60 questions about the future to ask before the big decisions

Living together is the first real test of concrete compatibility, and the most underestimated. You move in on a feeling, you cohabit on habits!

1. How much solitude do you need in a normal week, in honest hours?
2. Tidy or chaotic: where do you stand, and what can you tolerate in someone else?
3. How do we divide the chores: by preference, by schedule, by skill?
4. What's your ideal rhythm: night owl, early bird, and how does that get negotiated?
5. Inviting friends over without warning: normal or unthinkable?
6. How do we handle daily expenses, from the very first month?
7. What's your worst cohabitation fear?
8. How much space of your own do you need in a home?
9. Screens in the bedroom: yes, no, it depends?
10. How do we handle a disagreement when we can't each go back to our own place?
11. City or suburbs, renting or buying: what's your ideal scenario?
12. What did you hate about your past living arrangements, flatshares included?
13. Which rituals from before do we keep, once we live together?
14. What's your definition of a successful shared home, in three words?
15. And if the first six months go badly, what do we agree now, for that moment?

If half of these answers surprise you, that isn't a bad sign, quite the opposite: better to discover them now. And to turn it into a considered decision, the «ready to live together» test cross-checks your answers point by point, and it saves you discovering the gaps with the boxes already unpacked.

Marriage, civil partnership, or commitment without paperwork: whatever the form, it's the substance that gets checked here. These fifteen questions are the ones couples regret not having asked.

16. What does commitment mean to you, concretely, not in poetry?
17. Marriage: desire, indifference, or principle? And why?
18. What's your biggest fear about committing to me?
19. What would make us a successful old couple, in forty years?
20. Faithfulness: do we define it the same way? Let's check.
21. What do we do if one of us goes through a real storm, unemployment, illness, depression?
22. What place will your family have in our life? And mine?
23. What's your model of a couple, the one that inspires you, and the one that serves as a warning?
24. What will you never sacrifice, even for us?
25. How do we handle our differences of religion, culture or values, if we have any?
26. What, for you, would justify a separation? Hard question, useful answer.
27. How do you picture our weekends in ten years?
28. What have the married couples around you got wrong, in your opinion?
29. What do you need in order to feel free WITHIN commitment?
30. What if we each wrote our own definition of «us»? Want to bet they're different?

Numbers 20 and 26 deserve an evening of their own. And once you've been through it all, the «ready for marriage» test puts your answers side by side, in black and white, and it's surprising what comes up.

The most committing subject of all, and the one where the unsaid costs the most. These questions don't get asked in one go, but they should all have been asked before the big leap.

31. A child: a dated plan, a vague desire, or an open question?
32. Why do you want a child? The honest answer, not the social one.
33. And if it didn't happen naturally... what would we do, how far would we go?
34. Who cuts back on what, in the first years: work, going out, sleep?
35. What's your model of parenting: firm framework, freedom, and where does it come from?
36. What do we pass on in terms of religion, values, traditions?
37. What role will the grandparents have, and what limits?
38. How do you imagine we stay a couple while becoming parents?
39. What's your biggest fear about becoming a father or a mother?
40. What did your parents get wrong that you absolutely want to avoid?
41. And what did they get right that you want to reproduce?
42. Screens, sugar, punishments: three touchy subjects, shall we take positions now?
43. If our child were very different from what we imagine, what would still matter?
44. Where do we live, in that scenario? Near whom?
45. And if one of us changes their mind about children, what do we promise each other, right now, today?

No couple «agrees on everything» here, don't worry. The goal is zero blind spots, and the «ready for a baby» test does exactly that cross-checking work, subject by subject.

The subject nobody talks about at the start and everybody argues about later! Money in a relationship is never just about figures: behind it there's security, freedom and power. So talk about it while everything's fine.

46. What's your relationship with money: security, pleasure, anxiety, freedom?
47. Joint account, separate accounts, or mixed: your model, and why?
48. How do we define a «big expense» that gets discussed by both of us?
49. The salary gap between us, how do we handle it, without taboo?
50. What debt or financial commitment of yours should I know about?
51. Saving for what, as a priority: a home, travel, security, retirement?
52. What would you do if we inherited or won a large sum tomorrow?
53. Helping your family financially: how far is that normal for you?
54. How does a big decision get made in our house: consensus, taking turns, reserved domains?
55. What's the expense other couples make that you find absurd, and the one of yours that I find absurd?

We finish with the fuel. Because a couple isn't just successful management, it's also a direction that makes you want to go. There are five left, the loveliest ones.

56. What's the dream we've never said out loud, the two of us?
57. If we gave ourselves one completely crazy year, what would it look like?
58. What do we want to have lived together before we're 60?
59. What's our next big project, the one we launch this year?
60. And a very long time from now... what would you like us to be remembered for?

And if these conversations about the future have given you a taste for the big discussions, the full collection of questions for two covers every other register, from the lightest to the deepest. There's enough for years of evenings.