Questions for those who are contemplating marriage: (I thought this was REALLY great advice)

By Dennis Prager, Creators Syndicate 

1. Is the person your best friend or at least becoming so? It is easy to find a lover. It is easy to get excited about a new person. But if the person you marry does not become your best friend, you will either seek someone who will be or simply drift apart. What is a best friend? Someone you can and do tell just about everything to. Someone you want to be with as much as possible. And someone you need.

2. Aside from sex, do you enjoy each other? As great as the sex may be, even Hugh Hefner spends the vast majority of time doing other things. You must enjoy this person during those hours.

3. Does the person have a number of good friends and at least one very close friend of the same sex? A woman who cannot hold female friends and a man who cannot hold male friends have issues that will probably sink your marriage.

4. How does the person treat others? It should go without saying that if the person is not kind to you, quit while you can. But also watch how he or she treats waitresses, employees, family members and anyone else he or she comes into contact with. How the person treats others now is how this person will treat you later.

5. What problems do the two of you now have? Whatever problems you have before the wedding day, you will have during your marriage. You therefore have three choices: Make peace with the problem, see if it can be solved before deciding to marry, or don’t marry the person. It is imperative that you be ruthlessly honest with yourself. And that is very hard. Nothing in life is easier than denying problems when you are in love.

6. How often do you fight? It may be normal for couples to fight, but it is usually a bad sign if you are doing so with any frequency while dating. If you do fight, do you quickly make up? Does he or she fight fairly and hear your side? And perhaps most important, do you fight over the same issue(s) with no resolution?

7. Do you share values? Opposites attract in the very beginning. Likes stay together for the long term. The more you share, the better your chances of a good marriage. For example, if you think TV watching is a form of self-abuse and your prospective spouse loves watching for hours a day, you may have a big problem.

8. Do you miss the person when you are not together? Men are better at being distracted by work, sports, computer games, the opposite sex, and God knows what else, but it is not a good sign if you rarely miss her when not together. As for women, if you don’t miss him, it is probably a really bad sign.

9. How much of your love is dependent on the sex you are having? The power of sex is so great that it often obscures problems of relating to one another. How much do you relate outside of bed? Do you love talking when you don’t see, let alone touch, each other?

10. What do people you respect think of the person you’re considering marrying? Young people are certain they know better than anyone else in the world what is good for them. But if objections come, let us say, from a parent for reasons that are not easily dismissed, and if others you respect are unenthusiastic as well, you should take the objections seriously. You would do so regarding the purchase of a car, wouldn’t you? Yet no car will affect your life nearly as much as your spouse.

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“Some people get an exalted idea of what marriage is. It’s not all barefoot walks on moonlit beaches, hand in hand, in starry-eyed rapture. More often it’s the man waking up with the baby in the middle of the night, out of love and consideration for the wife, because she’s tired or pregnant. Or it’s the woman cleaning up after the man, doing his laundry or preparing his meals, because she truly loves and cares for him. It’s hard work in addition to all the affection, fun and romance! It can be wonderful, but you still have to do your part and work at it.

Most of all, you have to go into it with both love and commitment, not just to see if you can make it work, but determined to make it work, no matter what rough spots you encounter along the way.”

-D.B.B.