To consider making a ‘contract’ thing at the start of any future relationships which discusses issues like marriage/finances/housework/pets before even moving in together?

[EweHaveGoatToBeKiddin]

Probably a silly idea, but I've been thinking about this for a while.

When/If i ever find myself in another relationship, i would want to draw up some sort of 'contract' (can't think of a better word) before moving in together which discusses lots of issues I often see on here that causes problems.

E.g - How chores will be allocated. How the finances will work. What will happen at Christmas (stay at home or visiting)? How will this change when/if we have children together? How will childcare be allocated? How will our working life change? How will the housework roles change? How over-bearing or disinterested do we expect our respective ILs to be? (Huge issue for me as me ex-MIL was extremely overbearing and caused me to have PND). How do we plan to school our children? How do we ensure we have equal time for ourselves/our hobbies (i see frequently on here mums being left home alone with the baby while the dad swans off to the pub/football etc - again this has happened to me in the past). Where will we live? What would we do if our parents became ill? Are we happy to have them live with us?

There are tons of other things i would want to cover as well. But i would want it drawn up like some sort of pre-nup. I know that it would be easy to change your mind/attitude about any of these issues when they do eventually arise, and that a bit of paper isn’t enforceable, but at least everything was discussed beforehand and could be reflected upon. Or it would show straight away a huge difference of opinion on something that could effectively mean the end of a relationship 5 years down the line (e.g. the desire to have another child when it turns out the other partner only ever wanted one).

No doubt, i'll be single forever if a man asks for us to move in together and i present him with my 'discussions booklet/contract'.

But i just see so many things on here and in RL that i believe could have been sorted out/discussed right from the start.

AIBU to think this is a sensible idea? Or has my awful past experience of a relationship with dd's dad (6 years ago) messed me up a bit? (He's chosen to never have contact with her since 3 months old).

Been single ever since. And quite happily, too. I love my independence. I love being able to make day-to-day decisions without negotiating. I like being selfish and doing whatever i want.

But it is very lonely. And i feel as though i might be open to dating these days if i ever meet someone i like. But i just want to ensure i avoid or try my damnest to prevent all the issues reoccurring that destroyed my previous relationship.
I wish that we had tried from the start:

Talking about how MIL's obsessive attitude couldn't continue when our dd was born.

Talking about how scared ex was of his own mother and how he chose to please her over me.

Talking about finances from the start. I ended up having to buy all the baby things myself because he didn't agree half the stuff was necessary (Moses basket, steriliser etc)

Talking about housework from the start (i ended up doing everything).

Talking about how our social lives/hobbies would remain fair. He got to go out every night while i had to stay home.

So basically i would want to discuss all issues - big (marriage/kids/finances), small (housework/social lives/Christmas arrangements) to minuscule (time spent on work at home/time spent connected to a computer/baby names including surname - another thing that often cause issues) that frequently cause confrontation and resentment in relationships to be discussed way before even moving in together.

AIBU? Will i be single forever if i try to implement this? TBH i don't really think I'd mind forever singledom too much.

Thanks for listening to my ramble.

If you feel you need a contract to get your partner to stick to things previously agreed then you're in the wrong relationship. Far too many people move in, get married and have kids before they really know their partner well enough to.

What my friend the rabbi asks couples before they get married.

• do you want children? When, how many? What would you do if the other person changed their mind? When is your cut off point on this?

• work: how important is your career? Do you expect your spouse to sacrifice theirs for yours if neccessary eg moving abroad or vice versa. If both are equally important what criteria will you use to negotiate big decisions. Do work commitments come before social ones? How will you address it if you feel your artners career is intruding upon your home life?

• socialising: is having strong seperate friend networks important to you? Do you prefer spending time as a couple? What is a good balance for you between time as a couple, time alone, time with individual friends and time together.

• relatives. How often do you plan to see each side. How will you feel if one side is more dominant in your lives and how will you address this?

• finances. Together or seperate. What long term financial goals do each of you have? What sacrifices are you willing to make for them?

I'm thinking exactly what dancing posted. Many people don't discuss their values and expectations of life beforehand, and they expect that love will solve everything.

Well, it doesn't.

a lot of this - at least, the domestic/financial stuff - might be covered by a LTA: www.advicenow.org.uk/living-together/living-together-agreements/

A contract? Whay happens if they don't do the recycling on Thursday as specified in section 4 sub clause 3. Do you propose to sue them?

It seems a sure fire recipe for making living with with someone an utterly joyless and regimented grind.

It all sounds completely sensible and also completely un-doable :o

That would have been a hinderance in my case.

Relationships, along with what life throws at us, are continually changing and evolving. I'd hate to think a piece if paper would stand in the way of allow a relationship to adapt.

As an example, we got married nearly 16 years ago and both wanted the big family thing and both would never have wanted a wedding abroad. Now if we did it, we'd both want to get married abroad.

Things change, feelings change, situations change and I'd prefer to let nothing stand in the way of that.

Not sure about a contract but a definite yes to discussing as many potential issues with a partner before living with them, and definitely before having children together. Of course they may say all the right things and not stick to what they agreed, but it's better than assuming the woman will do all the childcare/housework, or that their parenting styles match for example. I've heard of people not even discussing children before they got married, just assuming their partner felt the same!

The problem with something like that, I think, is that things change.

And you're involving other people.

First point: my husband and I had no idea when we moved in together and then married that I would wind up with 3 chronic pain illnesses that makes it impossible for me to work full time. So therefore anything about taking care of bills/home/etc that was agreed 12 years ago when we met, would no longer be true.

Second point: you can't dictate how others will act. So saying 'This is how I want the MIL to be' doesn't make it so.

I agree with the previous poster, however, that if you are blaming your exMIL for your PND? You need to get your head on straight first anyway. No one can cause you PND. They can increase it, sure, by causing you stress. But it's caused by hormones and brain chemistry, not by another person's actions.

Having been burned in the past (including after living with dds dad for 6 years then adding a planned baby) yanbu!

The list of things in my head that I would end a budding relationship for are pretty ruthless... And yes I'm perfectly happy for any potential girlfriend/ boyfriend to be as discerning

Sounds massively controlling to me. Any partner worth their salt would run a mile.

Op I don't think it's a contract you need it's getting to know someone and having these discussions over the course of that period of time.
Have proper communication lines so these things can be discussed.

What would the purpose of the contract be? Would there be penalties for breaking the contract? It sounds a little bizarre.

I just had a divorce because we didn't agree on any of those subjects. I do think these things need to be discussed before moving in together.

I thought pre-nups were mostly when a lot of money was involved.

Discussion, yes.

Written contract about housework, especially if this appeared before an informal discussion:

I think many men would see this not just as a red flag, but red bunting (shaped like sharks' teeth of course) with big brass bells on.

If some

Surely most couples would discuss all this stuff in depth before you live with someone anyway so a written contract seems pointless

You'd think, Annie.

Can I ask how long you were together before dd op? Dh and I had discussed all this in depth but we were engaged, then married for a good few years prior to children so had tons of time to discuss every little thing.

We have obviously had life hurdles along the way but we are doing everything we planned over a decade ago in jobs, children, their names etc.

No.

I agree that a lot of stuff should be fleshed out in advance. It's not just about clarifying expectations and possibly aborting the relationship in advance. Even if a contract is theoretically unenforcable, the fact that how things are supposed to be is written down in black and white would usually carry some force when there's a dispute later on.

I tried, several times, before and immediately after getting married, to clarify the terms of cohabitation. There was always a seemingly good reason why she wasn't quite ready to discuss it. Eventually, about a year after getting married, she got irritated by my attempts to have this conversation, and angrily asked me why she should enter a negotiation that could only make her worse off.

In a sense she had a valid point. She had moved in with me, all the bills were in my name. I was paying for everything, so on the financial front she could only be worse off. On the non-financial front, I was coming home every day to a flat that looked like a bomb had hit it. She wasn't working at the time, and is the opposite of me in that the more time she spends at home, the less clean and tidy it is.

Given she wasn't working initially, I wasn't actually looking for a financial contribution, just wanted her cleaning up after herself to rise the level I'd consider non-negotiable if she were a mere flat-mate paying her own way. For the long-term, I was open to any kind of fair arrangement I'd ever heard of, from 50:50 on all fronts to traditional roles. She had one I hadn't come across in mind. She told me she was a "housewife", by which she mainly meant it wasn't her job to pay for anything. (Not even subsequently when she had a job paying 80K a year.) Her non-financial contribution, in which I had no say, consisted of vacuuming the carpets once a week, while ignoring ten other categories of household mess (mess she had made) that I would have prioritised as being more important. If I cleaned up after her she screamed at me for making her feel unwelcome in her own home. Apparently it was her right to live as messily as she liked, and I had a mental disorder for wanting to live otherwise.

Obviously I should have divorced her early on. I made the mistake of thinking no-one could be so unreasonable forever. By the time I realised my mistake, it would have cost me to much to divorce her. (I realise that won't compute for some people. I was within site of my life-long goal of having enough investment income to live on without working. All earned on a daily rate slaving over a hot computer terminal. I realise that for people who've always expected to work until they drop, any savings are easier to sacrifice.)

(In case anyone gets excited by my history, I should add that it's been a long marriage, and is not that bad these days. For no reason I can discern, she's been nicer than usual to me recently.)

annie once upon a time, I read an article advocating marriage preparation classes, from someone who had just gone through them. The classes followed the same model as the one dances described up-thread. The journalist took pains to point out how many of her fellow couples were astounded to find out they had very different opinions on things such as savings. She thought a few of them ended up postponing the wedding as the prospective spouses realised they had such different expectations for life, that needed discussing.

I can't find it through google now, unfortunately.

And yes I'm perfectly happy for any potential girlfriend/ boyfriend to be as discerning

Me too! And if I changed my mind about anything I'd discuss any issues and compromise, not just change anything without discussion and agreement.

I think it's a good idea to have a contract as described by the OP, not to be used as binding on all fronts, but to be used as guidelines, as a framework to refer to when there are disagreements or big decisions to be made. I like things to be clear so this would really appeal to me.

I think there's any number of things that people think are obvious: obviously we will have children, but not for ten years or so; obviously I'm not going to give up my job just because I've had a baby; obviously you get a cleaner rather than doing it yourself once you can even remotely afford to do so, and a cleaner is a greater priority than a sunny holiday; etc. Only it takes five years for a person to realise what's obvious to the other person: "What do you mean, it's obviously the man's job to take out the bins?"

So I think having a sort of questionnaire to fill out independently once you're approaching cohabitation/children/whatever would at least make clear what each person thinks is obvious. And if there were any deal breakers ... well at least you'd know before committing.

But people often will say/agree to anything in the first flush of love, or when the situation is not actually upon them.

My sister had to threaten to leave her DH because he didn't want to have a baby. Shocking, yes? Yet, in the early days of their relationship he had said "yes of course I want to have children someday," and she had, quite reasonably, believed him. So, come the day when they were in their early 30s (at the time considered old for a first child) and financially secure and she wanted to start a family she was gobsmacked at him deciding that no, actually, it wasn't the right time. It did have a happy (ish) ending by the way, but just goes to show that talking it through can be meaningless.

I can imagine a discussion going a bit like this:

She says: Talking about how MIL's obsessive attitude couldn't continue when our dd was born.
He says: Of course I won't let that happen
When the problem actually rears it's head:
She says: Your mother is being obsessive. You promised you wouldn't let that happen."
He says: But she ISN'T being obsessive.

and so on...

Discussing things before entering a committed relationship/marriage is very important but I think mostly so you know you can discuss things/resolve difference rather than to provide a prescription to live by.

Because life happens. Things change.

Do you want kids? Yes? What if you're infertile/what if your partner is? Is donor sperm acceptable? Donor eggs? Surrogacy? Adoption? Are you allowed to change your mind after multiple miscarriages/if one of you gets sick/ because you've gone bankrupt? What if you do just change your mind?

Life has a way of making you eat your words. If dh had proposed a contract as you're suggesting I'd have backed away because it would signal to me that he didn't know that.