Living Together Before Marriage

[_Asti_]

I've done it both ways, lived together with a man for 5 years and it didn't work out, and have been living with my fiance for 5.5 years and getting married in 9 weeks. I think it's a deeply personal choice and that really, living together isn't likely to change the outcome of your relationship. If you are committed to each other and that relationship, living with each other before marriage (or not) isn't going to change that.

 

JMHO.

 

Glad to hear Those are sort of my thoughts as well.

[allypally]

I'm old fashioned on this one!

 

I think if you can get to know someone over a long period of time and be with them in lots of different situations e.g go travelling with them, or on the otherside of the coin, be there for them throughout a bereavement, then you will build a picture of who they are.

 

I have known the guy I am living with now (not my bf - he is gay) for over 5 yrs. It took a long time for that to come about, but because over that 5 yrs I got to know him very well, and because of that, I KNEW that I could live with him.

 

Case in point, you don't need to live with a man in order to prove that you could handle living with him and visa versa.

 

I think if you have gotten to know eachother well enough over a long period of time then:

1) you know your relationship is solid enough without the stress of living together initially and getting to know eachother that way.

2) there is an element of mystery in the lead up to an engagement followed by living together.

3) If the relationship doesn't work out, you don't have to contend with a 'mini divorce' where everything is divided up equally and you have to sell the house or wait another 6 months before you can go your separate ways. Less messy if you're not living together.

[Hope75]

Although I will add that I think for us, living together for so long before marriage and owning a home together already will make for less of a 'shock' (read: transition) when we do marry.

 

My friend who married in June after 7 years with her now husband and living together for 5 said that really nothing has changed for them except that they wear rings now.

 

On the flip side, my sister and her hubby got married one year ago after being together for 4 years, and they didn't live together before marriage. It was a very rough and rocky transition for them, living together after not doing so for so long. A few months after the wedding, she was questioning if this was the right thing for her! (thankfully, they have settled into a routine and seem to be doing much better.)

 

I do feel as though I learned a lot about us as a couple and a team sharing the responsibilities of living together and owning a home by doing it before marriage, so I have a better idea of what I am getting into- although I would marry him regardless and would have had to adjust to it after if that was the way we chose to go.

[rikka]

I agree with you ITG.

 

When people say "try it before you buy it", I feel so cheap to me. We are not talking about TV or a car. I guess marriage is more about understanding. Any relationship requires understanding, time, commitment, trust and faith. If you are not ready to invest these in your relationship, even if you live together many years before you get married, your marriage is bound to fail.

 

I know couples who did not live together prior to their marriage and are happy and I know who lived together prior to their marriage and are divorced now.

 

Its personal choice but I would not live together before marriage. If I can not judge a person, I must not get married to that person.

 

 

I agree that "try it before you buy it" cheapens and demeans people in a committed relationship that choose to co-habituate. A partnership can be just as committed, understanding, trusting and faithful as a marriage. IF your relationship lacks these but you get married thinking that "marriage" (or a baby) is going to solve all your problems - your marriage is just as likely to fail compared with a couple who choose to live together before marriage. In fact I would put my money on the "living together" pair lasting longer than the "marriage as a band-aid" pair.

 

I quoted you McLovin, because I can give anecdotal evidence of couples living together before marriage and are happily married years later AND couples who didn't live together before marriage and couldn't hack it so they gave up and are now divorced. Or those who got married before living together and said they'd do it differently if they could. The fact is relationships work and fail for various reasons and I don't think the lynch pin of divorce rate is living together.

 

Personally, I think I am far more committed to my boyfriend (whom I live with) than my friend who blissfully got married this last year saying "well, 50% of marriages end in divorce anyway, so if it is a mistake I am in good company". And she wasn't being tongue in cheek. People with mindsets like THAT demean marriage.

 

What works for me and my relationship may not work for the next person and so on. It is a personal choice. I guess I just get irked when people pull random stats out of the air and treat it like fact. OR blindly make generalisation without considering that there are other factors. To each his own I guess.

[TheSmilingTurnip]

I think that while statistics may give us information that help us take certain things into consideration when making a decision, it is ultimately the makeup and mindset of the two people in the relationship that determine the outcomes. It is their motivations and intentions and personal character makeup that will decide how their relationship fares. It is problem-solving, ability to judge character, ability to compromise and ability to communicate, among many, many other qualities.

 

Commitment from a person who has many of these qualities in good quantity, a person who understands themselves, is a commitment you can trust. Commitment from an emotionally immature person who doesn't have many of these qualities is not a commitment you can trust.

[Circe]

If you believe in statistics - don't do it. Stats show that you are less likely to end up married if you live together first. Worse, of the live-in couples that eventually get married - those marriages are less likely to worse (ie more likely to end in divorce) than other marriages.

 

I'm also personally against it for my own reasons - to sum those reasons up succinctly, I think it encourages (especially the man) to take all the benefits of a married, domestic lifestyle, without putting in the amount of work and commitment and obligation that such a lifestyle requires to be "forever" material. And I don't think those habits can be broken if marriage eventually happens.

[star-shaped]

I'm moving in with my OH soon and neither of us is planning on engagement any time soon.

 

His parents are divorced and so he wouldn't get engaged without living together for a long while first.

 

Personally, I just don't see any point in rushing it. We're not buying a place together, we're renting, and as I'm just about to start a PhD it just doesn't seem like a logical time to be getting married for some reason. This is just a personal feeling of mine.

 

 

Having lived with my ex for financial reasons I think that the statitics surrounding people getting divorced after living together before marriage are because of people doing it for the wrong reasons.

[Hope75]

If you believe in statistics - don't do it. Stats show that you are less likely to end up married if you live together first. Worse, of the live-in couples that eventually get married - those marriages are less likely to worse (ie more likely to end in divorce) than other marriages.

 

I'm also personally against it for my own reasons - to sum those reasons up succinctly, I think it encourages (especially the man) to take all the benefits of a married, domestic lifestyle, without putting in the amount of work and commitment and obligation that such a lifestyle requires to be "forever" material. And I don't think those habits can be broken if marriage eventually happens.

 

I think this has more to do with the attitude/mindset of those who are moving in together before marriage with the premise of 'trying it out' before getting married. I knew when I moved in with my guy that this was a step towards marriage and a life together and so did he, and we made that commitment in our hearts and minds. Now, almost 6 years later and getting married in 8 weeks, this only strengthens our bound and furthers the commitment we made when we moved in together.

 

For us marriage isn't a 'let's try it and see' kind of thing- it was something we thought long and hard about and made a conscious decision to uphold, and living together or not doesn't change what we've chosen for our path- it only made it that much stronger for us.

 

When I moved in with my ex at age 17 (and we lived together for 5 years) I was just 'trying it out', enjoying living together but I had no real concept of 'forever' and wasn't in a place where I could realistically make that sort of commitment... and of course it failed.

[notsoanonymous]

I have no problem with living together, I do have a problem with the purchase of a home together.

 

If things fall apart, someone is going to get royally screwed financially.

I've seen several couples have to file bankruptsy, move in with family, get roommates etc all because their money was tied up in a home they couldn't afford alone.

 

Okay, I think given my current situation I can speak to this topic.

 

I've posted before regarding buying a house before marriage. Some people will recognize me and recall that. Some of them may even say "I told you so" although I really hope given the fact that this only happened three days ago now, people would be a bit more kind than to attack.

 

My boyfriend and I bought a house together in January and closed at the end of March. It's been five months now.

 

Sunday night he blindsided me by telling me we moved too fast and he had major cold feet. Buying the house initially was his idea. I wasn't ready to start looking but he insisted. I was in it but had some reservations which he assured me were "nothing to be concerned about". He told me he already planned our engagement but wanted it to be a surprise (it never happened.) I've had my own cold feet but believe very much in making things work. He is choosing instead to cut and run.

 

Keep in mind this is after not having a cohabitation agreement (because we were in LOVE and getting MARRIED and why pay a lawyer to do that when it's an added expense right?!) Wrong.

 

We are now on a "break", living in the same house in separate bedrooms, and he is "trying to figure some things out." We have a mortgage that is more than our home is worth on the market because we are in a soft market in my area and its new constuction (and we have only owned it 5 months). Meaning? If we do break up, our only real options would be to file bankruptcy.

 

I'm 27 years old - He is 29 himself. This isn't a first love or a rash decision or me pressuring him to marry me. This is exactly what it is.

 

 

No one can tell you what to do in your own relationship. I am telling you my story only because I feel that despite the added expense, your desire to have a house, etc - Go to an attorney and get things hammered out FIRST.

 

Either that, or make it official. Love does go sour, things do happen, people grieve over the death of their grandmother so badly that they walk away from everything out of the blue.

 

Anything is possible, good or bad. Make the decision your gut tells you to make.