What are your views on living together before marriage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just curious as it came up in conversation the other day. My rather liberal mother is staunch on one rule in life - never live with someone until you are married. Her reasonings are that classic "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" idiom and that it just makes things 10x more difficult if things go south.

I understand those points of views but think it's a good idea to live with each other before marriage because understanding whether you can live well together is a BIG part of having a successful marriage. I would perhaps open up her rule to "never live with someone until you're engaged (or soon to be engaged)." Or I would say that living together (in a rental situation) before marriage is fine, but you shouldn't buy property together yet.

What are your opinions?

I think living together without getting married for a woman is the worst of both worlds. You get all the duties of married life without its perks. And you get all the annoyances of single life without its joys.

Whether you can live together depends very much on your commitment, more so than on actual compatibility.

Hmm, this was not my experience. What "duties of married life?" My then-boyfriend-now-DH and I had a nice 2 bed condo. We had high income, no kids, and all the time in the world. Holy cow, it was so much better than married life now slaving away with the rug rats!

The principal duty of married life is monogamy, and the principal perk of single life is the freedom to explore other partners. When you live together, you are as good as declaring yourself off limits to other men. In my view, this sort of concession is owed only to husbands. Even if you have a serious boyfriend (living separately), you can meet someone who you think will be a better match, and explore this at least initially before breaking this off. Few men would want to date someone who lives with someone else. I wouldn't want to take myself out of the game without a ring on my finger.

Seriously? Come on now, you don't have to be engaged or married to have an exclusive relationship with someone. Even HS kids know that.

My live in boyfriend and I absolutely had the expectation that we were monogamous and not seeing other people.

It's not a law. It's a personal position. Of course you don't have to. I preferred it that way. For me, the ring was the price of monogamy. I wasn't willing to do it any other way.

You would seriously tell your serious boyfriend "I'm going to f*ck around with whomever I please unless you put a ring on it"....cause that's sort of what you are implying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I am not for it. I believe most women who live with a man before marriage are looking to get married. Men often are not on the same page. Also I feel as though women may not want to voice their likes/dislikes because they are afraid to argue less the man will not marry them, so they brush basic things under the rug like that really fun ex he still hangs out with as "friends." Basically the woman is not her full self because she's auditioning for the role of wife to a man who's going along for the ride. Sometimes they marry and sometimes they don't but those issues are still under the rug. Do they come out before or after the divorce.

Umm, no. If you are in a committed, monogamous relationship and your serious boyfriend cheats on you, you can most certainly move out and put an end to that relationship, ASAP. You walk away with everything that you brought to the table - your bank account, your 401K, your investments, your car, your t.v, etc - all still yours.

If your husband cheats on you then you have to go through a divorce, along with a separation, split of marital assets......which is time consuming, expensive and emotionally draining.

Yes but it's a lot more hassle to do this while moving out vs. simply stopping to take his calls if you happen to live separately.

Yes but you aren't just dating anymore by the time you move in with each other. You have taken your relationship to the next level - monogamous, sharing living expenses, celebrating holidays together but usually not bank accounts, car ownership, etc. Marriage involves a financial entanglement that living together does not.

Since a good many marriages fail due to financial disputes, it is not a bad idea to go into a marriage with your eyes wide open.

How does that counter what I said? If your boyfriend cheats on you, it's a lot easier to just break off the relationship vs. needing to pack up, give notice, find another place to live etc.

My position is that most issues are resolvable if you are committed to resolving them.

My point was that by the time you move in with your SO, you are romantically exclusive. There is an expectation that you will not be seeing other people and there is the acknowledgement that you will be sharing a place, rental expenses, household duties with your SO. This is the time when you get to enjoy being together w/o being anymore financially entangled than you are with any other roommate. If it doesn't work out, you can leave as easily as you could leave any other incompatible roommate scenario. By the time you marry and start sharing bank accounts you have a pretty darned good idea how responsible someone is, how they handle money, etc.

It's much easier to break it off and leave someone if you don't live together.

Yes. But when you live together you get to experience a new level with your SO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just curious as it came up in conversation the other day. My rather liberal mother is staunch on one rule in life - never live with someone until you are married. Her reasonings are that classic "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" idiom and that it just makes things 10x more difficult if things go south.

I understand those points of views but think it's a good idea to live with each other before marriage because understanding whether you can live well together is a BIG part of having a successful marriage. I would perhaps open up her rule to "never live with someone until you're engaged (or soon to be engaged)." Or I would say that living together (in a rental situation) before marriage is fine, but you shouldn't buy property together yet.

What are your opinions?

I think living together without getting married for a woman is the worst of both worlds. You get all the duties of married life without its perks. And you get all the annoyances of single life without its joys.

Whether you can live together depends very much on your commitment, more so than on actual compatibility.

Hmm, this was not my experience. What "duties of married life?" My then-boyfriend-now-DH and I had a nice 2 bed condo. We had high income, no kids, and all the time in the world. Holy cow, it was so much better than married life now slaving away with the rug rats!

The principal duty of married life is monogamy, and the principal perk of single life is the freedom to explore other partners. When you live together, you are as good as declaring yourself off limits to other men. In my view, this sort of concession is owed only to husbands. Even if you have a serious boyfriend (living separately), you can meet someone who you think will be a better match, and explore this at least initially before breaking this off. Few men would want to date someone who lives with someone else. I wouldn't want to take myself out of the game without a ring on my finger.

Seriously? Come on now, you don't have to be engaged or married to have an exclusive relationship with someone. Even HS kids know that.

My live in boyfriend and I absolutely had the expectation that we were monogamous and not seeing other people.

It's not a law. It's a personal position. Of course you don't have to. I preferred it that way. For me, the ring was the price of monogamy. I wasn't willing to do it any other way.

You would seriously tell your serious boyfriend "I'm going to f*ck around with whomever I please unless you put a ring on it"....cause that's sort of what you are implying.

I did imply it, and I didn't really have to put it in these words. I was open to meeting other men. If he wanted me to make a commitment of monogamy to him, he had to back it up. He did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not for it. I believe most women who live with a man before marriage are looking to get married. Men often are not on the same page. Also I feel as though women may not want to voice their likes/dislikes because they are afraid to argue less the man will not marry them, so they brush basic things under the rug like that really fun ex he still hangs out with as "friends." Basically the woman is not her full self because she's auditioning for the role of wife to a man who's going along for the ride. Sometimes they marry and sometimes they don't but those issues are still under the rug. Do they come out before or after the divorce.

Umm, no. If you are in a committed, monogamous relationship and your serious boyfriend cheats on you, you can most certainly move out and put an end to that relationship, ASAP. You walk away with everything that you brought to the table - your bank account, your 401K, your investments, your car, your t.v, etc - all still yours.

If your husband cheats on you then you have to go through a divorce, along with a separation, split of marital assets......which is time consuming, expensive and emotionally draining.

Yes but it's a lot more hassle to do this while moving out vs. simply stopping to take his calls if you happen to live separately.

Yes but you aren't just dating anymore by the time you move in with each other. You have taken your relationship to the next level - monogamous, sharing living expenses, celebrating holidays together but usually not bank accounts, car ownership, etc. Marriage involves a financial entanglement that living together does not.

Since a good many marriages fail due to financial disputes, it is not a bad idea to go into a marriage with your eyes wide open.

How does that counter what I said? If your boyfriend cheats on you, it's a lot easier to just break off the relationship vs. needing to pack up, give notice, find another place to live etc.

My position is that most issues are resolvable if you are committed to resolving them.

My point was that by the time you move in with your SO, you are romantically exclusive. There is an expectation that you will not be seeing other people and there is the acknowledgement that you will be sharing a place, rental expenses, household duties with your SO. This is the time when you get to enjoy being together w/o being anymore financially entangled than you are with any other roommate. If it doesn't work out, you can leave as easily as you could leave any other incompatible roommate scenario. By the time you marry and start sharing bank accounts you have a pretty darned good idea how responsible someone is, how they handle money, etc.

It's much easier to break it off and leave someone if you don't live together.

Yes. But when you live together you get to experience a new level with your SO.

I don't deny this. I just think that this new level is something to explore when you marry. For me, it was better that marriage meant changing my life rather than rubberstamping what already existed.

[Anonymous]

It's going to be different for every person and for every couple. Some people would be smart to live together first, others may be better off not. There really isn't a right answer on this one.

For me personally, I lived with a partner in a LTR before we eventually split and I met and married DH. Leaving someone you live with is incredibly challenging. Even if you are able to resist relationship inertia, there are financial and logistical considerations that make it that much harder to break up when you live together. I was in an abusive relationship much longer than I otherwise would have been - like, years longer - if I hadn't had to overcome those practical challenges.

[Anonymous]

Imo you’re a fool if you don’t.

Marriage is a legality. Living together is the real deal. I’d rather know if we are compatible before tying my financial future to another person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just curious as it came up in conversation the other day. My rather liberal mother is staunch on one rule in life - never live with someone until you are married. Her reasonings are that classic "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" idiom and that it just makes things 10x more difficult if things go south.

I understand those points of views but think it's a good idea to live with each other before marriage because understanding whether you can live well together is a BIG part of having a successful marriage. I would perhaps open up her rule to "never live with someone until you're engaged (or soon to be engaged)." Or I would say that living together (in a rental situation) before marriage is fine, but you shouldn't buy property together yet.

What are your opinions?

I think living together without getting married for a woman is the worst of both worlds. You get all the duties of married life without its perks. And you get all the annoyances of single life without its joys.

Whether you can live together depends very much on your commitment, more so than on actual compatibility.

Hmm, this was not my experience. What "duties of married life?" My then-boyfriend-now-DH and I had a nice 2 bed condo. We had high income, no kids, and all the time in the world. Holy cow, it was so much better than married life now slaving away with the rug rats!

The principal duty of married life is monogamy, and the principal perk of single life is the freedom to explore other partners. When you live together, you are as good as declaring yourself off limits to other men. In my view, this sort of concession is owed only to husbands. Even if you have a serious boyfriend (living separately), you can meet someone who you think will be a better match, and explore this at least initially before breaking this off. Few men would want to date someone who lives with someone else. I wouldn't want to take myself out of the game without a ring on my finger.

Seriously? Come on now, you don't have to be engaged or married to have an exclusive relationship with someone. Even HS kids know that.

My live in boyfriend and I absolutely had the expectation that we were monogamous and not seeing other people.

It's not a law. It's a personal position. Of course you don't have to. I preferred it that way. For me, the ring was the price of monogamy. I wasn't willing to do it any other way.

You would seriously tell your serious boyfriend "I'm going to f*ck around with whomever I please unless you put a ring on it"....cause that's sort of what you are implying.

I did imply it, and I didn't really have to put it in these words. I was open to meeting other men. If he wanted me to make a commitment of monogamy to him, he had to back it up. He did.

If a boyfriend had given me an ultimatum like that I would headed for the hills. I would consider that to be a very controlling move on his part and probably a lack of integrity on his part as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who live together before marriage have a 33 percent greater chance of divorce.

Did your Baptist preacher whip out that statistic for you?

NP. It is pretty well established in social science research that living together before marriage does not decrease your chance of divorce. Here is a good article that includes that 33% number.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/the-science-of-cohabitation-a-step-toward-marriage-not-a-rebellion/284512/

That said, I lived with my DH of 23 years the summer I was in graduate school. There was no way however, that I was going to move to a different city to live with him after I graduated without being engaged. It would have involved too much uncertainty on my part because I would have had to find a job in a city that was less than optimal for my degree.

We really didn't find out how compatible we were as a couple until we had children. That was what really made us compromise, and where we really started to have differences that we have since resolved. However, having children before marriage also doesn't improve outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I did imply it, and I didn't really have to put it in these words. I was open to meeting other men. If he wanted me to make a commitment of monogamy to him, he had to back it up. He did.

If a boyfriend had given me an ultimatum like that I would headed for the hills. I would consider that to be a very controlling move on his part and probably a lack of integrity on his part as well.

It's not controlling (of other people) to set your own terms under which you are willing to make a commitment of monogamy to another person. Your body and person is something only you are entitled to control. No one is entitled to demand this of you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

If a boyfriend had given me an ultimatum like that I would headed for the hills. I would consider that to be a very controlling move on his part and probably a lack of integrity on his part as well.

It's not controlling (of other people) to set your own terms under which you are willing to make a commitment of monogamy to another person. Your body and person is something only you are entitled to control. YOU decide the terms on which others will be allowed to enjoy them. No one is entitled to demand this of you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people should not move in together if they aren’t sure that they want to marry the other person. It just makes it much harder to end a dead in relationship when you are living together. I know A LOT of people who have continued on in long term relationships just because they live together.

Actually, it is very easy to walk away when you are just living together. The actual process of leaving isn't that much different than moving out of any other incompatible roommate scenario.

You either wait until the lease is up and go your separate ways or you find someone else willing to take on your share of the rent.

A divorce is a much, much more lengthy, complicated and expensive process. So that might make a person stay in an unhappy marriage because leaving is not easy.

People who continue on living together for years and years must be fairly compatible to stick together so long. Just because they haven't made it "official" does not mean that they are not happy together.

Disagree. You tend to buy a bunch of "couple" things when you live together, or there are unspoken agreements about who has rights to stay in the apartment or keep the dog or who pays the family plan at the gym. I mean, if you've only been living together for a month or two, sure.

[Anonymous]

You solve 95% of these problems by actually having a conversation about life goals and dreams, and where you hope the relationship is headed. If you're on the same page, living together can be great. If you're not, it can blow up on you, or make end up being stuck like glue in a relationship that no longer works for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's going to be different for every person and for every couple. Some people would be smart to live together first, others may be better off not. There really isn't a right answer on this one.

For me personally, I lived with a partner in a LTR before we eventually split and I met and married DH. Leaving someone you live with is incredibly challenging. Even if you are able to resist relationship inertia, there are financial and logistical considerations that make it that much harder to break up when you live together. I was in an abusive relationship much longer than I otherwise would have been - like, years longer - if I hadn't had to overcome those practical challenges.

If you had gotten yourself entangled in the guy's finances - cosigned for his car loan, kept him afloat during episodes of joblessness, leased furniture with him, that sort of thing, I can see how it would have been difficult for you to extricate yourself from that situation. Ideally, you don't get all financially wrapped up with each other unless you know how that person handles responsibility and his money.

FWIW, I had a boyfriend try to persuade me to cosign on a car loan for him and he also used my credit card w/o my permission and wrote checks on my bank acct w/o my permission (I put an abrupt end to that sh*t when I found out about it). He couldn't hold a job to save his life. Thankfully I did not ever share a place with that guy nor did I cosign any loans with him. If I had, that would have been pretty disastrous for me. I honestly don't know what my life would look like now if I had allowed that. You have got to look out for yourself. People who are financially irresponsible with their own money and credit will sometimes try to take you down with them.

On an up note, the boyfriend that I did share a place with was on the same page with me financially which is vitally important. If things hadn't worked out between us, we really could have just walked away from each other. By the time I purchased a house with him I considered him to be a good investment partner. It doesn't sound too romantic, but having the ability to trust someone like that is just the most amazing thing ever. Especially after what the last boyfriend had put me through, KWIM?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Living together prior to marriage is apples and oranges to marriage. No comparison according to people I know who have done both.

Personally, playing house never appealed to me. Make a commitment or go away.

I do not see any difference between the time we live together before marriage and the time after. What was different was having kids!

+1 From an everyday perspective, it's really not that different. If you keep money separate after you get married, it's not really that much different than living together. If you have joint accounts before you get married, it's not that much different if you make it official.

My DH and I bought a house together then immediately got engaged. For me, I would only move in with someone if I thought the relationship was headed towards marriage eventually because to me marriage is important. For others, I know that making it official isn't that big of a deal. But living together is not that different from being married. If you want an out even after you get married, just keep your finances separate and sign a prenup.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If a boyfriend had given me an ultimatum like that I would headed for the hills. I would consider that to be a very controlling move on his part and probably a lack of integrity on his part as well.

It's not controlling (of other people) to set your own terms under which you are willing to make a commitment of monogamy to another person. Your body and person is something only you are entitled to control. YOU decide the terms on which others will be allowed to enjoy them. No one is entitled to demand this of you.

O.k. A person who is only willing to show that side of themselves AFTER I've financially and legally intertwined myself with them is a no way, no how, no go for ME. I get to decide my terms, too.