Are You Ready for Marriage?

Everybody's doing it. Or so it seems. When you're ready to make a lifelong commitment to your partner, it suddenly seems like everyone around you is getting married—Carrie and Mr. Big, Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz, the girl from high school voted "least likely to get married" and a boy she met in college. Next thing you know, June comes around, wedding shows appear on every television channel, and even your single friends are trying to figure out their ideal wedding date (7-7-07 is gone forever, oh my!).

So how do you know if marriage is the right decision--right now--for you?

You must know that there is no such thing as a "marriage timeline". A couple who have been together for four years are not necessarily more ready for marriage than a couple who have only been dating for seven months. Perhaps your partner feels completely committed to you and feels no reason to sign a contract reinforcing your relationship, but you want that contract—and the picture-perfect wedding to go with it. You have the marriage bug. So what are you going to do about it?

You must have an open and honest discussion with your partner about marriage.

The Catholic Church forces this discussion through their Marriage Encounter program. If you're not Catholic, you can go through a similarly painful and enlightening process by having a frank discussion with your partner about the nitty gritty to make sure you two really are on the same page.

Creating a happy marriage is entirely dependent on your ability to communicate, and ultimately, your knowledge of yourselves and what you want as individuals. To make your partner aware of what you want and need, you have to share.

To start, try having a conversation in which you both answer the following questions:

1. Do you have any debts?

If your partner has a student loan, there's no reason to panic (as long as he/she's paying it off diligently). However, poor credit can spell disaster for a relationship, as it will impede you from buying a house, car, or even renting an apartment. You don't want to end up like that guy on the free credit report commercial, living in your fiancé's parent's basement for the rest of your life because you didn't know your partner was nose high in credit card debt.

2. Do you want kids? How soon?

You say: 5, before you're 30.
She says: I'm waiting until I'm over forty like Nicole Kidman.
Now what?

3. Where would you like to live?

Does your potential future spouse have a job that will move you around? Are you OK with that? Do you have a job that will allow you to move as well? Do you have secret fantasies of living by the beach? Must you live within a certain radius of your mother to keep Meatloaf Mondays alive?

4. What activities will our disposable income go to?

Do you like to spend your money on eating out? On video games? Shopping? How much money do you want to save a month? When your married, your money becomes "our" money. If the two of you have completely different spending habits, this is something you should examine very carefully. It may be cute when you're dating, but if your husband is buying every new Wii gadget invented while you're eating Ramen noodles and acting as sole contributor to the joint savings account, you won't be happy for long.

5. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

If your girlfriend, currently a lawyer, answers, "Working at an orphanage in India," and you answer, "Living off of my loaded girlfriend," you've got problems already.

If these questions didn't get you two all riled up yet, try reading Susan Piver's book, The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say "I Do", one of Oprah's picks. If you still love each other after discussing every question, you may start picking out your wedding colors. (And if you can't agree on those, maybe you should hold off on marriage for a little longer!)

Finally, after you've delved deep into each other's psyches, determined that you truly are destined for each other and that you want to declare your love to the world, make sure you understand what marriage means, both romantically and practically.

Romantically and spiritually, marriage is a lifelong commitment to a single partner, a pledge to grow old together, and to love one another eternally. That's the stuff many women like to focus on.

Legally, marriage means contemplating filing joint or single tax returns, employer healthcare options for your spouse, possibly assuming your spouse's debts, and realizing that those annoying conversations you just had to determine if you wanted to marry each other in the first place will continue to be a part of your daily lives together.

So before you buy a subscription to Brides magazine, or start researching your city's best DJs, have a heart to heart with your partner. That way, you'll know whether he/she is thinking about marriage too, and whether he/she seems compatible for you as a life-long mate. And if he/she doesn't turn out to be either of those things, you'll save $12 and a lot of time.