The Six Big Questions of Married Life

Text and all illustrations by Peter Moore.

THE OFFICIANT WAS PEPPERING my fiancée and me with questions.

How long had we been together?

Why were we getting married when there were so many alternatives to marriage?

Did we want kids, and if so, how many?

Had we merged finances?

And how were our parents’ marriages, anyway?

We were overwhelmed by all this, so okay, maybe we were guilty of dodging full answers. We just wanted rose petals to be strewn in our path, not to contemplate reality until death—or boredom!—do us part.

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That’s when the minister leveled us with an Old-Testament-prophet gaze and said: “A marriage can’t end well. Either you’ll fall out of love and split up, or one of you will die and leave the other alone. So this relationship had better be worth it.”

Ouch. Nice job stuffing the cork back into the champagne bottle, Rev!

Still, we seem to have passed the exam. At the end of May, we celebrated a very Oldster event: Our 39th wedding anniversary. Only a third of marriages last that long. The rest are like the ones enjoyed by my buddy Theo, who married once per decade from the 80s onward. He has a lot of marital experience, too, but maybe not the right kind.

Each year in the U.S. about 2 million couples make their way toward the altar, uttering the magic words “I do.” But maybe they should be asking questions, instead. The scary bit: each of these questions can lead to relationship interruptus, if unaddressed.

So, as our minister told us: You better get it right.

1. Who are you, exactly? No, really. Who?

In 1987, when Claire and I wed, the average age for a first marriage was 26 for men, and 24 for women. Not exactly the golden moments for self-knowledge, right? By 2022, those first-marriage ages had risen to 30 for men and 29 for women—about where Claire and I were on our big day. Today’s married people will have been around the block a few times, which is good: They’re more likely to know why they’re saying “I do,” and who they’re saying “I do” to.

2. Wai…