Is cohabitation before marriage a good thing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not a good idea.
It is sinful to have sex and cohabitate before marriage.

Also sinful to divorce so just live with your sour lemon?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely a good idea. You want to see what the other person considers dirty vs messy, if they slam cabinets or close them gently and overall are they easy on their things or hard on them, do they have a no-shoes household or not, do they have guests over a lot, etc.

Well, more like if they are kind and responsible people who are easy to live with than testing their capabilities for becoming an employee for merry maids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really wish I had. I am divorced. No way I would have married if we had lived together beforehand.

Those studies are decades old and when most women did not have careers. It is a different world now.

Curious as to why you wouldn’t have married?

He was controlling in all ways and emotionally abusive. I would have seen this if we had lived together.

[Anonymous]

This is answer I gave on the other thread.

We moved in together once we were engaged. We married about six months later. Frankly, it felt like our marriage started on th3 day we moved in together. Our 30th anniversary is in Sept.

I tend to think having a long term commitment before cohabitating is important- but it doesn't have to be marriage. Moving in six months before marriage let us see if there were any issues we had not addressed. It was a probationary period.

[Anonymous]

You can't see family enmeshment, temper issues, financial irresponsibility, deeper sexual issues, executive function issues etc without spending at least one year living together and running a household.

[Anonymous]

We were engaged but didn't really know each other until after marriage, only saw each other's social side.

[Anonymous]

It worked for us.

[Anonymous]

I was a an extremely successful and happily independent single woman. There was no way I was going to submit to a “test drive” or relinquish my independence by cohabiting without a ring on it. Marriage always involves risk. We’re going strong after 20 years of marriage. But you do you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was a an extremely successful and happily independent single woman. There was no way I was going to submit to a “test drive” or relinquish my independence by cohabiting without a ring on it. Marriage always involves risk. We’re going strong after 20 years of marriage. But you do you.

I'm surprised a women like you thought of it as submitting to a test drive instead of both of you going on a test drive together.

Marriage always involves risk but increasing it several fold by being ignorant is far from smart unless you are restricted by religion or culture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't see family enmeshment, temper issues, financial irresponsibility, deeper sexual issues, executive function issues etc without spending at least one year living together and running a household.

How can you date someone long term and not see all of that?? Or are you all marrying after 6m?

[Anonymous]

Not many people have answered this, but if you do decide to live together, it should be no longer than a year before you get engaged. Otherwise move on. So many women waste their fertile years waiting on a proposal from a man they are living with.

[Anonymous]

There was no way I was going to submit to a “test drive” or relinquish my independence by cohabiting without a ring on it.

What does a ring matter? Either you want to live independently or you don’t.

[Anonymous]

I was 30 when we moved in together, engaged 4 months later, married 3 months after engagement. Worked well for us. Still married - will be celebrating 15 years very soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not many people have answered this, but if you do decide to live together, it should be no longer than a year before you get engaged. Otherwise move on. So many women waste their fertile years waiting on a proposal from a man they are living with.

This is such a weird mindset of assuming that every woman wants to get married asap and is just waiting on the man.

That may be true in some cases but realize that it doesn’t have to be. You actually have the power to discuss marriage, kids and to propose.

We were on the same page the whole time— lived together for 3 years, been married 30.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Plenty of people move in together because they think it’s the next step, to save money, to test compatibility. But then it becomes much more difficult to end a relationship once you’ve moved in. It’s no longer just a simple conversation and then moving on with your life. Some couples remain together when they’d otherwise have broken up. Also studies in this century have shown that couples usually are not on the same page when it comes to cohabitation. In heterosexual relationships, women often see it as a step toward marriage while men do not.

From my sample size of one, I lived with my first husband before we got married and yes, I did feel like unraveling it all would be such an ordeal so I went along with getting married even though I shouldn't have. He wasn't abusive, he didn't cheat, we just weren't on the same page in terms of what we wanted our life to look like and what we were willing to do to achieve that and I kind of new it before we got married and should have called it off but didn't. I was 26 when we got married and we got divorced (100% my decision) when I was 30, before we had kids.

I never lived with my second husband before we got married mostly due to logistics about our condo and apartment but we spent a lot of time at each other's places and also spent time apart. I feel like I was much more discerning when dating him (I had met my first husband when I was only 21 and he as four years older) and we've been very happily married for 15 years. I can definitely see the benefits of living together, but I also feel like I was able to figure out what I needed to know from not living together the second time, so I think it's more about how/whether you gather information and what you do with it then the sole fact of cohabiting.