25 Questions Every Christian Couple Should Ask Before Their First Anniversary

The First Year Will Wreck Your Assumptions (In the Best Way)

My wife and I spent eight months in premarital counseling. We read the books, did the workbooks, sat across from a pastor who asked us all the "right" questions. And then we got married — and realized nobody had asked us the real ones.

Not "what are your love languages." Not "how do you feel about tithing." The real ones. Like: what happens when one of you stops wanting to go to church? Or when your in-laws have a completely different definition of "boundaries"? Or when you disagree about money so badly you sit in the car for twenty minutes before walking into Target?

Nobody warns you about that one.

Here's what I think most premarital counseling gets wrong: it prepares you for the idea of marriage, not the Tuesday-night reality of it. The first year isn't hard because you picked the wrong person. It's hard because you're learning, in real time, that love is less like a movie montage and more like assembling IKEA furniture with someone who reads the instructions differently than you do.

Gottman Institute research found that couples who ask each other meaningful questions weekly report 31% higher marital satisfaction. Not yearly. Not when things go sideways. Weekly. That stat alone should change how you think about date nights.

So here are 25 questions for Christian couples that go deeper than devotional prompts. These aren't softballs. Some will make you uncomfortable. Good.

Faith & Spiritual Life Together

This is the one everyone assumes they've covered. You're both Christians. You both go to church. Done, right?

Not even close.

A Barna study found that 41% of practicing Christians say faith conversations with their spouse are "surface-level at best." Four out of ten. These are people who go to church together every Sunday, who pray before meals, who would both check the "Christian" box — and still can't talk about what they actually believe when the lights are off and the kids aren't around.

1. If one of us stopped going to church, how would the other respond — honestly?

This isn't hypothetical for as many couples as you'd think. Seasons of doubt hit. Burnout is real. And your answer to this question reveals whether your faith is something you share or something you perform together.

2. What part of your faith feels most alive right now, and what part feels like it's on autopilot?

3. Do we pray together because we want to, or because we feel like we're supposed to?

The National Marriage Project found that couples who pray together are 30% less likely to divorce. But there's a massive difference between prayer as habit and prayer as actual conversation with God together. If it feels forced, name it. That honesty might be the most spiritual thing you do this month.

4. Whose faith do you admire — and what specifically do you want our marriage to look like because of it?

5. When was the last time you felt genuinely close to God, and did I know about it?

That second half — "did I know about it" — stings a little. Because sometimes we're having real moments with God and our spouse has no idea. That gap matters more than most couples realize.

6. What's one thing about how you were raised in church that you do NOT want to repeat in our home?

If you want a structured way to get into conversations like these without it feeling like a therapy session, tools like deep questions for Christian couples can help break the ice — especially when you're not sure where to start.

Money, Goals, and the Stuff Nobody Wants to Talk About

Look — money is the number-one predictor of divorce. Not infidelity. Not communication issues. Money. And yet most engaged couples spend 200+ hours planning a wedding and less than 10 hours in premarital counseling, according to PREPARE/ENRICH data. That math is insane if you think about it for more than five seconds.

My wife and I learned this the hard way during our first year. We had completely different definitions of "saving" and neither of us knew it until the credit card statement showed up. Turns out, she thought saving meant "spending less than you earn" and I thought it meant "having a savings account you never touch." We were both right. We were also both wrong. Marriage is fun like that.

7. What's your honest relationship with money — are you a spender, saver, or somewhere in the anxious middle?

8. How much debt are we bringing in, and what's the plan — not the vague "we'll figure it out" plan, but the real one?

9. How do we decide what percentage of our income goes to tithing, giving, and generosity — and what happens when finances get tight?

This one splits couples fast. Tithing when you're comfortable is easy. Tithing when rent is due and the car needs new brakes? That's where your theology meets your bank account.

10. At what dollar amount does a purchase need a conversation before it happens?

Huge difference. Some couples say $50. Some say $500. Neither is wrong, but not knowing your partner's number is a fight waiting to happen.

11. What does "financial security" actually look like to you? Be specific.

12. What's one financial goal you'd be embarrassed to say out loud — and can you say it right now?

Side note: if you answered "I don't know" to more than two of those, that's not a red flag — that's just an honest starting point. The problem isn't not knowing. The problem is pretending you do.

Family, Kids, and What You Inherited

Every marriage is really two families trying to merge into one. And no matter how much you love your spouse, you married their family's patterns too. The way they handle conflict? Inherited. The way they show love? Inherited. The way they go silent when they're hurt? Yeah — inherited.

It's like a software update you didn't agree to. Your operating system got patched with code from two completely different developers, and now you're trying to run the same program together.

13. What's one pattern from your parents' marriage that you've already noticed in ours?

14. Do we actually want kids — and is that answer based on what WE want, or what everyone expects?

Contrarian take: the Christian community puts enormous pressure on couples to have kids quickly, and not every couple is ready — or called — to be parents on someone else's timeline. Having this conversation honestly, without the weight of your small group's expectations, matters more than you think.

15. How involved do we want our families in our marriage, and where's the line?

16. What's one thing your parents got right that you want us to carry forward?

17. If we have kids, what's the one non-negotiable value we're raising them with — and what if we disagree on it?

These aren't breezy questions. They take time. And honestly, they're better spread across several conversations than crammed into one intense evening. If you're looking for a way to ease into stuff like this, faith conversation questions for couples has a mix of lighter and heavier prompts that can help you build momentum without making it feel like an interrogation.

Conflict, Forgiveness, and How You Fight

Here's what nobody tells you about the first year: you're going to fight about dumb stuff. The thermostat. The way they load the dishwasher. Whether "I'll do it later" means today or next century. And those dumb fights? They're actually about something much bigger — they're about whether you feel heard, respected, and safe enough to be annoyed without the whole relationship feeling threatened.

We learned this the hard way. Every. Single. Time.

18. When we argue, do you need space or do you need to talk it through right now — and can you handle that my answer might be the opposite?

This one question could save you a hundred fights. Pursuers and withdrawers marry each other with alarming consistency, and when you don't name that pattern, every conflict becomes a chase scene nobody wins.

19. What does forgiveness look like to you — is it a decision, a feeling, or something else?

20. Is there something from before our marriage that still bothers you that we've never fully talked about?

21. When I hurt you, what do you need from me that I'm currently not giving?

22. Do you trust me with your anger — or do you edit yourself because you're afraid of how I'll react?

Read that one again. Slowly. Because if your spouse is filtering their real feelings to manage yours, that's not peace. That's performance. And it'll erode things in ways you don't see until it's almost too late.

The Future You're Building Together

Most couples talk about the future in vague terms. "We want to be involved in ministry." "We'd love to travel." "Maybe move somewhere warmer." But vague futures create real disappointment, because your version of "someday" and their version of "someday" might be two completely different zip codes — literally and figuratively.

Funny enough, the couples who seem to have the strongest marriages aren't the ones who agree on everything. They're the ones who know exactly where they disagree and have decided to build something together anyway. That distinction is everything.

23. Five years from now, what does an ordinary Wednesday look like for us — be as specific as possible?

Not vacation. Not a big life event. An ordinary Wednesday. Because that's what marriage mostly is. And if your ordinary Wednesdays sound completely different from each other's, that gap is worth closing now.

24. What's a dream you haven't told me about because you think it sounds too ambitious or too weird?

25. What's the legacy we want to leave — not the Instagram version, but the real one?

Legacy is a heavy word and people use it loosely. But stripped down, it's this: when people talk about your marriage in twenty years, what do you want them to say? Get specific. Write it down. Revisit it every anniversary.

For more on how Not Just Sundays works and why it's built for exactly these kinds of conversations, that's a good next read.

How to Actually Use These Questions

Don't sit down and fire all 25 at your spouse in one evening. That's not a conversation — that's a deposition. Pick two or three. Spread them out over a week. Let some of them breathe. The best conversations happen when there's no pressure to get through a list.

And honestly? Some of these are better asked in the car, or on a walk, or at 10 p.m. when you're both half-asleep and your guard is down. The context matters almost as much as the question itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should Christian couples start asking these deeper questions?

Before the wedding, ideally — but the truth is, most couples aren't ready to answer these honestly until they're actually living the reality of marriage. The first year is prime time. Don't wait until year five when patterns have already hardened.

What if my spouse doesn't want to answer some of these?

That resistance is actually information. If a question makes your partner shut down, the issue probably isn't the question — it's what's underneath it. Don't force it. Circle back. And consider whether the environment feels safe enough for that level of honesty.

Can these questions replace premarital or marriage counseling?

No — and they're not meant to. Think of them as a supplement, not a substitute. A good counselor gives you tools to process the answers. These questions just get you to the right conversations faster.

How often should couples have these kinds of deep conversations?

The Gottman Institute's research points to weekly as the sweet spot for meaningful check-ins. That doesn't mean a two-hour deep dive every seven days. Even 20 minutes of honest conversation — one real question, fully heard — outperforms a monthly marathon talk session.

What if we've been married for years and never asked these?

Then start now. Seriously. There's no expiration date on good questions. A couple married 15 years might actually get more out of these than newlyweds, because you have real history to draw from instead of hypotheticals.