Quote:
Originally Posted by agzg
So I suppose I should elaborate. Full disclosure: I live with my boyfriend now. We're not engaged, we probably will get married eventually for a benefits/kids situation but we aren't planning on it right now. I don't know much about divorce rates or marriage rates of cohabitating couples, and to be honest I don't really care.
Obviously YMMV - I'm not everyone and I wouldn't say that my experience is typical, but that's why I wouldn't (and didn't) live with a boyfriend while I was in college or grad school.
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My sitch is similar. I lived in the dorm, house, and apartment w/roomies in college. Post-college, I actually lived at home for a year, and then bought a condo. I had been living entirely by myself for over five years when Mr. DBB moved in.
On one hand, it made "financial sense" for us not to pay a rent and a mortgage when he spent every night here anyway, but on the other hand, I could cover all of the bills on my own if I needed to, so it's not like the stay-together-for-the-lease situations I've seen with other friends.
Certainly living together has its great moments: I get off the train and he's walked down to the station to meet me, I love cooking for two, etc., but it also puts a whole new level of stress on a relationship in other ways. One is that you take each other for granted...when you see each other every day, sometimes you forget to plan time to really spend together and have fun. Another is that you don't actually have your own space any more, so you may have to negotiate that you want him to leave the house for a while or something.
As far as marriage, it's not really a priority for us right now. We were talking about it before I quit my job, because I had great health insurance, but now that we are both students it would actually be worse for our finances. There are some legal benefits that come with marriage, obviously, but a lot of the things that are always cited (e.g. "you can visit each other in the hospital") are simply granted to us through hetero-normative privilege.
In any case, I never would have done this as a younger woman. I don't think you know anything about yourself until you are, say, 25, and you don't know much about the other person, either.