7 Awkward Conversations to Have Before Marriage

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]The purpose of dating as a Christian, at least in my opinion, is to get to know the person to the extent where you can see yourself marrying them and work towards that ultimate goal. That doesn't mean that you're locked into that goal, but it does mean that that is the ultimate purpose behind you guys going out, you getting to know each other's families, you, you know, going on these dates where you're talking about things that are important and hashing out different disagreements. Now, that last part is important because often it can be pretty tempting when you like a person, when you really vibe with their personality and you guys have good chemistry to not want to get into the deep stuff, the stuff that you might have disagreements over that might put a ruffle in your potential relationship together. After all, it's a lot of fun.

[00:00:46]And I've seen this time and time again.

[00:00:48]Couples avoiding important conversations that need to happen before marriage and therefore delaying their engagement and marriage. I don't want that for you because what that leads to in dating is more temptation. Couples dating for 7 8 years because they're not willing to have those tough conversations that are barring them from being one from getting married. So, today's video, we're going to break down seven awkward convos that you need to have with your potential spouse. Whether you're currently dating right now or you have hopes to in the future, or maybe you're married or engaged currently, these are some of the conversations that are better to have late than never. Now, the first awkward conversation that you need to have, and it doesn't necessarily have to be awkward, but I know for a lot of people it can be, is role expectations. Now, I have to admit that when Kazia and I were engaged, we didn't really have this conversation that much. Like, I knew that I would be the primary bread winner, that that would be my role and responsibility, and that, you know, Kasia ultimately would be focused on our future children and homeschooling them.

[00:01:53]Um but as you know people without kids as we are right now um the role expectations are you know it's like I I bring home the dough and she makes most of the meals but at the same time it's like we do a lot of different chores together and we do different stuff and it's very fluid but I imagine as we get older in our you know marriage and have kids those maybe role expectations and distinctions will become more clear but nonetheless I think this is a really helpful conversation to have because if you aren't you know if you expect your wife to be a stay-at-home you know mom one day or a stay at home wife or whatever and you're not making that clear then you know she might have totally different expectations of what that's going to look like. So setting these expectations is super helpful and it will help you um as time goes on to avoid you know big conflicts in your relationship and just to know your ultimate trajectory like what do you want the husband and wife dynamic in your household to look like. Before we get back in the video, another awkward conversation that you should probably have is about pornography. Your experience with pornography, your use of it, if you've had an addiction or not, and whether you're in a relationship or not, we all need accountability. And that's why Covenant Eyes is here for you. It's an accountability software that will send a monthly report of your internet usage to someone trusted in your life. For my viewers, you can click the link in my description and get 30 days free. If it doesn't help you, you can always cancel it. I encourage you to get serious about accountability and check out Covenant Eyes today. Now, let's get back in the video. The next conversation I'm going to highlight here is boundaries with in-laws. If you have not had experience around like married couples and that dynamic and you know family and extended family, you don't realize how important these kind of boundaries are. So, what do we mean by boundaries? Boundaries obviously are something that protects something that you care about. And in this case, it's your relationship. In Genesis 2:24, it talks about how man shall leave his father and his mother and become one flesh with his wife to leave and cleave to his wife.

[00:03:56]But what happens? But what happens when either the husband or the wife doesn't leave their mother and father, but instead stays codependent with them?

[00:04:06]They they stay just the exact same dynamic as before they were married. And I mean, this happens. You see um wives that are constantly at, you know, her mom's house and just like always there and always playing the role of the daughter, but rarely the role of the wife or husbands who instead of going to their wives for affirmation and approval and encouragement and comfort. They go on a call with their mom to get that.

[00:04:30]Have those conversations. How many times are we going to see, you know, our parents throughout the month or throughout the week? What is a reasonable expectation? like maybe your wife will come back to you and say, "Well, maybe three times a week." And you know, that's an expectation that maybe you're okay with, but also you're like, "Well, that seems a little bit uh much, like I don't see my best friend three times a week." This isn't just a practical question. When you're building your marriage, you're severing those attachments, those primary attachments with your parents, and you're re, you know, um cauterizing them with your with your partner, with your uh wife or your husband. If you never sever those primary attach attachments with your parents, then you're not going to be able to truly bond with your husband or wife. The dynamic is meant to change because you're not just a daughter or a son now. You're a husband and a wife, which is your primary calling. Yes, you're still a daughter and a son, and those still things come with responsibilities and duties, and that makes perfect sense, but your primary calling at this point is husband and wife. and how can you prioritize building that relationship? This next one is sexual past. Uh it's definitely an awkward conversation to have and it can be one of the most difficult conversations that you have in your relationship perhaps depending on you know how you take it and how you process it and the other person's experiences and maybe baggage you'd even call it. Um and the reason that you it's helpful that you talk about this and I'm not saying or suggesting that you go into explicit detail in any way because that is just not helpful at all. But I think it is helpful to just be open and honest with your partner about some of your past experiences in this way because you are becoming you know sexually one and you know if you're not revealing kind of your experiences beforehand at least in in a broad sense um I think those things are going to come out later anyway and they're going to be more painful and uh perhaps you're you're suppressing some experiences that you had in the past and that is going to play its way into your sexual life with your partner. And so it's good to be open and upfront about, okay, this is this is kind of what I've been through. This is what I've experienced. You know, these are my regrets in this way. To just be open and upfront about that is super super helpful. And if you're the one sharing it, um, you know, give give the other person some some time and some space to to process that because especially if they've had a very different sexual past, that can be a difficult thing to process. It can. Now, I wouldn't just limit this to, you know, your your past of like hooking up with people, you know, fornication. Uh, you know, pornography addiction is also a sexual past. So, it's something to be honest about and open up about because that will impact your relationship. Now, maybe it's far in the the distance in the past and and whatever, then and if that's the case, that's great. Um, but it's still helpful to be honest about, hey, this is something that I, you know, was into and that I battled for a long time and that captivated my heart, but this is how I've, you know, gotten away from it. This is how God saved me from it essentially. And those are really helpful to conver conversations to have even just to be honest and authentic about who you are and what you've been through just as you are about other aspects of your life. One important thing to remember, especially if you know your potential spouse is the one telling you their sexual past and and you've had a very different experience and and they're telling you all this kind of stuff that's weighing heavy on you. You know, the Bible says that we are made into new creations. That the old is gone and the new is come. The world may define people by what they've done. You know, this is their body count and and whatever else. But God does not have that same metric. When we give our life to God, when we put our faith in him, when we repent for our sins, we are given the righteousness of Christ. So when God looks at us, he sees a righteous, pure, spotless person, not because of what we've done, not because we've been perfect in our past, but because of Jesus righteousness. And just as God shows us that grace and and and that compassion, I think he calls us to show that grace and compassion to our potential spouse that's opening up to us about these hard things. One of the things we talked about within probably our first 10 dates was um something around finances and debt. And essentially what I wanted to ask my wife, my my now wife was, you know, what are your expectations for what your husband, you know, should make essentially because I, you know, she was expecting this this guy is making all this money, right? I'm like, "Hey, I'm I'm a Christian YouTuber and I don't know, you know, maybe there's some people out there that are just, you know, raking in the dough, but it's like, hey, you know, I need to set expectations here because ultimately I'm in ministry." And so, she was pretty clear about it. Like her expectations were, you know, I want, you know, a husband that can be able to provide for us and what what we need. That doesn't mean um, you know, tons of excess. Um, but ultimately, she just verbalized that she wanted her husband to be able to work hard and have a good work ethic.

[00:09:29]And that was the primary, you know, concern of her. So was she didn't want a slothful or a lazy husband. And for me, I'm like, okay, that's that's that's a good answer. I appreciate that. That gets us on the same page. And uh and then also another question about debt.

[00:09:43]Like I I asked her like, "Do you have any debt?" And she did not have any debt. She was, you know, living on her own and she had moved out since she was 18, but you know, she had worked hard to not accumulate any debt. And I was like, "Okay, that's cool. That's cool. I didn't have any debt either." But these are important conversations to have because if she were to say or your, you know, your future potential spouse says to you, you know, I have $100,000 in debt, that is a big factor. This is a very tangible thing that is going to impact your daytoday life. So, it's something to consider, right? If we're going to be paying, you know, minimum payments of $500, $800, $1,000 every single month, we need to know that. And we need to be on the same page financially. Are you just a frivolous spender? Is that something that you have an expectation for in the marriage or you you know you don't really have a priority to save or to give? That's something that we want to talk about and get on the same page. This can be an awkward conversation. I would not advise being like, "Okay, let's just put everything on the table on our first date." You don't uh you want to get to that level. You don't want to bring money into it that early. But it is as you go on to have some of these broad conversations about your values and what matters to you. What is your perspective on spanking? Isn't that a great way to just open a first date? Now, I would not advise that, but I would say that you should talk about parenting and discipline at some point in your dating process or your engagement process. I I think that's just a helpful thing. How were you raised? How did your parents raise you? How did they discipline you?

[00:11:14]What do you like about that and admire about it? And what do you say that you know that was pretty bad and I would not do it um that way at all? Those are really helpful things to clarify because if you go into a marriage and you're expecting, okay, well, you know, I'm going to spank my kids and this is just the way it's going to be. And your wife had a really tyrannical or authoritarian parent and that was a really like kind of almost abusive type thing. It's going to take some conversations to get on the same page because she might be very hesitant to go in that direction. You know, one of my favorite things to do at parties is is talk about headship and submission. It's really it's a real crowd-pleaser. People love talking about headship and the rules of men and women.

[00:11:57]No, no, I'm just kidding. Obviously, like that is one of the things that people dislike talking about and it's awkward and it's weird and especially if there's weird umness around the idea of submission or there's been bad examples in their life of what that looked like.

[00:12:11]It can have be conversation with a lot of baggage. At the same time, this is an awkward conversation that you need to have. And the reason being is that it's a command by God for man to lead his household, to lay down his life for his wife just as Christ laid down his life for the church, and for the wife to submit to her husband just as the church submits to Christ. This is a commandment. Now, in our culture, there's this thing called feminism that obviously has a lot of different uh perspectives and people have different interpretations of what that means. But there is a big belief that you know what it's just an egalitarian partnership.

[00:12:49]There is no leader of the household.

[00:12:51]It's just men and women and we're just basically the same and have basically the same rules. If that is her expectation, you know, I would call that a red flag. And I would you'd want to get that, you know, understanding.

[00:13:04]I don't know like in on your second date, third date, fourth date, I don't know, like whenever it it seems fairly natural. But I'd want to know sooner than later because if she is unwilling to be led, then as a man, I don't think that is somebody that you want to pursue. Now at the same time like one of the things that we really focused around when we were dating around this conversation was just kind of the distortions that we had seen and experienced around you know headship being misused essentially and you know we women being subject to these kind of authoritarian uh doineering men and husbands and how that was not what we wanted to see. And then also some other examples of men who were just completely passive that with women ran the show and that was something very clear early on that we were like I don't want to be the husband that's just you know get home from get gets home from work and is on the couch watching TV where the wife is doing the discipline of the kids and she's making everything and you know she has to make all the decisions because he's too tired. like I did not want and do not want to be that husband. And I made that very clear to her and she at the same time too said well okay I need to grow in trust because trust is the gateway to submission essentially like if I can truly trust that you know trust you that you can make the decision then I can feel at peace in submission. So a lot of our our dating was building that trust leading towards marriage. So then when we got into marriage, and we're not perfect at it by no means, but it's like, okay, I'm going to try to build courage in order to make the decisions and lead well, and she's going to build trust in me to be able to trust me to make those big decisions. And it doesn't mean that we're not collaborative.

[00:14:47]Absolutely. The so much of our, you know, decision-m is collaborative, but at the end of the day, I'm the leader of the household. And that is something that we clarified pretty early on.

[00:14:57]Church and theology. Now when my wife and I met u we were going to two different churches, two different denominations. I was going to a reformed Baptist church and Kesia was going to a Dutch reformed church. So some similarities there but there was one important difference baptism. Okay. So she grew up pedo Baptist which essentially means that you are baptizing children right to be to invite them into the covenant through baptism. That's part of their theology. And for me it was believers baptism. and I got married. I got I got baptized as a believer. Now, for us coming together, it was an important conversation pretty early on to say, "Okay, what is your relationship to the theology of your particular church? What are your questions? And are you pretty solidified in their theology?" For the most part, we were pretty much on the same page.

[00:15:44]She had been coming more over to the believer's baptism side. I'm not going to put words in her mouth, but we got to the point of basically saying, "Okay, you know what? we're going to go to to my church, the Reformed Baptist Church, because this is most closely aligns with our theology and we really enjoy the community and this is the the church that we want to pour into. And theologically speaking, we are we are pretty much on the same page. Now, there's some things that we're still hashing out and maybe we even have personal questions within ourselves that we're trying to work through and you know, saying that, okay, we're 100% in on the the same theology all the time is kind of an unrealistic expectation because they're going to be minute aspects of the Christian faith or the scripture that you are continuing to learn and grow in. Um and so communicating those things to you know what you're learning to your future spouse and even when you're married to your spouse is just part of growing and learning and being. So there might be slight disagreements but you generally you want to be on the same page especially where you're going to attend uh you know be part of the church essentially right if you are like a two different denominations and you refuse to go over to each other. Now, I've seen couples that they just don't talk about it. You know, they'll attend each other's churches, but at the end of the day, they don't really like them that much, and it's just something that they kind of skirt around. Listen, guys, this is going to be an important aspect of your spiritual development to be part of a body of believers. The Bible says, "Do not forsake the gathering, the assembling of the saints." Let me know in the comments down below if I missed an area or an awkward conversation that you should have with a potential spouse.

[00:17:18]Thanks again for watching guys and until next time, keep pursuing the mission.