17 Things Every Couple Needs To Do Before Getting Engaged
Taking the step from just dating to becoming engaged is a big step, whether people want to downplay the significance of the whole thing or not. When you're simply dating you can just break up with someone and be on your way with little to no hassle, but when you're married, your relationship is legally-binding! Some people will say it's just a piece of paper and doesn't change your relationship, and while that may be true, when you put a ring on that finger you're saying to the world that you choose THIS PERSON to be your family for life. That means you're tying yourself and your family to this person for life… now that's definitely a big deal! No matter how crazy-in-love you may be, there are still certain relationship and life steps that every couple needs to work through in order to test their love and commitment to another that will ultimately determine if they're at the right stage in their relationship to get engaged and enter into a marriage.
With that in mind… what are some things that the majority of couples should work through as a team or unit before making the big decision to put a ring on it and walk down the aisle? Here we've outlined 17 things every couple SHOULD do before getting engaged.
17 Live Together
This is one of those points that always has such a divided reaction, usually because those who have a strong religious affiliation or come from a strict or religious family will strongly disagree. So with the exception of religious or family reasons, couples should test out their domestic compatibility by living together before getting hitched. It's one of those natural progressions in a relationship - date for a while and then move in together because you're ready to take that next step. By living together, you get to know each other in a whole different capacity than while you were dating. You get to see how they are in a domestic environment, how messy or tidy they are, you get a full composition of all their different moods and when their moods change, and overall, you really put your compatibility as a couple to the ultimate test as you spend indefinite amounts of time together and sleep in the same bed every night. You could say that moving in together is a marriage without the paperwork (aka. Common Law). So if you can cohabitate together without wanting to rip each other's faces off, then there's probably a good chance you can handle a marriage as well. Figuring out you hate living with someone is not something you want to find out after you're already married.
16 Survive An IKEA Trip Together
This is for everyone who doesn't plan on living with the person before they get married (calling all religious people and those with strict families!). Make a trip to IKEA together. And no shortcuts, either. Do the full IKEA experience - grab some popcorn, lie down on a few fake beds, argue about some light bulbs, and make an afternoon out of it. Honestly, if you can survive a trip to IKEA together without one of you having a complete meltdown or having a big public argument about some mundane household item, then you very well might be on your way to an engagement. Bonus points if you can set-up IKEA furniture together. Actually, if you can set-up IKEA furniture together without cursing in each other's face then you should get engaged as soon as you finish setting up the furniture item.
15 Have The Kids Discussion
You should never even consider getting engaged to someone if you haven't openly talked about kids on numerous occasions and made absolutely sure that you're both on the same page. The kids topic is actually something that should come up in the early stages of dating - to make sure you both want the same things in the future and there is a mutual dream or goal you're both working towards. For family-oriented people who want to have kids, this is usually a non-negotiable. There's no worse situation than investing years with someone you love, to only find out when you actually start talking about the big serious stuff, that they actually don't want to have kids. Talk about the big things early on so you don't waste time and make sure you want the same things when it comes to family life.
14 Go Through A Difficult Time Together
Whether it's a financial strain, an emotional crisis, death of a loved one, or just a time when your relationship is going through a tough time, it's important for a couple to work through a hard time together before walking down the aisle. This usually means you will have to be with someone for a considerable amount of time before getting married. But a couple's ability to respond in a crisis, how they come closer together or break farther apart, is really telling in terms of their communication patterns and how they respond when times are tough. Marriage will come with its struggles, and you need to know you're there to support you no matter the situation.
13 Get To Know Each Other's Parents And Families
When you get married you're bringing two families together. This is why, both for you and your family's sake, spend time getting to know your SO's parents and extended family. Extended families and parents get much more involved with a relationship turns to engagement - there's a wedding to be planned and money to be spent, joint holidays together etc. So make sure you get along with their family, and even make sure your family gets along with their family. If you could see your mom and your SO's mom drinking wine together, or both your dad's talking about ropes and hunting gear together, then you know that bodes well for a potential engagement and bringing both families together.
12 Spend The Holidays With One Another's Families
This point directly piggybacks off the previous point. But, at the very least, you both need to spend a holiday season with each other's families. Whether it's travelling back to your SO's hometown for Christmas if the live in a different city, or simply partaking in a bunch of holiday family dinners. It's important you see how your fit in with your SO's family traditions. It's also important that you witness what their family holiday traditions are, as those are what will be passed down to them as well, and likely what they will want to incorporate with their own family which is obviously directly going to affect you. Most importantly, spending time with their family over the holidays is just the most optimal way to get to know your future in-laws, extended family, and get closer as a couple as a result.
11 Have The Finances Discussion
The big elephant in the room - money! It's important that you have numerous discussions regarding finances. Whether you're still paying off student loans, or are still trying to square off other debts, it's important that the person is in the know when it comes to your finances. Also, things such as credit scores become increasingly important when it comes to getting approved for a mortgage or trying to finance a car, so make sure you have those money talks. Also, and probably more importantly, going through a period of time where you are budgeting together, sharing finances, and learning each other's spending and budgeting habits is going to much better prepare you for a potential marriage. In a marriage, you combine your finances, and their debts become your debts, so you need to have those conversations.
10 Have Some Savings
Of course you're madly in love and want to get married immediately, but this is just one of those practical things that can often hold couples back. Finances just aren't in the right place, or they don't have enough money saved to get married, or potentially buy a place. The truth is: it's important to have some kind of nest egg set aside before walking down the aisle. Weddings are crazy expensive, and once you get married, it's usually a sign that kids aren't that far off into the future, so you want to make sure you're going down a financial path where you will have the money to support a growing family. Everyone will have a different opinion when it comes to saving money before marriage, but having SOME savings is something the majority of people will consider a must. Come on… you don't want to be that newlywed couple still living in your parent's basement… or do you?
9 Raise A Pet Together
Okay, so not every couple are pet people. So if you hate dogs, then stop reading this immediately. But getting a pet together is often one of those incremental “relationship steps”. Buying a dog together is like a much less stressful, less inexpensive, and a less time consuming way of raising a kid together. Actually, you could say that raising a dog (or another animal) together is the training grounds for raising kids. It's a good way to see how you work together as a team to take care of another life. You see how hands on the other is, how responsible they are, and how much or how little they're able to care for another life. If you love someone and want to marry them, buy a dog first and see how that works out.
8 Babysit Together
If you aren't a big pet couple, I'd suggest babysitting a young infant instead. Even just randomly put a baby in your SO's arms without giving them any warning is a fun way to find out a lot of important information when it comes to kids. If you're a family-oriented person, you obviously want the person you're with to be the same, so babysitting a little kid together, whether it's a niece, nephew, or just helping out a friend, it's a fast-tracked way to see what type of maternal or paternal instincts they might possess. If they become annoyed or completely overwhelmed by the energy of the little infant, versus entirely overjoyed and filled with enthusiasm, you might get a lot of the answers you are looking for.
7 Talk About Future Career Plans
It's important you both understand how much of a focus work is going to play in one another's life moving forward. If you're proposing to someone with the expectation that they are going to want to start a family soon, then that's going to be tough if they're actually working towards a work promotion, one that will involve more responsibility and longer hours at work. In other words, you both should be familiar with each other's tentative five-year work plans so you know what type of career path you're both headed down, and how those compliment or complicate one another's. Maybe one of you has plans to start their own business one day, and has always dreamed of being an entrepreneur, while the other is perfectly content just working their 9-5 and wants to enjoy their free time during evenings and weekends. Those are things that will affect, both your own relationship and potential plans to start a family in the future.
6 Get To Know Each Other's Friends
In particular, get to know your SO's best friend. Their best friend is virtually family anyways, and actually has the power to have a profound impact on your relationship. They're going to be the best man or maid-of-honor at your wedding, so you better get along well or else your pending marriage could become a bit of an awkward subject. My advice: make an effort to get to know them so that the best friend knows that you value them. You don't want to be one of those couples that only ever hang out with each other, and aren't able to mix friends together and socialize in groups. Who knows… their best friend may just end up falling in love with your best friend and now you have double date partners for life.
5 Go On Vacation With Each Other's Friends/Family
Go on a vacation with your SO and their best friends. That's a great way to bond and get to know the people who are closest to them. Same with family - you both should take turns going on a trip with each other's families to really see how you fit in and get along. Trips like this can often become very telling signs if you should marry someone. If you go away with your SO, and they seamlessly fit in with your family, and your family loves them, then the likelihood of you marrying that person is obviously going to increase dramatically. While you don't want to go as far as saying they're “tests,” these are big moments in a relationship that help excel or delay a potential engagement.
4 Travel Together
I think Bill Murray said it best, “If you have someone you think is the one, take them and travel around the world. Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel all over the world, to places that are hard to reach and hard to get out of. And when you land at JFK and you're still in love with that person, get married.”
You won't truly get to know someone better than when you're living out of a backpack for months on end, wearing three day-old underwear, and spontaneously moving from place-to-place in some foreign country where you don't know the local language. That is how you REALLY get to know someone. So if you can go on a grungy travelling experience together, and come back even more in love than when you left, you must marry that person immediately. I think Bill Murray knows what he's talking about!
3 Learn How To Be Brutally Honest With Each Other
Don't even think about marrying someone if you haven't perfected the art of communication. Or at least learned how to communicate with each other effectively. It's important that you both learn how to communicate your truth, and create an arena in the relationship where this type of honesty is accepted and encouraged. You will find the greatest amount of freedom in a relationship when your relationship adheres to the mantra, “brutal truth”. So make sure you and your SO have healthy communication patterns and you've had very honest discussions about the things that are difficult to talk about in relationships. That's how you win and make sure you're together for the right reasons, rather than withholding things from each other for fear of disrupting your relationship or hurting the other person.
2 Learn How To Argue Exceptionally Well
People always think that the best couples get along perfect all the time and never argue. But that just isn't true. It's rather that the best and strongest couples just argue exceptionally well. They argue in a way that is healthy and actually helps push the relationship forward. That's because they argue quickly - they don't linger on the disagreements, become passive aggressive, or hold grudges that create a hostile and toxic energy in the relationship. They argue, but they choose love and make sure they don't leave the discussion until they find common ground and work past the disagreement. Couples having disagreements just shows that they're being honest with each other and aren't afraid to bash the walls of the relationship because they trust their relationship can handle it. Obviously fighting too much is not a good thing, but don't think about marrying someone until you've learned how to argue with one another in a way that actually makes both of you feel better by the end, even bringing you closer as a couple.
1 Have A Clear Discussion On Boundaries And Expectations Out Of A Marriage
Boundaries and expectations is another important discussion, or series of discussions to have before walking down the aisle with someone. First off, boundaries when it comes to cheating and infidelity. Honestly, this is something that will probably become clear early on while you're dating. But both of you need to be completely in the know of what the boundaries are in the relationship, and the appropriate way to act with other people so that it doesn't disrespect your relationship or each other. 3Those kinds of things become uber serious when you enter a marriage, so you better figure it out early. Expectations is another big thing to consider - you both need to have a clear idea what one another expects out of a marriage, and a husband or a wife. Those expectations will differ from person-to-person and couple-to-couple - which could be things like how much time you want to spend together, or how often you plan on taking trips apart from each other, or what sort of dynamic will be set-up between you for balance between work and home life.