How Do I Tell My Fiancée That I Want a Prenup?

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Dear Dr. NerdLove, I have a question that I don’t know if anyone has ever asked you before.

Growing up, I had a front row seat to my parents’ divorce. Calling it ugly would be an understatement. Everything, literally everything about the process was the start of a screaming match between them, from custody arrangements to dividing up the record collection. I watched what had been a loving and sweet relationship devolve into two strangers who apparently hated each other more than life itself and it left me terrified that I was going to have a similar fate if I ever got married.

Now it’s many years later, I’m 28, I’m engaged to an incredible woman and we’re just at the start of planning our future wedding. But I would be lying if I didn’t say that the specter of my parents’ divorce wasn’t always hovering in the back of my mind. That’s why I’m writing to you today. I want to ask my fiancée for a prenup before we get married and I don’t know how to bring it up.

I’m not looking to protect my non-existent assets, I’m not expecting her to cheat on me (or that I would cheat on her) or something and I’m not afraid of her taking everything in the divorce and I’m obviously not expecting us to ever actually need it. What I really want is to make sure that we know how things are going to proceed so that if we do get divorced, it doesn’t become the nightmare that I lived through as a child.

How do I tell my fiancée without making her think I don’t trust her or that I don’t have faith in us or our marriage? Is there a way to bring up a prenup that isn’t insulting or makes her feel bad?

Here Come The Lawyers

This is a tricky needle to thread, HCTL. Pop culture and celebrity gossip have taught us as a society that prenups are the domain of the uber-rich and famous, contracts to either penalize philanderers with various clauses and codicils or protection against gold-diggers who are looking to get rich the “old fashioned” way: marrying someone wealthy and then divorcing them. The constant drum beat of “this is for couples who know this won’t last” has functionally taught us that if you ask for a prenup, then there’s something about the relationship that doesn’t smell right to you but you’re going through with it anyway.

In reality… well, yes, there’re folks who use them this way. But to ordinary people living every day lives, it’s really more accurate to think of them as insurance. Nobody buys home owners insurance or car insurance because they expect their house to burn down or because they are sure that they’re going to drive their car into a tree someday. They do it, hoping that day will never come but knowing that if it does, preparing now will save pain, hardship and inconvenience down the line.

So it is with a prenup and divorce. Divorce laws vary from state to state and they can cause all kinds of headaches if you are going in blind and unexpectedly. A prenup smooths out the process by saying precisely how things will go – Person A gets X, Person B gets Y, you agree in advance how you’ll handle Z. Even if the divorce is reasonably amicable, just the process of trying to divide assets or handle any number of unexpected details can bog things down. I watched a couple go through a very friendly divorce reach the point hair pulling frustration as they tried to navigate issues like dealing with the health insurance paperwork, differences in income and selling their house. Having arrangements laid out in advance may not make things more pleasant, but at least it can make things proceed more smoothly and leave everyone with more spoons to handle the unexpected.

But there is still going to be the initial gut-punch of “don’t you trust me?” or “are you having questions about going through with the wedding?” that are going to be hard to avoid. It’s so deeply ingrained in society that it’s almost reflexive.

So here’s what I’d suggest: use a modified version of the Awkward Conversation to talk about things before you have a lawyer draw one up. Schedule a time with your fiancée to talk about the future together. Lead with what you told me about your parents and their divorce – how ugly it was, how the process made everyone even angrier at each other and how it affected you. Then you make it clear that you don’t expect to get divorced and you are absolutely committed to this marriage, but neither of you can see the future and you want to be prepared if anything does happen.

You might want to frame it as insurance or preparing for disaster: not something you want or expect to happen, but because the world is unpredictable and being prepared minimizes pain in an already painful situation. Tell her that you’re bringing it up now, because planning things out when you’re both in a good headspace and able to discuss it rationally will be far less stressful and acrimonious – a way of being kind to your future selves.

Let her know how during your parents’ divorce, you watched the love your parents still had curdle into anger and bitterness and how you never want that to happen between the two of you. Emphasize that, in the event that you do decide to end the marriage, what you want is a road map and checklist of what is going to happen and how. You want things to be as smooth and pre-planned as possible so that it will be as conflict free as you can manage it.

Make it clear that you’re not worried that she’s going to try to take your stuff or that you’re trying to penalize her, just that you believe that by planning things out in advance, you will minimize the likelihood that the process of getting a divorce will make things worse and having this in place will make it easier for the two of you to have as positive a relationship as possible afterwards.

Then, when you’re done, you give her space to react. She may well have a whole host of very large, very loud emotions in the moment. Let her have them. She may have a metric fuckton of questions; let her ask them and answer them as best you can, and as calmly as you can. If she starts throwing accusations, do your best to take a deep breath and let them wash over you, recognizing that it’s more the shock of the moment than what she actually feels. Then, when she’s ready, let her say her piece.

And who knows? Your worries are understandable, but she very well may be on the same page as you. Considering the age we live in, she may not see getting a prenup as a sign of distrust, but as sensible planning. Depending on whether her parents are still married, or if either of them had gone through a divorce previously, she may have similar experiences or stories to yours. So while it’s good to be ready for her being upset, she very well may surprise you.

One more thing that will help: emphasize that you want her to have her own lawyer go over whatever gets drawn up. Making sure that she has her own advocate, independent of you, to look out for her best interests, may help her see that you’re coming to this in good faith, rather than out of suspicion.

It’s a tricky conversation and I don’t envy you having to have it. But if you get through it together, it will be one more moment where something that could have pulled you apart has only brought you even more firmly together as members of the same team.

Good luck.

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

In all likelihood, I am an autistic person. I have not been diagnosed, but self-testing, identification with other people with autism and the testimony of people I trust suggests, yeah, I’m autistic. And that’s okay – I actually like having that prism to see and maybe understand the world through.

However, at this point, I’ve spent literal decades feeling like an ugly weirdo. I’ve done okay with relationships, but it feels like it’s been completely by accident and I’ve always pretty much needed people to sit on my lap or just say that they like me (or both!)

I hear so much about how people look at people in social situations and consider them or playfully flirt and I don’t think I’ve ever been on the receiving end of that. And that really hurts, because it feels like neurotypical people who can present themselves well (I do take care of myself and try to dress stylishly, at least within my subculture) exist in a different world to me while I’m behind glass. I don’t know which I’d prefer – that I’m ill equipped to detect signals or that I’m never on the receiving end of them.

I know I think “oh, hey, that person is cute” or “she’s really funny” after interactions, but it really brings me down I’m just static to people I meet. I guess my question is – is it possible to be that invisible? I do try to be funny and ask questions of people and maintain hobbies and interests but it can feel like wearing a “person suit” sometimes.

Thanks, Doc

Can’t Click “Not A Robot” In Good Faith

If you’re a regular reader, NAR, or even a fairly new one, you may notice how many people – both neurotypical and the various flavors of neurospicy – have issues with picking up on signs of interest or the fact that people are flirting with them. This isn’t something that’s only reserved for folks who are neurodiverse, it’s something everyone experiences. Some of it is just down to people not knowing how to recognize flirting or interest, but a lot of it is down to how we feel about ourselves.

After all, if you think you’re an unfuckable homunculus, you’re going to have a much harder time believing that other people could have all kinds of sweaty pantsfeels for you. And if you do see someone who seems interested, you’ll be much more inclined to assume that you’re misreading things, that you’re overestimating their interest or that you don’t know if you can trust your own judgement.

However, I think you’re missing something important: you’re autistic. That’s information you didn’t have before, information that directly affects your understanding of your own life and experiences.

I’ve talked before about what it was like for me to be formally diagnosed as having ADHD – suddenly, a lot of what frustrated and perplexed me growing up made much more sense. It was like wiping the fog off a window and finally being able to see things clearly; I had a much better understanding about why I struggled with some things or reacted in certain ways.

So it is with your coming to the realization that you’re autistic. Think of finally having that label as being a key that unlocks new understanding of your life and your past – and, just as importantly, your future. Now that you know this about yourself and how this affects you, you’re able to fold this into your understanding of yourself. Considering how autism makes it difficult to understand social cues, doesn’t it make sense that you may have missed out on signals that were less overt than “sat in your lap and started to wiggle”? Doesn’t it make sense that you felt weird or out of synch with the world around you? You were a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, sanding off bits of yourself until you managed to squeeze into an imperfect fit. Small wonder that you felt ugly and weird; you were trying to be something you weren’t. That discomfort was as much about not being your authentic self – or, rather, not realizing what your authentic self actually was and thus not understanding why everything was such a poor fit for you.

It’s less of an “ugly duckling” situation and more of a cat being raised by dogs. You could make it work, but it wasn’t going to be a smooth or easy process and it was going to involve a lot of frustration and misunderstandings.

By that same token, because you know this about yourself now, you’re in a better position to advocate for what you need for better understanding and comprehension. Sure, you’re still going to struggle to pick up on some things… but now that you know that this is an issue for you, you can actually work with that. You can, for example, tell people that you need them to be blunt with you or that you prefer they do X if they need you to understand them. You can ask for clarity when you need it and advocate for yourself and your needs.

It’s hard to fill a need if you don’t realize that need is there in the first place, after all. It’s hard to adjust your view of the world when you don’t realize you’re not seeing it clearly in the first place. You now have so much new and more complete understanding of yourself that it’s almost like you’ve evolved into a different person. But it’s more that you’re finally taking off weights that you never realized were there.

There is, obviously, going to be an adjustment period. Just having the label isn’t going to change a lifetime of ingrained habits and behaviors after all. You’ve been wearing that mask for so long that it’s going to take time to get used to not having it. So you need to give yourself some grace, some compassion and have patience as you adjust. You’re going to be carving some new grooves and developing new patterns and behaviors – ones that will actually meet your needs and serve you in ways that the previous ones didn’t.

So I think what you need to start by forgiving yourself for not knowing this about yourself. After all, you can’t always know what you don’t know. Now that you know this, you can take a different approach and figure out how to navigate the world in ways that actually work for you. It will take time – and you should give yourself that time. And while the world is still hard for people who aren’t neurotypical, I think that now you know this about yourself, you’re going to find that life is going to be very different from now on… and much better for you.

You’re doing great, NAR. You just need to give yourself some time to adjust to this new perspective. You’ve got this.

All will be well.