Falling in love and saying “Yes, I’ll marry you” is very easy.
I still remember my proposal like it was just yesterday.
My husband, then my fiancé, outdid himself!
It was beautiful and I was so happy.
You couldn’t get me mad in that season of my life, I was just too excited.
The aesthetics, sweet words, mushiness, and daydreams about the wedding.
And oh, how could I forget the wedding hashtags?!
Coining a wedding hashtag was one of the most exciting parts of planning my wedding for me.
The whole experience of wedding planning is just so beautiful, fun-filled, and cute.
But marriage?
That’s a whole different ballgame.
It’s like you quickly move from hashtags to reality checks.
You’ve probably heard some people say, “I wish I had known this before getting married.”
It’s not always about hidden secrets, sometimes it’s about unspoken expectations.
Chances are, these people didn’t skip the romance while dating, but they skipped the real talk.
From finances to boundaries with family, intimacy, and personal values, if you’re not talking about the right things while dating or courting, marriage might come as a rude awakening for you.
If You Can’t Talk About These 10 Things You’re Not Ready For Marriage
1. Money
If you can’t talk about debt, income, savings habits, giving, or financial goals, you simply are not ready.
It’s that simple, and I choose to be blunt about it.
Don’t think I’m judging you because I used to be that way myself.
I avoided talks that had to do with money, financial responsibility, investment, and all that stuff.
They just weren’t my favorite subject.
I wanted a world where I could just spend money every time I needed to without having to plan or talk about it.
But real life doesn’t work like that.
Many couples walk into marriage with butterflies but without a plan.
Your wedding can be beautiful and your honeymoon dreamy, but you need to understand that reality will come knocking fast.
At that point, you’re going to realize that love and chemistry aren’t enough when the real issues start creeping in.
Debts to be sorted, bills to pay, money decisions to make, and so on.
Getting married doesn’t magically solve communication problems; if anything, it even exposes them.
You must have heard at least once that money is one of the leading causes of divorce in many marriages.
Well, I can conveniently say that money isn’t really the issue because money is good and makes life beautiful so it shouldn’t ruin marriages.
What the issue is, many times, is different money mindsets and hidden money matters.
This is why anybody willing to get married should be ready to talk about money without holding back, no matter how uncomfortable it is.
If you’re avoiding uncomfortable topics now, marriage won’t make them easier; rather, it will make the consequences harder.
2. Kids
If you think your partner automatically shares your views about children, you may have another think coming.
You’re both different individuals and coming from different families so you may have unique views.
It is maturity to be able to discuss kids from a healthy mindset and perspective and see if you agree.
You should be able to talk about whether you want kids, how many, when, and how you plan to raise them.
Children need parents with a plan, not just parents who can show them love.
If you still see yourself as a baby and think talking about children is far-fetched for you, you probably aren’t ready to get married.
Even if you claim to not want to have children immediately you get married.
First of all, is your partner aware of this and in agreement with this plan?
Secondly, what happens if pregnancy happens and children come?
3. Sex and intimacy
Maybe I should have mentioned this sex part before kids because that’s how kids come.
If you’re anything like me, then marriage is what exposes you to deep intimacy and sex.
I’m a Christian, and I believe that sex was made to be had exclusively within marriage, so that obviously means that I didn’t have any of it before I got married.
But make no mistakes, this is not an excuse to be ignorant about the subject and unwilling to talk about it.
Celibacy doesn’t mean ignorance and unwillingness to engage when it comes to the subject of intimacy.
If you can’t talk openly and respectfully about your expectations, boundaries, sexual health, or preferences, especially when marriage is close, you need to reevaluate your readiness.
And I understand that due to social conditioning, and sometimes even past trauma, some people aren’t comfortable having the conversation around these things.
But you owe it to yourself and your partner to seek healing and come out of the shame and pain, whichever the case may be.
Silence in things like this creates confusion, shame, and unmet expectations.
Sex is a major part of marriage and talking about it can even be what determines if you both should even get married or not.
4. In-laws
I’d say boundaries generally, but I chose to say in-laws because, in many contexts, they’re the closest to couples and have the highest tendencies to interfere in marriages.
My newlywed friend called me teary-eyed a few months into her wedding.
She said, “We talked every day, but somehow we never talked about how much his family would be involved in our lives. Now his mum has lived with us since we got married and doesn’t seem to plan to leave anytime soon.”
I felt so heartbroken for her.
She was confronted with that after a beautiful relationship and a fairytale wedding.
They never discussed how to handle extended family and what boundaries would be set.
And now, they’re in a lifetime commitment, discovering painful surprises they could have addressed earlier.
Don’t assume boundaries, talk about them.
If you can’t express how much influence you think your parents, siblings, or friends should have in your marriage, you’re not preparing well for it.
Marriage requires leaving and cleaving (Genesis 2:24).
Boundaries are protection, not enmity.
5. Plans
Your plans don’t have to be photocopies of each other for you to work.
You can have different dreams and still make a great couple.
But you have to talk about it first.
If you don’t feel confident in your plans and desires enough to share them, something is wrong.
And if your partner makes you feel ashamed or makes your dreams feel insignificant, that’s also a problem.
You have to be able and ready to honestly share your ambitions, goals, and any sacrifices that may be needed on that journey.
6. Your past
The thing about marriage is that it is an “All or nothing” kind of thing.
It requires going all in or just don’t do it at all.
And when I mean going all in, I mean including your past and all.
I have a friend who got engaged but the wedding never happened.
They had the rings, the parents had met, and even the date was picked.
However, when his bride-to-be finally got to find out some information about his past, she realized that they weren’t on the same page and hadn’t been for a long time.
They loved each other but never had the conversations that mattered.
This guy had a whole child with his ex but was never bold enough to tell his new woman.
When everything came to light, he claimed he was going to let her know eventually, but that didn’t make any sense.
When was he going to tell her?
After they had their own kids?
Don’t let love blind you to the need for hard talks.
If you’re still hiding your past mistakes, relationships, addictions, or secrets, you simply are not ready.
Marriage requires truth, not perfection.
Honesty builds safety.
7. Fights and forgiveness
The late Nigerian pastor Bimbo Odukoya’s quote, “Marriage is a union of two forgivers,” may sound cliché, but it’s gold.
If you decide that marriage is for you, then you have to be ready to talk about issues, fights, and conflict resolution.
You can’t remain a person who avoids confrontations, is scared to talk about fallouts, or just shuts off every time there’s an issue.
Your marriage will not work.
The ability to have hard conversations, give or receive apologies, and handle disagreements without stonewalling or exploding is super important.
Because conflict is inevitable, healthy couples don’t avoid it; they manage it well.
This goes hand in glove with being ready to talk about forgiveness, give and receive it, and your willingness to grow through mistakes.
You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to accept they you aren’t and your partner isn’t either.
8. Values
If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.
Values are non-negotiables.
They are not things you should be ashamed of or scared to talk about.
I see this happen most times in the situations where people are desperate; they want the wedding so bad and they think sharing might stop it from happening.
Let me be the one to tell you that if that happens, then you should be happy because you most likely dodged a bullet.
You need to be at liberty to talk about your values, what you consider acceptable, your standards, faith, convictions, and what role God or spiritual practices will play in your life if that’s something you’re into.
Be okay with setting the records straight.
If you can’t say what’s absolutely unacceptable to you in a marriage (e.g. abuse, infidelity, addiction, spiritual mismatch), maybe you’re not ready.
You owe each other the truth.
More so, when you’re united in values, your connection is deeper than surface compatibility.
9. Mental health
One Sunday afternoon, as we washed dishes after a family lunch, my aunt said something I’ll never forget: “Marriage is not built on love alone. It’s built on conversations no one likes having.”
She and my uncle had been together for over twenty seven years, and their wisdom was hard-earned.
They’d weathered many storms together; job loss, parenting disagreements, health scares, and so on, and they survived because they never stopped talking, even when the talks were tough.
My aunt’s advice rang in my head for a long time because I saw how profound it was.
If you can’t sit down and have honest, sometimes uncomfortable talks with your partner, you’re signing up for frustration dressed in pretty wedding colors.
Sometimes these conversations are about the deepest, darkest parts of our minds; mental health struggles and issues.
You need to be ready to talk both to your partner, and to people who can help you about anxiety, trauma, therapy, and coping mechanisms.
A growing trend I see in this generation and the younger ones is the readiness to talk about the nice stuff but reluctance to share the unpleasant and dark areas.
I’ll have you know that marriage doesn’t fix emotional pain; if anything, it will even amplify the areas where you’re unhealed.
And you don’t need to have serious mental health problems to talk about it.
You can discuss it generally without it being your experience; that will create the right atmosphere between you and your partner, making it clear that in case a need for the conversation arises in the future, it’s okay to talk about it.
If you’re dreaming of a marriage without first tackling difficult conversations like this, you’re only preparing for a wedding, not a marriage.
10. Roles
Personally, I don’t subscribe to gender roles and it’s not the norm in my marriage.
But that’s only because my husband and I discussed it before we even got married and we agreed to instead focus on our strengths and do what works for us.
It’s okay to have expectations about roles and responsibilities, you just need to be willing to communicate them.
If you can’t express what you expect from a husband/wife emotionally, spiritually, sexually, or domestically, you will find yourself in situations you don’t like.
Because the thing about unspoken expectations is that they eventually become silent frustrations.
If you’re serious about marriage, the most romantic thing you can do is talk about the things that scare you.
Silence before marriage often leads to shouting in marriage.
If the mere thought of discussing serious life matters like debt, sex, faith, loss, or family expectations makes you nervous and uncomfortable, maybe you should pause for a bit.
Before you say “I do,” make sure you can say “Let’s talk.”