would you feel about medication for a mental health concern? Are there any mental health issues in your bloodline that you may not suffer from, but others in your bloodline do. Now, why is that important? Because things do travel in bloodlines until they are dealt with physically and spiritually. Here's the other thing: there are some mental health diseases that do not show up until you're 30 or are not diagnosed usually until you're in your 20s. So you want to know is there anything in this bloodline I need to know about? Because we might have children and I need to know what we would be dealing with. Also, that person may or may not be receiving, they may have received a diagnosis and they're still in denial about it. You need to know these things. Pay attention and pray attention. And girls, if you really want to check out the bloodline, then you need to attend an extended family function. Okay, that's the wedding, a reunion, a funeral. You need to check out how crazy is crazy Uncle Larry. Mm-hmm. Because it's crazy, like, oh Uncle Larry, you're so crazy. And then there's like a whole continuum where Uncle Larry is not quote unquote crazy. Uncle Larry just got out of the hospital. I'm not making light of that. I am saying this is real. And you need to know that before you connect your life to this person. We're talking about your life, your whole life, and the life of your future children. So we need to make sure we know what we're getting into. We're paying attention and we're praying attention. What about money? Now you know that money causes more arguments than infidelity. Actually, money concerns and money fights cause more divorces than infidelity. So you need to know how do we spend it, use it, invest it, save it, sew it, how do we budget it and perceive it? What's the role of money in our lives and in our marriage? How about this one? Are you in debt? And if so, how much and to whom? Because there's a big difference between you owe $2,000 in credit card debt and you owe $2,000 to a loan shark. If you're late on your credit card payments, well, then they're going to charge you a late fee. They're going to report it to the credit bureau. They might cancel your credit card. But if you're $2,000 late on your loan shark, they might just cancel you, okay? And they might threaten me because of your indebtedness to the loan shark. See, I need to know that. Some of y'all are laughing right now, some of you are not. And there are some married women listening to this right now who wish they had had this podcast before they got married. Yes, ma'am. When it comes to money, you also want to know: will you have separate bank accounts? How are you going to pay your personal and household bills? Who's going to be responsible for what? And how are you going to handle financial decision making? How large of a purchase can I make without having a discussion with you about it? And I know I just set some of you off with that last one. How large of a purchase can I make without having a discussion with you about it? Listen, ladies, if you are saying right now, this is my money, I don't have to have a discussion with him about how I spend my money, I would ask you to seriously reconsider whether or not you're ready to be married because again, those money issues cause more divorces than infidelity ever has. Listen, don't get angry with the messenger. I'm just giving you things to consider. You can conduct your engagement, your marriage, and your decision makings any way you want. I'm just giving you questions to consider. Let's talk about children now. Do you want children? And if so, how many and when? And I know of at least one couple where they had to break off an engagement because they could not come to an agreement about wanting children. One party wanted children, one party did not. And that's too big of an issue to sidestep. Here's an area you really need to be in agreement with. Not only that, how are you going to handle co-parenting of existing children? Now I can tell you for those of you who already have children, or this is your second marriage or your third marriage, or whatever the case may be, how you handle co-parenting is going to be one of those deciding factors about whether or not this marriage makes it. Huge issue, causes a lot of discord because you're bringing in two different parenting styles, not only for your current children, but for existing children and their other parents. So there's a lot going on. So if you both have children from other relationships, you have to look at what that co-parenting relationship looked like and spend a lot of time with having practical discussions and making plans and boundaries for those things. Will we continue working full-time after having children? What would our childcare arrangements look like? What adjustments would we would have to make to our finances if one of us plans to stay home? What are we willing and not willing to give up as parents? And how do we look at that? How do we look at our parenting role? Here's a biggie. Your faith. How important is church to you? How often should we go? Should we attend the same church? And how do we decide which one to attend? What role does the Bible play in your life? What percentage of our income should we give to the church that we attend? See, here are some of the questions, again, that cause big fights because we didn't handle them in practical ways. Here's another one. How important is prayer to you? And how often will we pray together after we're married? Um, I know of some people who don't like to pray aloud in front of other people. This is your spouse. Is that going to change? You need to have those discussions. See, these are the practical issues you need to talk about, ask and answer before you get engaged. Because by the time you're engaged, you're already so deep in, it's harder to walk away if one of these answers becomes a deal breaker. Let's talk about home life. Who can live with you? Under what circumstances and how long? Oh, that's a biggie. While we're there, what would you like to do about aging parents? You know, now people are living longer than ever. And that also means that we are dealing with parents who are aging longer than ever. So some of us have found ourselves in a sandwich generation. I was in that, right? I was raising children and caretaking parents at the same time. It can take quite a toll on you physically as a caretaker, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially, and also on your marriage. So you need to have that discussion and come to these conclusions before you get married. You also want to look at how you're going to divide the household chores. Who's going to be responsible for what? Hmm. Is that equitable to you? Here's another one. And this has been in the news lately, and I find it very interesting. How often do you feel someone should bathe, brush your teeth, and change their towels and sheets? I've actually heard something from uh every day they should bathe to once a week to if I jump in the pool, I feel I'm clean. Oh my. How often should you change towels and sheets? Some people change their towels every time they bathe, which could be once a week or once a day or twice a day. So how often should we change sheets? There are some people who want to change them every week. Other people feel comfortable changing them once a month or once every few months. I'm not judging. I definitely have I definitely have um some thoughts on it. I'm not judging if you want to keep your sheets for a month. I don't know why, but okay. But you need to know this before you get married. Here's one that's really interesting. Are you a morning person or a night person? And how would that impact your sleep and your marriage? How can we adjust that, right? So if you are a morning person and he doesn't get started until 10 o'clock, and by 10 o'clock you are in your third dream, that could be impactful, and you will need to figure out how you're going to handle that and overcome that difference. So these are just some of the questions we need to ask and answer before you get engaged, so you can make a quality decision about whether or not to move forward. And I know the thought that you might not move forward with this man can be very, very painful. However, the pain of breaking off pre-engagement is not nearly as hurtful as it is after the engagement or worse, after the marriage. So take your time to ask and answer these questions and to pay and pray attention. And whatever you do, tune in for part two of the awkward questions you need to ask and answer before you get engaged. All right, I want to know have you asked any of these questions? My contact information is in the show notes, and I want to hear whether you've asked and answered these questions and how they've impacted you and your future engagement. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. And until next time, be wonderfully blessed. Bye now. That's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you're listening so you never miss one. I would love it if you would share the podcast with your friends, post about it on Facebook and Instagram, or leave a review. That way you can help me to bring you more great content and expert guests. Until next week, be blessed.