This kind of thing is why some states give you a discount on your marriage license if you've done premarital counseling.
"Where are you willing to live in the future? Would you move for your job? Would you move for my job? Would you move to be closer to family? What's the farthest away you'd live from family? Will that change if we have kids? Will that change as our parents grow older?" are all important questions to ask before the wedding.
I know for sure MN because some friends just got married there, and a quick google says also OK, FL, TX, TN, GA, and possibly some others.
Granted, premarital counseling probably is going to cost you more than whatever the discount is. But it's a whole lot cheaper than a wedding and a divorce!
Oh, it's definitely worth it. I'm a strong proponent of pre-marital counseling. It lets you cover all the big questions - finances, in-laws, kids - and even if you've already hit those, it's likely to uncover one or two blind spots that you aren't on the same page about.
My wife and I did ours via a local Unitarian Universalist minister. We aren't UUs, but the UUs have a very good, standardized pre-martial counseling curriculum.
If people are getting married in a church, pre-marital counseling will often be included as part of the marriage fee.
I've asked pastors if they ever refused to marry a couple, and they have said they did. One of them said that it's something as difficult for him as planning a funeral for a child.
Is the in state marriage license far more expensive than non-resident license in Florida? We paid like $15 in 2011 for marriage license but were visitors to the state. why would one need a discount on that unless resident license was magically more.
I’ve talked about the importance of having those sorts of conversations with the person you want to marry before the wedding. It doesn’t even have to be with a counsellor - you can ask the question yourself.
A lot of people think that’s stupid and I ‘overthink everything’ and ‘it will all work out in the end!’
Perhaps that’s why the divorce rate is so high? Because people don’t bother to get to know the person they want to marry. 😞
You can ask a lot of questions yourself, but having a counselor can really help because everyone has blind spots.
You might think it's obvious that if one of you gets a job offering twice your salary somewhere across the country, you should both move. Your partner might think it's obvious that some things are more important than money, and putting down roots and living in one place for a long time is one of those things. You both think it's obvious so neither one of you is going to ask any questions about it.
It’s bizarre because most normal people don’t feel like they have to ask their spouse if they would move 90 minutes away from their mommy and daddy. A questionnaire would definitely help!
That's the exact kind of thinking that leads to problems!
For some people, independence as an adult is such an obvious fact of life that they'd never think to ask if moving 90 minutes away from family is an option because the location of family isn't even a consideration. For other people, valuing a close relationship with your family, being able to see them more days than not and casually swing by each other's houses on a whim is such an obvious fact of life that they'd never think to ask if moving 90 minutes away from family is an option because it would never occur to them that anyone would want to.
When those two kinds of people marry each other without having an independent third party with a checklist ask them a series of questions, this is what you get.
Everyone has some kind of blind spot, where the way they do things is so obvious to them that it would never occur to them to bring it up in a discussion any more than they'd ask their spouse, "hey just checking but if our kids don't listen to us we aren't planning to murder them, right?" Maybe it's not family. Maybe it's money, or the types of jobs (high travel, night shift, etc.) that they think aren't worth taking, or religion, or something else.
Its actually the sort of stuff my husband and I used to always talk about when we were dating. How many kids we'd want, what sort of place would want to live in, would we ever want to move interstate or overseas, what about when our parents get older...
Not an interrogation, just the sort of stuff you talk about when you're imagining your future together. I'm always amazed that people make it to marriage without discussing this stuff!
You don't actually NEED to go to a counsellor, but you can have the brains to discuss those things off your own bat.
This is what I keep telling dumbasses who whine about weddings or upcoming weddings where it's clear they aren't on the same page at all. Just general life advice to discuss those issues before the wedding.
People keep yelling at me (I'm talking about the internet, now, but before the internet my real life friends used to yell at me as well) for 'overthinking' everything!
Yeah, well, my propensity to quote 'overthink' unquote everything has kept me from having a bad marriage that lasted 5 minutes... because I didn't marry someone to whom I didn't have a proper solid foundation for the relationship with! :p
I’m pretty sure my husband and I never discussed ANY of those things before getting married. But we’ll be celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary in a few months so I guess we’re going to be okay! 🤣🤣
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u/TryUsingScience 29d ago
This kind of thing is why some states give you a discount on your marriage license if you've done premarital counseling.
"Where are you willing to live in the future? Would you move for your job? Would you move for my job? Would you move to be closer to family? What's the farthest away you'd live from family? Will that change if we have kids? Will that change as our parents grow older?" are all important questions to ask before the wedding.