Before You Say “I Do”: The Uncomfortable (but Essential) Conversations Every Couple Should Have
You’re planning a wedding. Everything in your relationship feels fine. No red flags, no big dramas, no glaring incompatibilities. So why poke the bear?
But here’s the truth: no one has ever said, “I wish we talked less before getting married.”
Avoiding hard topics now won’t make them disappear later. Sex, money, death, politics, addiction, conflict—these are the tectonic plates beneath every partnership. They shift. They rumble. Sometimes, they quake. And the couples who make it through intact are generally the ones who’ve mapped the terrain before the aftershocks hit.
This post offers a deep dive into some of the most avoided but essential premarital conversations, plus tools, tips, and recommended resources to help you navigate them with openness and respect. These categories aren’t always cleanly divided - like gambling and money, or addiction and porn - but I’ve done my best to organize the resources clearly.
Please note there are some affiliate links in this post.
🔥 Sex
Let’s begin with the most magnetic (and most misunderstood) terrain of all: sex.
We live in a world saturated with sexual imagery and innuendo, but actual conversations about real-world intimacy are rare. Expectations, shame, mismatched desire, unspoken needs - these can unravel even the strongest connections if left in the shadows.
Conversations are helpful, sometimes books are too.
📖 Your Blueprint for Pleasure: Discover the 5 Erotic Types to Awaken―and Fulfill―Your Desires by Jaiya is a framework for understanding how you and your partner are erotically wired. It’s not just about sex positions or fantasies, it’s about discovering what turns you on at a deep, elemental level. Are you energetic, sensual, kinky, or something else? Understanding your blueprints can help bridge places of disconnect. And even if the sex is good, understanding your erotic wiring can take your sex life up a notch… or ten!
For couples curious about how safety and comfort coexist with novelty and desire, 📖 Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel is a provocative read.
For those wanting to make sex more nourishing and sustainable, try 📖 Slow Sex by Diana Richardson.
For women who want to understand their bodies, brains, and pleasure more deeply, 📖 Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski is a must read.
For couples who want to bring some spirituality into their sex life, 📖 The Sexual Practices of Quodoushka offers rich teachings from the Nagual tradition.
For adventurous couples ready to explore their erotic edges, check out Jaiya’s other book, 📖 Cuffed, Tied, and Satisfied: A Kinky Guide to the Best Sex Ever.
👀And about porn: it’s time to talk. Whether it’s a shared pleasure or a private shame, porn can affect relationships in subtle and overt ways. If you or your partner are navigating this terrain, reading 📖 Your Brain on Porn by Gary Wilson is a great place to start. Or tune into 🎧 Porn Addiction, Men’s Sexuality, and Sexual Alchemy on the Sex Birth Trauma podcast with Kimberly Ann Johnson.
💊 Addiction
Addiction can shape a relationship in ways that are invisible until they’re undeniable. Whether it’s alcohol, prescription pills, sex, weed, gambling, or screens… anything we habitually use to numb out or escape can create ruptures in connection.
If you or your partner are in recovery, or living with addiction in any form, it’s essential to speak about it openly. What does support look like? What are the boundaries? What’s your relationship to sobriety? What are you willing to tolerate and what are your non-negotiables?
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but putting it all on the table is a good place to start.
Read about one couple’s outrageous journey navigating love, longing, and the labyrinth of addiction.
📖 Heart Medicine offers a rare, raw window into the spiritual dimensions of recovery—and what it means to love someone through the chaos. This is not your average recovery memoir. It’s a wild, courageous quest for healing through the sacred plant medicine Iboga, and a testimony to the power (and limits) of love on the path to freedom.
💸 Money
Money isn’t just about numbers, it’s about values, stories, habits, and power.
Debt, spending styles, savings goals, inheritances, income gaps, prenups - these aren’t just financial details. They are the architecture of your shared life.
If you want a guidebook that blends practical finance with emotional intelligence, Bari Tessler’s 📖 The Art of Money is gold. She’ll walk you through money dates, gentle budgeting tools, and how to unpack your childhood beliefs around wealth and worth.
🛍️ If overspending (or secret spending) is part of the picture, 📖 To Buy or Not to Buy by April Lane Benson offers a thoughtful, shame-free look at why we over shop and how to stop. It’s especially helpful if shopping has become a source of tension or escape.
🎲 If gambling has touched your relationship, 📖 The Recovering Spender by Lauren Greutman offers a raw and relatable roadmap. While not about gambling per se, it speaks to compulsive spending and financial self-sabotage with honesty, hope, and hard-won wisdom. For more addiction-specific support, 📖Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll explores the psychology of machine gambling and how it hijacks human desire.
💀 Death
Talking about death isn’t morbid. It’s meaningful and necessary. It also happens to be a topic I’m passionate about! I don’t only officiate weddings. I am also a certified end of life celebrant with years of experience officiating meaningful memorials and celebration of life ceremonies. These experiences have shown me how important it is to have honest conversations about loss before it happens.
What are your wishes if one of you gets sick? Who makes decisions? Have you talked about wills, health directives, guardianship, burial vs. cremation? How will you handle pet or parent loss? How do you handle grief?
Here are a few entry points into this conversation:
📄 Fill out The Five Wishes together—a beautiful living will meets values document.
☕️ Attend a Death Cafe, where strangers gather to talk mortality over tea.
🎥 Watch BJ Miller’s TED Talk What Really Matters at the End of Life.
📚 Read books like The Wild Edge of Sorrow, The Five Invitations, The Light of the World, When Breath Becomes Air, or Notes on Grief .
🎧 Watch Lisa Keefauver’s TED Talk Why Knowing More About Grief Can Make it Suck Less
Death, when talked about honestly, brings life into clearer focus.
🧠 Mental Health
Every couple should talk about their mental health history and current needs. Anxiety, depression, neurodivergence, past trauma… these are not personal flaws. They’re part of the fabric of many lives and deserve to be named, understood, and supported.
Discuss how each of you tends to your mental and emotional well-being. Are you in therapy? On medication? Do you need alone time, exercise, a support group, a spiritual practice? Knowing how to show up for one another in times of emotional crisis (and what your limits are) is vital.
And if either of you are looking for support healing unresolved trauma, these books are a few of my personal favorites:
📖 The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk – a foundational trauma text for understanding how unprocessed experiences live in the body and what healing might look like. Dense but essential.
📖 Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman – a groundbreaking classic that maps the terrain of trauma, memory, and healing with clarity and rigor. Academic but readable.
📖 Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker – a heartfelt, practical guide especially for those recovering from childhood trauma. Written with the tender authority of someone who’s been there.
For something less technical, check out the profoundly beautiful 📖 What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo. (The way she describes her wedding ceremony at the end is inspiring!)
🗳 Politics
You don’t have to vote the same to love each other well—but you do need to talk about how you deal with difference.
Whether it’s climate change, cancel culture, gun laws, or God, your beliefs are likely shaped by different lineages and lived experiences. It’s easy to demonize or dismiss, but that’s a fast track to resentment and breakdown.
To build a resilient bridge, read 📖 The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt together. It offers a research-based lens on why good people disagree, and how to talk across the divide with curiosity, not contempt.
There’s hope! I received this email for a bride this winter:
”My fiance and I come from different backgrounds, have differing political views, and have different religious and spiritual beliefs, and yet the commonality in love we have for each other has proven to be stronger than our differences. Corny? I would have thought so too, until I met my fiance. Our relationship has been one of great healing for the both of us.”
🥊 Conflict
Fighting isn’t the problem. Fighting poorly is.
What do your fights look like? Do they leave bruises or build understanding? Do you know how to de-escalate? Can you repair quickly and honestly? Do you go to bed angry? How are you at forgiving?
📖 Fight Right by the Gottmans will show you how to transform conflict into deeper connection. And 📖 Getting to Zero by Jayson Gaddis dives into the topics like repairing trust and navigating high-stakes relational triggers.
If you’re looking to navigate conflict with more grace and better tools, these resources can guide the way.
🎧 Also check out Jayson Gaddis’ free podcast: The Relationship School
💥 How to Talk About the Hard Stuff (Without Blowing Up Your Weekend)
Some tips:
Pick the right time (not when you're hangry, tired, or rushing out the door).
Start small. You don’t need to tackle all these topics in one night.
Make it playful. Consider using an app like SuperBetter to gamify growth.
You don’t have to be perfect communicators. But you do have to be willing. Because marriage isn’t sustained by wedding vows alone. It’s sustained by conversations like these and by the way you navigate them.