living together before marriage: opinions?

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by AGDee

Some of the problem with pre-marital counseling and relying on discussing the issues is that sometimes one of the people involved may say one thing during these discussions but then do another. I'll give you one example.. money. My second husband appeared to be very responsible with his money. He had a lot of money invested for retirement when he was only 30. He had enough saved in the bank for a down payment on a house. He had a decent car, good suits and was pretty generous for birthdays, Christmas, etc. He agreed that if we both worked, we both made decisions about how the money was spent. So, what was the problem?? Well, he had been living at home his whole life and was working as an accountant for 5 years while living at home with NO living expenses the entire time. When we got married, had a mortgage and a baby within a year (diapers, formula, day care, new wardrobe for baby every few months as baby grew, etc), we had to live on a budget. Mr. Responsible with Money was a mess. He didn't know how to live on a budget.. he never had to before. He spent money like it was water, always using the ATM card and never putting the amounts in the checkbook. What a nightmare it became. Oh the fights about it! And, it was all my fault, because he didn't have money problems before.. so it must be my fault. I must be spending too much. To this day, he blames me for the debt he ended up incurring because I was buying groceries and clothes for the kids. Without sharing finances before, there was no way to foresee this.

Just an example...

I wonder if there would have been a way to foresee it living together but without the additional stress of mortgage and children? I don't know.

I see your point, but I think the example you give is not a problem with pre-marital counseling but, noting the part of your quite I bolded, with him. He wasn't honest with you or with whoever was doing the counseling (or perhaps with himself). Whether it's pre-marital counseling, living together or marriage, you only get out of it what you and he put into it.

I know that with our pre-marital counseling (required by the church before we could be married), we had to do quite a few personality inventories and the like. We were just discussing last week, after 19 years of marriage, how the "danger areas" identified in our pre-marital counseling really are the areas that have been most challenging for us over the years.