The Questionnaire

A (non-exhaustive) list of questions I think you should ask before you get married.

Ever thought something on the lines of “MAN, I wish I knew what to ask a man before I marry him. Why can’t there just be a CHECKLIST or something? This shouldn’t be this difficult!”? I know I have.

So when a much younger friend told me that she thinks the guy she’s been seeing for 3 months is the one, I wrote her a list of questions I think she should ask him. It’s nowhere near exhaustive. It is, however, the list I think addresses a lot of difficult conversations couples struggle with. Here it is, in case it’s useful to anyone else currently looking at a man across a dinner table and wondering whether he’s your person for (hopefully!) the rest of your life.

0. What is his relationship with his parents? Does he call them because he wants to or because he’ll get a guilt-soaked phone call if he doesn’t? Does he spend time with them because he enjoys their company, or because he thinks that’s what a good son does? Is he financially dependent on them? Have they paid for the car, “helped” with the down payment, covered his health insurance, or maybe gifted him some money? What is the expectation of return on that? How does he speak to his mother on the phone when he thinks you’re not listening?

1. Does he have siblings, and what is the actual family ecosystem? Is there an anointed golden child and a resented scapegoat, and which one is he? If he’s the golden child, you’re about to inherit the resentment of everyone who isn’t. If he’s the scapegoat, you are about to inherit a lifetime of him trying to prove his worth to people who don’t really care about his effort. How do the siblings speak to each other as adults? Is he friends with his siblings?

2. How does his family treat his bhabhi, his jiju, whoever the most recent person to marry into this family is? Who serves whom? Who gets interrupted? Whose plate gets filled first? Whose career is asked about with genuine interest?” Whatever is happening to her is what will happen to you.

3. What did his parents’ marriage actually look like when he was growing up? Who deferred to whom on the small stuff? On the big stuff? Who got to be tired? Who got to be the “difficult” one, and who was expected to deal with it? Who decided how comfortable the dinner table was? Whatever he watched as the primary example of ‘marriage’ for his whole life is what he thinks marriage is.

4. Has he ever been to therapy, and if not, would he go if it was needed? What does he think of men who go? If his answer involves “I just talk to my friends,” “I’m not really the type,” or “I don’t believe in that stuff,” ask yourself how he plans to process his pain when life eventually whoops his ass. The answer is going to be you, and you are not qualified. What then?

5. What is his actual income, and does he know where his money goes? If he cannot tell you within reasonable accuracy what he spends on rent, food, going out, his parents, and savings each month, he is not a financial adult; he is a financial teenager who happens to have a salary.

6. Does he have debt, and how does he treat it? Credit card dues, personal loans, EMIs on things he didn’t need, money owed to friends, money owed to family. Has he ever defaulted on anything? Has he ever been bailed out? Is that person who bailed him out going to expect repayment in the form of influence over your marriage?

7. What is he financially expected to contribute to his parents and siblings after marriage? Has he actually asked? Or is he assuming? Get a number. Monthly remittance, yes or no, how much. Siblings’ weddings: is he expected to fund part of it? All of it? Parents’ medical bills: is there insurance, is there a plan, is there a corpus, or is the plan “we’ll figure it out,” which always means you will figure it out. Is the house in his name or his father’s, and what does that mean for your marriage?

8. What happens when you out-earn him? Has it happened yet? If yes, how did he behave in the week after the money came in? Was he generous and proud, or weirdly snippy about small things? Men can intellectually support equal earning and still end up being turnips about it.

9. Joint, separate, or hybrid accounts? Does he have a thought-through position, or is he assuming you’ll just merge everything because that’s what wives do? Has he considered what happens to your money if you take a career break for children? Does it become his money that he generously shares, or does it remain yours? What’s his view on financial transparency? Full visibility into each other’s spending, or a “we trust each other” arrangement that mysteriously only ever benefits one side?

10. Does he know how to run the admin of his own life? Can he book his own doctor’s appointments, remember when his car insurance expires, file his own taxes, call the plumber, manage his own medication, and sit on hold with the bank? Or does he get a strange, helpless look when any of these things come up?

11. How does he spend on himself versus on you versus on his family? Is he generous with his parents and tight with you, generous with himself and tight with his parents, performatively generous with you in public and weird about it in private? Does he struggle to say no and then complain about it for the whole week?

12. Does he want children, how many, by when, and is any of this actually negotiable? “I’m open to whatever you want” is not an answer. Make him give you a real answer. Then ask what he thinks the first year of a baby’s life looks like in your household and see if his vision and yours are even vaguely similar.

13. If you struggle to conceive, what is his plan? IVF? For how many cycles, with whose money, with whose time off work, on whose schedule? Adoption? Does he genuinely consider it an equivalent to biological children? Childlessness? Can he imagine a full life with you and no children, or will he grieve it for the rest of your marriage?

14. Who is taking parental leave, who is doing the night feeds, who is doing the school run, who is staying home when the kid has a fever? “We’ll figure it out together” is the single most common lie told in pre-marriage conversations, and it always, always ends up with the woman figuring it out while the man takes credit for being supportive.

15. Whose career pauses when something happens, and has he ever, even hypothetically, even for thirty seconds, imagined it being his? If the answer is no, if he has genuinely never considered that he might be the one to step back, then you already know whose ambition is the default one in this marriage.

16. What religion or cultural framework are the kids being raised in, and has he actually thought about it, or is he assuming the default is his? Whose festivals are the “real” festivals in the house? Whose god gets the bigger photograph? Whose grandparents get to take the kids to which ceremonies? Whose mother tongue do the kids learn first?

17. What is his view on hitting children, yelling at children, shaming children, withholding affection from children as discipline? What was done to him, and does he describe it as discipline or as harm? A man who calls his own beatings “necessary” or “what made me who I am” is telling you what he will do to your kids the day they make him angry enough.

18. If you have daughters, will he raise them with the same expectations, the same freedoms, the same investment, same worldviews as sons? Don’t take his word because he’ll say yes. Watch how he already talks about his nieces compared to his nephews.

19. Does his family expect you to live with them after marriage? Has he told them you don’t want to? Has he had that conversation, or is he hoping you’ll either agree or be the bad guy who refuses so he doesn’t have to be? A man who cannot have a hard conversation with his parents on your behalf before the wedding is not magically going to find the spine to do it after.

20. How often will his mother visit, for how long, and who is hosting her? Is it understood that her visits are a joint project, or is it understood that she is his guest who you are expected to feed, entertain, defer to, and not complain about? What happens when her visit, which was supposed to be for a week, becomes a month?

21. What does he do when his family is dismissive of you? It will happen. If it has already happened (and look closely, because it almost certainly has), did he address it in the moment? Address it later in private with them? Address it later in private with you by asking you to adjust, or pretend he didn’t notice?

22. When his mother’s comfort and your comfort conflict, whose side does he choose? The seating at dinner, the temperature of the AC, what to order, where to go for the holiday. Watch carefully.

23. What’s his stance on the visible markers of marriage? Surname change, sindoor, mangalsutra, karva chauth, the performances of wifehood? Is he willing to take on any equivalent markers himself, or is the visible signaling of “married” a thing only one of you has to wear?

24. How does he handle the auntie-uncle pressure circuit? The relentless questions about when you’ll have kids, why you’re still working, why you wore that, why you spoke like that, and why you laughed too loudly? Does he stand between you and it, deflect it, change the subject, or does he go quiet and let you take the hits because “they don’t mean anything by it, just ignore”?

25. Does he defend you in rooms you’re not in? You will never directly know this, but you can figure it out. Does his family seem to think highly of you in ways that suggest he’s been telling them that he thinks you’re the bee’s knees? Do his friends know of your accomplishments, or are they surprised every time one comes up?

26. What does he want his life to look like at forty, at sixty, when the kids have moved out, when his career has plateaued? Has he thought past the wedding at all, or is the wedding itself the imagined finish line? Men who haven’t imagined the long arc of a life tend to be very surprised by it when it arrives.

27. If you got a serious opportunity in another city or country, would he move? Has he ever moved for a woman in his life? Has any man in his family ever moved for a woman? If women have been the ones who relocate for his whole life, you are asking him to be the first man in his bloodline to do it. That is much bigger than you can imagine.

28. Does he support your ambition the same way in public and in private? In public, he is proud, he brags about you, he shows you off, and he is the modern husband. In private, though? Is he still proud, or is there a small, cold voice in his head that tells him he expected something else?

29. How does he describe your work to his friends and parents? Does he get the title right? Does he get the company right? Does he understand what you actually do, or does he describe it as “she works in some media thing” because he never bothered to understand your work?

30. What does he do when you succeed, and what does he do when you fail? Failure is easy to be sweet about because it doesn’t threaten the status quo, and he gets to be the good guy. Success is where men’s real beliefs about their wives emerge, often subconsciously.

31. Drinking: how much? How often? What is he like when he drinks? Have you actually seen his worst? Find a way to see it before you commit.

32. Drugs: historical, current, recreational, dependent? What has he done, what does he still do, would he stop if you asked, and would he resent you for asking?

33. Gambling, including the respectable versions. Crypto positions he refers to as “investments.” Day trading that is actually betting. Sports betting apps. The casino trip with the boys that has happened more than once. FnO ‘just as an experiment’.

34. Porn: what’s his relationship with it? How often, what kind, and has it shaped what he expects sex with you to be? You don’t have to be anti-porn to ask this question. You just have to know what the man you’re sleeping with is comparing you to in his head.

35. Cheating: has he ever cheated? What does he personally define as cheating? Do not assume his definition matches yours. For some men, cheating starts at penetration. For some, it starts with a kiss. For some, with an emotional confession to another woman. For others, a conversation. Find out his definition and whether it is one you can live with.

36. How does his anger come out? Voice raised, doors slammed, things thrown, three-day silent treatments, driving fast on purpose, name-calling that gets walked back later as “just venting”? Every man feels anger. The question is who he aims it at and whether it has ever frightened anyone. Does he think of his anger as something he controls or something that controls him?

37. Has he ever been physical with anyone, ever? A partner, a sibling, a parent, a stranger in a bar, a wall, a door, a punch thrown at the floor? Men will tell you about punching the wall like it’s fine, whatever. It’s not fine.

38. Who are his three closest friends? What are their marriages or relationships like? If his three closest friends are all in marriages where the wife is exhausted and the husband is making jokes about it, you should realize that’s what you’re signing up for too.

39. How do his friends talk about their wives and girlfriends when they think no woman is listening? “Happy wife happy life” jokes, the “permission” jokes, the “ball and chain” jokes, the rolling of eyes at the mention of a wife’s name? Does your man laugh along? Does he push back? Does he actually not associate with men who talk like that in the first place?

40. Does he have female friends? Has he slept with any of them? Is there one in particular he talks about a lot, or maybe one he never talks about?

41. Are his friends happy for him about you? Are glad he’s found you? Or do they seem to be assessing you, waiting to see if you’ll be the cool wife who doesn’t mind the boys’ trips or the difficult wife who does?

42. Does he cook, clean, do laundry, do groceries, change sheets, scrub bathrooms without expecting a medal? Or only when guests are coming? Or only when you’ve cried about it?

43. Does he notice when something needs doing? Or does he wait to be told and then expect credit for doing what he was told? If you are the only one who can see the dust on the shelf, the empty milk carton, the kid’s school form due tomorrow, the wet towel on the bed….

44. What is his standard of cleanliness? How does it compare to yours? And whose standard wins when they don’t match? Does the lower standard get to be the default because raising it would be “nagging”?

45. How does he fight? Voice raised, walks out of the room, stonewalls for hours or days, goes cold, gets sarcastic, weaponizes something you told him in confidence, brings up something from two years ago, apologizes quickly to end the fight without resolving it, actually engages with the substance of what’s wrong? You will fight thousands of times in a marriage.

46. Can he say “I was wrong” without a “but,” “you also,” or a long explanation? A man who cannot apologize without qualifying it is a man who, deep down, does not believe he was wrong.

47. After a fight, who reaches out first? Always you? Always you? Is there a pattern of him waiting, knowing you will eventually crack? That is a tactic, conscious or not, and it works because you let it.

48. Does he hold grudges? For how long?

49. What does he know about himself that he doesn’t like and is actively working on? If he cannot name anything, or if what he names is one of those suspiciously charming things, he is not a man who has honest conversations with himself. You cannot have a real marriage with someone who has no relationship with his interior self.

50. How does he describe his exes? Is there a single ex he speaks of kindly, with whom he simply wasn’t a good fit? Because statistically, you will one day be an ex, and the language he is using for other women is the language he is preparing to use about you.

51. What is the mental health history in his family, including his own? Depression, anxiety, bipolar, OCD, addiction, untreated rage, suicide? None of it is a dealbreaker unto itself, but a man who refuses to acknowledge any of it is.

52. If you got chronically ill, is he the kind of man who stays present, learns the medications, and comes to the appointments? Or is he the kind of man who disappears into work and lets your mother and your sister become your real caregivers while he tells everyone how hard this has been on him?

53. If his parents get sick (and they will), what is the plan, and who is the assumed primary caregiver? Is it understood that you, the daughter-in-law, will be the one taking the lead because you are “better at that sort of thing”? Has he ever, even once, imagined being the primary caregiver to his own parents?

54. Sexual compatibility: have you actually had a real conversation about what you each want, what you each find difficult, what frequency works for both of you, what neither of you will do, and what each of you needs to feel wanted?

55. What does he do when you say no? Does he accept it? Does he sulk, negotiate, ask “why not”, or punish you for the next two days? A man’s response to a small no tells you exactly how he will respond to a big no.

56. How does he speak to people who can do absolutely nothing for him? How does he behave with the waiter, the driver, the watchman, the housekeeper, the call center agent, the auto-driver who took a wrong turn? People treat the powerful well because they have to.

57. How does he and his family treat his mother’s domestic staff, the cook, the maid, the driver they’ve had for years? Are they treated like real people with names and birthdays and families?

58. What does he think a wife is for? Ask him. Watch him try to dodge the question, watch him laugh, watch him give you an answer, watch him ask what do you mean. Press until you get a real one, and then think about whatever he actually said for a few days.

59. What does he think a husband owes to his wife, to his children, to his household, to the project of the marriage in itself? The answers most men give to this are shockingly weak compared to the answers they give to the wife version. Don’t put him in a corner on this one; ask him to take his time and think about what he thinks.

60. Does he believe in an equal marriage in the abstract while expecting a traditional one in practice? He will sincerely tell you he believes in equality, and he will mean it, and he will also be assuming that you will be the one who cooks, plans the holidays, manages the relationships, notices when the child is sad.

61. If one of you dies young, what happens? To the children, to the house, to the money, to the surviving partner? Has he written a will? Is there life insurance? Is there a plan? Is the plan “we don’t need to think about that now”? That is a plan to leave your children at the mercy of his family’s goodwill.

62. If you are both eighty, retired, and falling apart, who is taking care of whom? Can you picture it? Can you picture him gently helping you up the stairs? Can you picture yourself wanting to help him up the stairs? The image either comes easily or it doesn’t.

63. Can you imagine being bored with him? Because the wedding is one day, the honeymoon is two weeks, the early infatuation is two years, and the rest of it, decades of it, is the boring part. The boring part is where most marriages die.

64. Do you like who you are when you are with him? Not who he tells you you are, not who he makes you feel like you could be, not the version of yourself you are performing for him. The you that already existed before he arrived, does she get to stay? Does she get more room, or less?

The right man will not flinch at a single one of these questions. Actually, untrue. He WILL flinch and he WILL get awkward, but he will push through his own conditioning and stratified worldviews to meet you where you are. He will realise that this is important to you. He will sit with you and answer them, and the answers will sometimes be uncomfortable, and that discomfort will feel like the beginning of a real conversation rather than the end of one. He will be honest about not having all the answers and will take time to think things through instead of pandering to what he thinks you want to hear.

The wrong man will tell you you are overthinking, that you are being intense, that you are ruining something nice by interrogating it. Pay very, very close attention to which of those two men he turns out to be, because that distinction is the entire rest of your life.

Send this to every woman you love who is currently three months in and starry-eyed. Consider it a small act of public service. She'll either thank you or block you, but you might just save a life!