living together
 

Ok, just a really random question. My boyfriend and I were talking about our future. Like marriage and kids and names of kids, and if I would change my name and jobs and what not. Then he brought of the subject of living together. I never really thought about that before, and i really dont know what to think. I dont know any one who lived together before they were married.

Whats every one option on lving together while engaged, or about to be engaged?

Re: living together
 

I'm about to do it in August. Really, these days, the way marriages often end, I think it's a great test of compatibility. Just so long as it's done with something more in mind -- for example, you have already decided that when you're both done with school you'll get married.

I think a big reason that marriages end so often these days is that women are so much more self-sufficient. They have more options. If they want to leave a marriage, they're not essentially on the street because of it.

Consequently, it takes a lot more to make it work these days.

I learned in my Family Studies class that living together before marriage is a risk factor for divorce. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the two things are correlated. Living together is classified as a behavior that goes against societal norms, as is divorce. So if a couple is non-traditional enough to defy the norm and live together, they are likely to be non-traditional enough to get a divorce. Nevertheless, the statistic is there... living together makes you more likely to divorce.

I don't think you have to live with someone before you get married. I probably wouldn't do it, but I have no problem with those who do.

Other people can do whatever, and I won't judge, but I don't think I'd feel comfortable living together without an engagement and a wedding date set. I don't want to be doing things I'd willingly do as a wife (such as, picking up after some guy, doing his laundry, household stuff, etc) if I don't even have an engagement ring and there's no guarantee the guy is even thinking along those lines. Because I know I wouldn't agree to live with someone unless I thought I might want to marry him, but I know guys don't necessarily think about it that way. And I don't like the thought of letting a guy "test drive" me for a year or two if he's not sure whether I'm the one.

Also, the thought of mingling finances with a guy I don't know I'll marry is kind of scary to me- I like my independence.

My Take....
 

I, personally would want to live with someone first for at least a year to find out if I can deal with all his quirks. If not, then hes out. The townhouse/condo will be mine, so he would have to leave. I think that you really find out a lot about a person once you live with them, things that you don't see when they go home. Like do they throw their clothes all over the floor after they take them off, do they keep a tidy bed, is their room clean all the time or messy, noises they make when brushing their teeth, do they go commando all the time or just around you? ;)

I think that most marriages fail because the couples don't really know each other and living together first is a way to decrease the chances of divorce later on. IMO.

ETA: I meant to put in here that there must be a ring on my finger in order for any of the above to be valid!

Q

I lived w/ Mr. Munch for a while in undergrad. When I decided to move to NYC for grad school, he went back to his hometown. It was fun, but we don't plan on living together before the wedding. This is the last time I'll be "on my own," as it were, and I just want to get those last little screams of independence out before I'm out of school.

I am cool with it, it's just not something I'm willing to do at this point in my life. Plus, a lot of people living in NYC do it out of convenience, and a hell of a lot faster than they would in less expensive cities.

my boyfriend knows i will only live with a guy if i have a ring on my finger.

no engagement, no living together.

I lived with my boyfriend in college for about a 6 months or so. Then I decided that I wanted to live on campus with my friends. I would regularly crash over at his place but now that I am more grown up I wouldn't live with anyone unless I knew it was going somewhere. I think unconciously I was being rebellious back then cuz I was like 18 and my parents had held the reigns pretty tight on me. Now I think that people don't take marriage as seriously as they once did. I think personally speaking I would value my marriage more if we moved in together after we got married. Otherwise what really changes?

I was kind of progressive for me...it started with him coming over to my house every night...and then he began spending the night every night...and then I moved into an apartment down the hall from him so he was there every night and then during the day too. (Might as well have been living together then, but we technically weren't). And then when I decided I wanted out of my apartment (many things not up to code, no A/C and no windows that opened) he just moved out here to the house with me. Right now I'm on my way (as of tomarrow) to Charlotte, NC and he's taking a trip back to Mexico, but when he comes back he'll be living with my parents and I until we find a house/apartment. So I guess that kind of answers the question.

Alpha I don't mean to pry but are you two engaged?

I would like to live with someone while we are engaged. There's NOTHING like living with someone and I'd like to get that out of the way before we are married. No surprises.

Yes...well, I don't have the ring (but in his culture, engament rings are not custom...we're still discussing this) and we don't have a date set (we're not exactly sure when he's coming back from Mexico), but yes, we have plans to get married, so yes, we are engaged.

LOL! I'd never pick up after a guy or do his laundry even if we were married.

I second that. Well actually I might but only if he was doing the same for me. Marriage is a committment and give and take for both parties.

I live with my boyfriend and we don't touch each others laundry. It's mostly because we're both really picky about what does and doesn't go into the dryer and neither of us trusts anyone else to not mess it up.

Also, it's been discussed here several times. The studies that prove that couples that live together first are more likely to get divorced is flawed because there tend to be differences in religious beliefs and over all tradional values between couples that would agree to live together outside of marriage.

As I think about it more, I think *in general* a marriage staying together today is a 50/50 chance. You just never know.

I think I wouldn't live w/ someone before marriage just because I would want the novelty of building a house together. I think the reason people try to correlate living together and divorce is that most people whose religions are opposed to living together are also opposed to divorce. I don't think it necessarily means that people who live together beforehand are less serious about their relationship.

Good point.

Thanks for every ones input. An to let people know, I would not move in unless we were engaged. And this is a "if" we would move in together.

This is the same way I feel, and why I'm not moving back in w/ the Mr. when he comes to NYC to start school in the fall (including the fact that I need this time to "grow up," as it were).

Congratulations! That's all so exciting!

(and in terms of the ring you can always do what my mom did... her engagement ring had a tiny little diamond chip in it - yes chip - but this year for their 25th anniversary my dad is getting her the big diamond ring she never got before!)

By the way I love your baby names!

I did live with my husband before we got married. We started the paperwork to try to get a spot in student family housing before we got engaged - but we'd already been talking about marriage for a little while. By the time we actually moved in, we'd been engaged for about 4 months. I had the ring, but we hadn't set a date yet.

The decision was right for us, but it's not for everyone.

It can also make sense for financial reasons. I'm moving in with my girlfriend on August 1st. I start Law School soon. I'll accrue probably a student debt of around 60-70K while in law school. If things didn't work out, she'd owe half if we were to be divorced.

Not really fair.

I know you can take care of that kind of stuff with a pre-nupital, but why bother when you can just put things off a few years?

Does it really bother people to pick up other people's stuff or do laundry?

It wouldn't bother me to pick someone else's stuff, do laundry or cook even if we weren't engaged.

Why is that such a big deal?

My thoughts exactly...Wanna move in? :)

I think it's only a big deal if it's a one way street... if only ONE person is picking everything up, doing all the laundry, all the cooking, etc. I used to really resent my ex-husband when he sat there watching TV while I picked up, did dishes, bathed kids, got them to bed, put clothes away, made lunches for the next day, etc. Then when I would sit down to watch TV with him, he was ready for sleep and I needed time to wind down. He's the laziest slob in the world. He even accused me of not doing anything around the house! He knows now how much I used to do, cuz he has to do it himself now! (And yes, I tried to talk to him about it a lot of times. He said I just got angry while cleaning because I listened to Alanis Morisette while cleaning, which he termed "angry white woman" music"). Boy am I glad he's history...lol.

I wish I'd lived with him first, because I wouldn't have married him (but then I wouldn't have my two wonderful kids either.. so everything works out as it should in the end, I guess!)

Dee

I moved in with my then-boyfriend after we'd been dating for only 4 months. We got engaged 8 months later and are getting married a little over a year later (eek, it's only 2 months away!)

I don't know... it's different for every person, but I don't think I would have done that in college. It's too transitional a time for everyone involved. We were both a few years out of college by the time we met, and had the experience of living on our own for several years, becoming financially stable, etc.

Generally I would say... if you're still in college, wait until you have a ring. In my case, we'd already talked about the possibility of marriage and I was pretty secure in the idea that the relationship was going somewhere :)

What an insightful post, and an interesting way of looking at things. I think it is very important that people live on their own for awhile first before moving in with someone. I know there are "exceptions" but I think that it is important to experience independence, especially especially after the "transitional" phase of college (because after all college is not really "reality").

I lived with my husband for a while before we were married. I have always felt that I didn't need "marriage" to prove my love and commitment to my husband. We both had an apartment in different parts of town but we always stayed together. We realized that with what we were paying combined in rent, would cover a mortgage on a house. We decided to buy a house together. This was more excited to me than the wedding was.

I think that living together is a great way to learn about the things you don't know about the person. I would highly recommend it but I also understand that there are people that don't believe in it.

My husband and I lived together for a year before our wedding. We were engaged when we moved in together, so we knew that we were serious. I think it was a great test of compatibility. I also know a woman at work who lived with a boyfriend before marriage, and found out that she couldn't stand living with him. So they broke up, as opposed to finding out after marriage that they were incompatible and getting a messy divorce.

There are definitely pros and cons to living together before marriage, so you have to think about it and decide with him if that's what you want to do.

For me and my husband.
 

The reason we got married before being formally engaged was because of our serious family values and convictions. Both of our folks vehemently felt that we should not be "shacking up" with each other and not be married...

But both of us are in our 30's and who can tell us--two professionals--what to do? So we decided that we were gonna try the "live in together thang"... But as the move out date for myself got closer, we decided that it would be better to just go to a JP and get legally married, then have a formal ceremony with reception...

We got legally married by the court, but the formal ceremony and reception was not fun for either of us... Too much work and expectations from others that had nothing to do with us, being together, married.

It was tough to learn each others idiosyncracies, but I would not trade it for anything in the world than to be married to my husband rather that trying to work it out by living together...

I've lived with my girlfriend/fiancee since last April. We just got engaged this past May. So, we were living together for a year pre-engagement.

It's been great - for us it's worked well, we've learned more about how each of us lives, and we've had few problems if any. Luckily our living styles are compatible.

With us though, we'd gotten pretty serious pretty quickly, and it was an easy decision to make. If you're going to do it, I'd be careful...it is a make or break situation.

For me, it made it that much easier to propose.

I just asked my new boyfriend his view on this. He said that he thinks that the couple should live together before they get married to see if it is gonna work. We are still so completely new it's hard to tell where things are going but I still kinda feel that I would want the ring before I made that committment.

We have been together for four years and living together for the past two years. We just recently got engaged. For us it was a pretty simple decision. He moved to SC to be with me and it made little sense financially for us to live seperately when we were just going to be at one place all the time. We had discussed marriage before we moved in but had no idea when it would happen. I've learned a lot about him and neither one of us is afraid to do the other's laundry. LOL

I think it is a great idea to live with the one you love to find out if it is for real. I have been w/ my girlfriend for nearly a year know and we pretty much started living together right then and there. At 1st just because we didn't want to be away from one another, then afterwards my apt. got broken into and my car got stolen and my girlfriend was right there for me, I lived with her from Thanksgiving Break until my graduation in May and I can honestly say we are that much closer now because of it.

On a side note: The one thing that is extremely hard is this long distance thing, she is know in Cali doing an internship while I work for my fraternity national office. I haven't seen her in over a month, but I'll be there in a couple of weeks to see her and spend our 1 year to together :)