How long in a relationship is the most suitable for marriage?

The New York Times once published a famous "15 questions before marriage", the purpose is to help every couple to determine whether they and their current significant other have the conditions to become a couple.

These 15 questions are very classic and have become a classic template for many marriage counselling. I myself have reworked and condensed these 15 questions into the "10 Questions Before Marriage" for the Chinese context and some classic cases I usually encounter in emotional counselling.

Here are the 10 questions that I condensed based on my actual experience and counseling case review, as well as the corresponding interpretation, you can take each other to examine their significant other to see if the other party is ready to spend their lives with you.

1. do we have enough financial support to ensure the establishment of our small family, as well as the maintenance of married life in the future?

Yes, the first thing to look at when getting married is money. For marriage, money is not the most important thing, but it must be there.

In fact, we found through our research that Chinese women's concept of money in marriage is not as gold-worshiping and snobbish as some public or a sound publicity, for most of them, they "value material things, but do not seek richness". What does that mean? The two people married must have a material basis, but the money is good enough, I do not expect you how rich, and do not expect and you together with the glory and wealth.

Annual income, real estate, these things are just to let each other's lives have a guarantee, can make the future of marriage a little less worry, so if you want to get married, please both have a certain economic strength, then you can protect your future married life will not fall into the "poor couples of all things sad" predicament.

The "naked marriage" sounds very romantic and looks and feels like a special trust in each other, but without a certain amount of strength just because there is no money "naked marriage", the end is very bad.

2. Can we agree on the bride price and dowry? Can both of our families be satisfied?

In Chinese marriage, there is always a problem: bride price and dowry. If you open the module of marriage issues on Zhihu, there are a lot of questions about bride price.

In fact, I have always felt that the bride price issue cannot be called a strictly emotional issue, because for two people who really have feelings, this matter is just a formality, but all the two people who have problems with the bride price and dowry are often the ones who have bad feelings at the beginning and want to calculate each other when they get married.

I don't agree with the statement "this bride price amount is our old family rule" or "my other sisters were married with this dowry", in my opinion these are all negotiable, after all, the dowry and bride price itself is used in the marriage of the young couple.

So, if you can't talk about this issue, then hold off, you are not yet suitable for marriage.

3. do we know enough about each other's families of origin? Will our families of origin interfere with our marriage?

After marriage, each of you has two families: one is your original family, and one is a small home for the two of you. If you can't tell each other the boundaries between these two families, you can easily cause your marriage to fall apart because of such problems.

The influence of our families of origin is often lifelong, so before you get married, make sure you know whether the other person's family of origin is healthy, whether there are hidden problems (such as childhood shadows), only to exclude these potential risks, you can later have a basic grasp of the performance of the other person in the marriage.

4. Do our parents and friends approve of our marriage? Did our marriage get the blessing of our elders?

There is a true saying: if you don't listen to the old man, you'll suffer before your eyes. A marriage that does not have the blessing of parents often does not end well. Nowadays, many young people have become independent and feel that they don't need to consult their parents on marriage matters, and sometimes they even go against them, which is very unwise.

After all, parents are the past, they have experienced such a long time of marriage, very clear what the next few decades of life means, you choose the other half is not reliable. You look at your significant other with a "lover's filter", but your parents do not, they are strictly in the review of this person has the ability and qualifications to spend their lives with you.

So don't blame your parents for seeming to "make things difficult" for your significant other, they are just doing their best to eliminate some of the potential risks and keep you from going through some of the difficulties they may have faced before.

5. do we really know each other's habits? Are we able to accept each other in their daily lives?

When I was a kid, living together unmarried was still something that seemed very "indecent", but with the opening up of the culture and more and more cases, two people living together for a period of time before getting married is a good way to test the compatibility of each other.

You like the way the person looks in front of you, not necessarily the way the person looks in real life. Your boyfriend looks sharp and handsome, but he may not even wash his socks when he is alone; your girlfriend looks exquisite, but she may actually live in a room that is usually a pigsty.

The fact that you have been to each other's place before doesn't mean anything