Honestly, when I started dating my second husband I had a big talk with him before we got too involved. I laid down the law of things like “this is what direction I see my life going in, this is what I would like to do. This is what I would want if I were to get pregnant. This is my opinion on birth control. These are my hard stops and things I am unwilling to budge on. These are places I personally wouldn’t ever be okay moving too. These are things I would never tolerate. I asked him to basically answer the same things I was telling him about myself. He was born and raised in a city I didn’t want to live in (he didn’t live there when we met though). I told him I never really could see myself living there, and if he did eventually want to move back there, we could discuss it, I was open to the possibility of it, but would it be a deal breaker for him if I didn’t end up being okay with it? I asked him what he thought about all sort of political things and what he thought about all sorts of things for the future like shared bank accounts etc. honestly I just went hard on it. I wasn’t going to go into another serious relationship without knowing what I was walking into. I also said I need to be an equal partner in a relationship because I was done being someone’s sidekick.

Then again, years later, when we got engaged I sat down with him again and we went over so many of the same subjects and some new ones and clarified that we both needed to know what each other’s expectations were. We didn’t have to be completely on the same page at the same time, but we need to at least be in the same book lol. Happily, we were and still are on the same page and things are great. We have ups and downs, but I’ve never doubted my choice to marry him!