Girl Talk: Is It Bad To Live Together Before Marriage?

powplz
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 09:25 am: [report]

Haven’t we already beaten this dead horse?  Also, thanks for yet another article implying that marriage is the universally sought-after goal.  Go women’s lib…

stephoney22
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 09:39 am: [report]

Don’t get me wrong, I respect your personal preference to do so.  But I’m surprised this is the first you’ve heard of a study with such negative findings.  Probably more than 15 years ago I remember reading about a study that showed that some crazy number like 70% of couples (at that time) that co-habitated before marriage ended in divorce.  And I’m pretty sure the study was more scientific and less judging than this current one.  Besides, the feedback we’ll hear will probably only come from “exceptions to the rule” and not those who actually went through the living together, marriage and divorce.  I have my own, various reasons for not living together before marriage but I can only say that couples should think long and hard before making that decision.  It’s about what’s best for you and either way, you’ll learn something from whatever you decide.

*sam*
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 09:40 am: [report]

The study mentioned isn’t new—there have been *numerous* studies on the effects of cohabitating before marriage, and they pretty much all say the same thing—it increases the likelihood of divorce, and for pretty much the same reasons stated above.

However, that being said, let it be known that I agree with Ami’s mentality. Personally, if I’m serious enough with somebody to discuss marriage, I would rather live with them first. I moved in with one of my first serious bfs when I was a freshmen in college—and while the aftermath was hell, I’m glad I had the experience. I learned so many things a/b living with a SO that I would not have learned otherwise… like how important it is to discuss things like chores and money, rather than just assume they’ll work themselves out. Or the best way to voice your opinions a/b a delicate situation w/o coming off as insensitive or inconsiderate, or my personal favorite—what kinds of things are *probably* better left *un*shared with you BFF (i.e., your partner’s secret quirks/oddities)... not to mention that smoking (indoors, and probably just in general) is an *absolute* deal-breaker, as well as feeling the need to have a beer every night when you come home from work (my father is an alcoholic, and thanks to my not-so-wonderful *ex* live-in bf, I learned how much I refuse to be with someone that mirrors his behavior).

I think that part of the reason my current bf and I live so well together is based on that past experience. And while the odds are probably stacked against us according to those studies, I’m confident that we’ll make it. Not b/c I’m naive, but b/c I understand the risks, and considered them heavily before agreeing to get an apartment together, and I use that same reasoning whenever we discuss marriage. I don’t want us to end up as just another statistic.

*sam*
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 09:56 am: [report]

@helsbells: not to be rude, but it probably has something to do with your lack of manners. I fully respect everyone’s right to have an opinion, whether I agree with it or not, but simply opening up your mouth to call someone retarded, is uncalled for. If you disagree with an author’s POV, that’s fine, but you should either discuss why you disagree, or at the *very* least be somewhat polite a/b it. Otherwise, do us *all* a favor, and keep your rude comments to yourself.

skywalk
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 09:56 am: [report]

I wonder if these studies takes into account how many of these couples have kids outside of marriage then get married?  I really think the whole living with a S/O prior to marriage or not is a personal issues, but I do think (again my personal opinion) that couples should be married before they have children.  If you are both not ready and comitted to each other enough to get married I don’t think bringing a kid into the relationship is going to help the realationship.

powplz
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 09:59 am: [report]

I’m going to have to agree with *sam* - if you’re going to call someone inept, at least relate the sentiment to the post/content.

retro chic
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 10:06 am: [report]

I’ve done all the living together for freedom and for its own sake I’m going to… and will only move in again if marriage is *already* on the table, happens in a year or two – max, or it’s “Ciao, darlin.’”

AgentBeryllium
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 10:16 am: [report]

Ok I have an interesting question:

Do we as a society move to quickly in relationships?

I have to admit that I was sad when I read this article.
Mainly because I am for moving in prior to marrying. I didn’t do so with my exhusband and I really wish I had. It would have saved a lot of money and heartache.

My now BF wants to try living together before marriage and I’m down for it.

I just wonder why do we put time lines on relationships? What happened to trusting our own intuition and base the desicion on that?

resullins
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 11:02 am: [report]

My mother gave me two or three really great pieces of advice when I was growing up… one of which was to live with someone for a year before marrying them. I just moved in with my SO, and am in turn, choosing to ignore this particular study! (I’m a firm believer in if you don’t believe it, it won’t affect you as much!)

@Joyy: Isn’t women’s lib about choice? That’s sort of the whole point. This is an article about choosing to do something that before women’s lib was pretty much unheard of (moving in together). So what IF marraige is the final goal for some people? Is that a BAD thing? I think it’s great that we’re even having to discuss this, and I find your condescention of some women’s desire to get married both hypocritical and counter-productive to the very movement you’re claiming to be promoting.

powplz
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 11:19 am: [report]

@resullins - I don’t actually look down on women who get married or want to, but I guess you’re going to find that sentiment if you want to take the energy to look for it. 

Nowhere do I say that getting married is bad, I am just stating my annoyance that unmarried couples living together are so consistently described in a “pre-marriage” context.  That’s why I’m lamenting the advancement of it as “universally” sought after.  There’s nothing wrong with anyone wanting to get married.  I just find it annoying that the media assumes a couple’s choice is related to a desire to marry.

Am I making sense at all?  The comment was really not anti-marriage, just anti-assuming-marriage-is-the-goal-for-all(-cohabiting)-couples/women.

resullins
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 11:42 am: [report]

@joyy: If your annoyance is at the media and their choice of words, then the comment makes sense. I’ve just been inundated with so called feminists getting on women for doing things like choosing to take care of their children and not work, or wanting marraige.

But I also think that since this particular article is talking about people that live together AND then evetually get married, the term pre-marriage is perfectly valid. The couples that ONLY want to live together don’t have to worry about what this article is talking about. When someone is talking about divorce statistics in a couple that lives together pre-marraige, they’re not talking about the couples that don’t choose to marry. That’s a WHOLE different subject.

skywalk
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 11:42 am: [report]

joyy - I agree totally marriage isn’t for everyone or for every couple.  Similarly with children my husband and I chose not to have and we have been together since we were 24 and 27 and have been together 10 years so everyone is like when are you having kids.  We’re not!

We heard “when are you getting married” for 5 years and now always here “when are you having children”!

Penelope09
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 12:05 pm: [report]

I remember reading an analysis of one of those studies a few years ago, which basically said that a couple shouldn’t live together before marriage because not much will change after they do get married. So if someone isn’t taking the relationship as seriously as the other, they’re not going to see a ring and a ceremony as motivation for change, if their living situation is going to be just as it was in the end.
Yes, that’s probably true, but I think that the people this applies to, who aren’t taking their relationship seriously with their live-in significant other probably wouldn’t take it seriously after marriage, even if they hadn’t lived together beforehand.
I just moved in with my boyfriend, and we both take our relationship very seriously. But we did before we moved in together, we spent a lot of time together beforehand and living together has been a breeze. If anything, it’s made our lives so much easier because we don’t have to deal with roommates and late night/early morning transportation.

nire32
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 12:13 pm: [report]

The study is not saying that living together before marriage CAUSES divorce.  It is saying there is a CORRELATION between living together before and divorce.

However, this study does not account for other factors, such as religion, age, ethnicity, etc…. And these factors have been proven to have an impact on divorce rates. 

For example, if your religion doesn’t believe in divorce, are you really going to live together before you get married??? Um, probably not.  I’m not saying that living together before marriage is right or wrong - what i’m saying is that this study is crap….

sarahprotzman
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 01:14 pm: [report]

Ah, here we are again! If living together before marriage is such a healthy thing, why does this question get posed (and defended) so much?

Once you’ve spent time at each other’s homes, you learn the other’s habits. You know how often they clean the kitchen and how they do laundry. Inevitably, you’ll have differences with that small stuff, but you figure it out. That’s part of the fun of a relationship. Nobody divorces over dirty dishes.

Wondering how you’ll share a closet is NOT the reason people say they “absolutely must” live together before marriage. It’s that they’re simply not sure they want to be with the person forever. While that is perfectly valid, let’s stop telling ourselves it’s about a fear of who will feed the cat.

ahw
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 01:46 pm: [report]

Maybe it’s because I’m in the math field, but I always like to do my research before I buy anything.  I would certainly live with someone before I married them because ending a marraige is costly.  The best way to know someone, truly, is to spend their best and their worst times with them.

I’ve loved people who I could never marry or live with, and I want to be sure before I legally tie myself to someone that they are not only someone I love but someone I am compatible with.  Finances are a very important issue for me.  Without living with someone, it is very difficult to see if they truly pay their bills on time and truly keep a budget and savings. 

As for the study, I agree with nire32 in saying that people who are more likely to divorce are also people whose morals allow them to live with someone before marraige.

I don’t think one can look at a trend and take what we want from it; we need to look at ourselves and what helps us decide what to do and how to go about it.  Every relationship and every person is unique.

AgentBeryllium
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 01:55 pm: [report]

@ahw: I agree. The thing is @sarahprotzman was pointing out can be true, but the other is people lie. They cover up that they don’t vacuum in 2 weeks or do the dishes, but when you come over their house is spotless. When it boils down to marriage, it comes to a few rules that are made on both sides on how to live together and also can you live together and not kill each other. Like some old wise saying once said never have a best friend become a room mate. It just will not work.

After being divorced, rebuilding my little world, I would rather take something on a temporary basis and see if it will work out as opposed to just diving right in.

sarahprotzman
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 02:39 pm: [report]

If your relationship is based on communication, honesty and respect, you don’t need to move in to find out who each other truly are. (If you do, that’s a problem.)

If someone suspects their boyfriend lies or misrepresents who he is about ANYTHING, I can’t imagine wanting to be in that relationship to begin with.

After around a year of dating, it’d be very odd if someone were still unaware about whether their guy’s in debt, lacks financial discipline, can’t budget, or anything else that would fundamentally change how they viewed the person.

Because WOW, talk about something you want to learn BEFORE both your names are on the mailbox…

Kesseire
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 05:45 pm: [report]

I plan on telling my daughters to live together with their intended for at least a year before planning the wedding, and to do so after they’ve been dating for a good while already.

Folks can think of it as a “trial marriage” if it makes them feel better about it. But it’s the day-to-day grind that can wear a relationship down, and you just don’t know how compatible you are on that front with someone unless you’ve spent an extended period of time living together.

Shasta
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 08:15 pm: [report]

I worry that marriage is difficult enough to keep exciting and by living together prior, it contribute to the ordinary-ness of it all.

Bluesky99
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 10:12 pm: [report]

We started a torrid romance days after my 22nd birthday and rather…uhm…quickly got married. We were passionate, crazily infatuated with each other and metaphorically traveling on trains going in opposite directions.  In our blissful haze we decided to jump with both feet and never wonder about the one that got away. We did the reverse of what many of you propose in living together first. We got married to give us a try as a couple.

My take away, respect the societal expectations placed on being married because when you’re married the plan is forever, you play for keeps and it is reinforced by family, friends, coworkers, religion, my gosh even the law, and of course your own expectations. There is no such thing as a trial marriage.

The lens you use to view your relationship is always long-term when making decisions. For example, if you’re dividing up the closest space you may settle for half a closet now, but gain commitment for your own walk-in closet when you purchase your next house in 5 years, the expectation is clear, you’re less likely to simply settle for “trying” to live with half a closet.  (I finished my wife’s walk in closest renovation last year, glad she’s a patient woman.) 

Moving in together is a pivotal time for a couple establishing the foundation of a relationship, it is the start of the day to day routine, and if you subscribe to the forever after belief we think it is best to build the foundation married with the inherent commitment firmly in place for both individuals. The hardest part of married life is the day to day living, which lens do you want to have on when you build the habits that support life together, a permanent lens or a temporary lens? Living together first leaves room for some couples, or even just one half of a couple (ok, you got me, I mean the guy here) to hold back and not to give there all, it’s just so (dangerously?) dang convenient, and this increases the chance of building a weak foundation.

After 13 years we’re still learning more about being married, and yes I do still think my wife is hot. Expectedly I guess, the only minor character item I didn’t know about my wife before we were married was the she’s a bit of an item collector, I guess I should have lived with her first…not! So yes, I agree with sarahprotzman, if you’re honest you probably know all you need to know about marrying your significant other before you move in with them.

Ladies, and this goes for our own two daughters as well, hold out for that rock if you’re looking for your forever after.  It’s perhaps more powerful than you think.

Although, we’re open to suggestions on how we explain to our daughters about getting married 18 days.

TotallyRidiculous
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 10:29 pm: [report]

@sarahprotzman and msPriss - I don’t think it’s so much about knowing their habits, or about whether they hide/lie about them: a lot of it is that when you live with someone your relationship WILL change, and sometimes it’s hard to see how.  You can move in with your SO and find out that now they expect you to cook all the meals or do all the dishes, when they didn’t before.  Maybe once you move in together they start to take their bad moods out on you when they didn’t before.  Or maybe, when you’re around someone all the time, they start to take you for granted. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Of course maybe you’ll learn some good things too, like that they share their hot breakfast with you in the morning, or likes to do your laundry for you, but it’s the bad things I would rather find out about before I marry them.

sigma1932
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 10:51 pm: [report]

(k, I’m a guy reading girly stuff on the ‘net… so sue me).

My advice is this: if you’re thinking about marriage:  Living together = bad, Establishing a mutual “don’t have to call first/don’t need to knock”, open-door policy = good.

If you spend a lot of time at the other person’s place (so much that they can’t possibly hide anything—they won’t mind if they’ve really fallen for you), you’ll see how they really live without actually having to be a full-time resident.  You’ll both see each other’s faults, and it’ll still leave you the option of bailing easier if you see a deal-breaker (i.e. you still have your place to run back to).

If two people really took the time to get to know each other through and through and really want to marry each other (give it 2 years at least), they’ll find every possible way to coexist after they walk down the aisle even if they don’t live together beforehand.  If people make moving in together part of getting married, instead of something that happens beforehand, it becomes a lot easier psychologically to treat it like you’re sharing a NEW life together (which is what marriage is supposed to be) rather than just living two seperate lives parallel to each other.  If you’re not willing to share and build a new life with the other person, as one entity, then you really shouldn’t be getting married, and if you need a “trial marriage”, then that should be a red flag that you shouldn’t be getting married.

Simply living together doesn’t begin to build a new life with another person—you don’t learn about their views on chores, money, and having a beer, etc. by living with someone… you learn about those things by talking with them about it.  For the people that moving in together works for, it’s not becuase they lived together, it’s because living together triggered them talking things over, so they mistakenly assume that “living together” is where the life lesson came from when really it’s the communication… and that can be done while both people are still under seperate roofs.  On the other hand, I think the reason people who live together before marriage get divorced more often is because, even though they’ve lived together, they haven’t really communicated about building that new life together, and expect things to stay as they are—the parallel paths are closer together, but still seperate.

That said, I know from experience that it’s extremely painful, even if you’re NOT married, when one person has to move out if things go bad, and sometimes it can drag on due to finances, housing/apt. availability, etc.  My personal rule now is that I will not live with someone again unless we’re engaged and the date is set, and I won’t consider getting engaged until we’ve been seeing each other for at least 2 years.

wonderfultonight
wrote on July 27 2009 @ 11:11 pm: [report]

I am neutral about living/not living together. Each person has their own reasons for their decision. Many unmarried live-together couples are as much or more committed to each other and their relationship than many married couples.

However, for me personally, the relationship would have to be on a very strong ground already before moving in together. The idea of me or my SO being “on trial” to see if we could live together before we got married just isn’t for me. The key for me is when the two of you realize you don’t want to live WITHOUT each other any more.

And sometimes as Bluesky99 shows that can happen fairly quickly.

sparklestar
wrote on July 28 2009 @ 01:39 am: [report]

I think I have lived with most of the guys I have been with due to them being long term (1yr +) relationships. I don’t feel I moved too quickly in any of them. My default comfortable state is that of committed long term relationship so I am perfectly happy to do so.

With the guys I have lived with I am glad I lived with them because somebody really shows their true colours during cohabitation! They’ve either been living with me (joint names on a lease) or living as if they are. I learned how little some of them actually wanted to do housework, how content they were to sit around the house and do NOTHING, how addicted they were to their computer games and so on and so forth.

I have been living with my boyfriend now for about 18 months and it is a BREEZE. He shares the cooking and cleaning responsibilities if/when he needs to and we each have our own jobs around the house that we attend to. He doesn’t make life difficult for me and is always happy to help.

If I had married any of the previous guys I had lived with (who all showed their colours after about 6 months of living together) then I would definitely be part of the statistic. Fortunately through the added insight of living with them I was able to determine exactly what kind of people they were very early on (early in respect to the rest of my life…)!

I highly recommend living with a prospective husband-to-be as it will show you what kind of person they really are when the chips are down.

paul
wrote on July 28 2009 @ 01:43 am: [report]

I have tried the living together before marriage, then living together before and marriage and lastly just getting married 6 months after meeting my present spouse.
In all honesty, the ‘Just living together’ was a convienience for us both and in retrospect, we both knew all along that that was all it ever could be. The marriage after two years of co-hibition was an eye opener. Never have I experienced such a dramatic change in a person as I did then. Suddenly the Ring bound us and she felt no more need to “invest” in the relationship. Everything was now ‘By demand”
The third scenario has been fantastic. After 8 years we are still getting to know each other. We do everything together and almost anticipate the others next word or action. To sum it all up: it all depends if you are in a relationship with Mr/Mrs Right. Not even marriage will be able to kill that !

onelegatatime
wrote on July 28 2009 @ 03:55 pm: [report]

Yeah, I agree that moving in together, even for convenience, saving money, etc., makes sense if marriage or something like that is already on the table and the parties have already had a serious discussion about it.  Otherwise - just to test the waters - it may not make sense.

Jenn27549
wrote on July 28 2009 @ 04:37 pm: [report]

I’ve always been for living together before getting married.  My now-husband was not, as he had lived with a few people in the past and said he wasn’t going to do it again until he was married b/c it makes it too difficult to break-up if things get bad.  But we ended up living together by default for almost a year before we got married even though he wouldn’t call it that.  I had also lived with 2 previous guys, one for 1.5 years another for 4 years.  It seemed to me that you would know everything you need to know prior to marriage, but that’s not turned out to be the case.

Its not that marriage itself changed EVERYTHING, but it changed enough to make a difference.  I guess it would depend on how intertwined two people got while living together (for example, we still had separate bank accounts and didn’t mingle in each others finances until we were married—and although we had the same philosophy on money, it didn’t work out smoothly in application for a while).  But I’ve found that it is still different enough that living together isn’t a 100% or even 90% indicator of what marriage will be like.  At least not for me.  Its still valuable, but I wouldn’t go into the marriage expecting it to be exactly the same as it was the day before, when you were just living together.

BlueVibe
wrote on July 29 2009 @ 11:05 am: [report]

I’m really, really, skeptical of the so-called “proof” that cohabiting increases the likelihood of divorce.  I think it’s entirely possible that the two are both symptoms of the same underlying mindset.

My suspicion is that people who consider themselves more traditional or conservative are both less likely to cohabit and less likely to divorce.  People who are less tied to those ideas are more comfortable with the ideas of both cohabitation and divorce.  I don’t really believe that one is the *cause* of the other.

I also suspect that people who consider themselves more traditional are more likely to stay in marriages when they maybe *should* get divorced.  I’ve known enough anti-divorce people (male and female) who put up with cheating, lying, or abusive spouses to make me think that refusing to split up doesn’t mean you value commitment more or that what you have is a strong marriage.

Last theory: If it takes you THAT LONG to get around to getting married, maybe you had cold feet you didn’t acknowledge.  I would never settle for cohabiting (or being engaged) indefinitely.  If you want to marry me, do it already.  If we’ve lived together for five, eight, ten years and you’re still not hot-to-trot to get me down the aisle, something is not right and we need to face it.  I’d almost bet money that the reason so many people live together for years, get married, and then divorce is because something was off-key from the start.

Personally, there is no way I’d marry somebody without some living together.  I don’t want any domestic surprises after the wedding (for either of us—he needs to know that I’m a night owl, a pack-rat, hate folding clean laundry, and go completely postal if you don’t clean and season my cast-iron frying pan correctly).

My brother and SIL, and my parents, both lived together as couples before they married.  While they both agree that marriage is not the same as living together, they’re both glad they did (and are happily married).

Ghirardelli
wrote on July 29 2009 @ 03:39 pm: [report]

Under no circumstances will I move in with a guy before living with him. You really don’t know a person until you see them day in and day out, and find out what little things will bug the hell out of you. My mother and father didn’t live together before they got married, and ten years later he picks up and leaves. I’ll always take a test run. Both of my sisters lived with their husbands before they got married, and they’re going strong.

Black Iris
wrote on July 29 2009 @ 07:45 pm: [report]

I’m very biased here as a former cohabitor, now long-term married person, but:

Researchers have claimed that cohabiting increases the risk of divorce before, but it’s not a fair claim.  If a group of couples has been married 5 years, most of them will still be married.  Still true after 10 years, but there will be more divorced couples.  The longer the group of couples have been married, the more divorced couples there are.

When you look at couples that live together before they’re married, they’ve been together a longer total number of years.  So the fact that more of them are divorced after 10 years of marriage, doesn’t necessarily mean that more of them will split up by the end of their lives. 

Similarly, the study referred to above looked at people who’ve been married 10 years or less.  Some of the cohabitors, however, would have been together for more than 10 years.

Remember, the risk of divorce for young Americans has gone down from 50% to 40%.  This may be partly BECAUSE of cohabitation allowing people to break-up without going through marriage and divorce.

princessmorgan
wrote on July 29 2009 @ 10:10 pm: [report]

I’m kind of torn on this issue.  I was brought up in a very traditional, conservative Christian environment, and so my family and my background definitely discourages premarital cohabitation.  That being said, I can definitely see the benefits of living together before marriage (my mom has been divorced 3 times, and she didn’t live with any of her husbands beforehand). 

I’m young, but I’ve been with my boyfriend for almost 3 years now.  We’re in school (both at different colleges), and by the time we graduate, we’ll have been together for almost 6 years, assuming that everything goes well.  I want to marry him, but I still want to live with him beforehand.  Why?  Because we’re going to be responsible for paying for our own wedding.  I’ve always wanted to have a big wedding, but I don’t want to have to wait a year or two to save up the money for it before I can live with my boyfriend, especially when we’ll have been living apart for so long. 

So, I guess that I agree with the study on one point:  that your motivation really matters.  I think it probably has less to do with whether or not you live together before the wedding, and more to do with you, your partner, and the state of your relationship.

skywalk
wrote on July 30 2009 @ 05:44 am: [report]

Black Iris - I think you made a valid point.  Most couples that live together before marriage have a year to 10 or more years together before hand so 5 years into a marriage and the relationship could have already run its course.

Chebs
wrote on July 30 2009 @ 06:47 am: [report]

I think it’s a good idea to try to live together before marriage, but I wouldn’t push it on everyone.  I lived with my ex for about 4 years.  I learned a lot about living with someone, as others have mentioned, and I learned a lot about how I function around another person.  Unfortunately, there were a lot of dealbreakers that should have sent me running long before it got to the 1-yr mark, but I was silly and held out hope that he would change.  In my case, living together before marriage was good because (eventually) I saw my ex for the lazy jerk he was and managed to not end up one of those statistics.

Fast Eddie
wrote on July 30 2009 @ 06:57 am: [report]

When I got married for the first time, we did not have sex or live together before the wedding.  We divorced 2 years later.  Then I moved to California, the land of sexual liberation in the 70’s, but I still wanted a monogamous relationship.  Some years later I hooked up with this wonderful woman and we lived to gather for 8 years before we getting married.  That was 14 years ago (22 years total)and we look forward to many, many more. 

Bottom line I think is do what ever works for you.  Just make sure it works for both of you.  All the effort toward that is energy well spent.

resullins
wrote on July 30 2009 @ 07:28 am: [report]

@Chebs: I did the same thing. Lived with my ex before-hand realized that he was going to spend the rest of his life snooping through my stuff because he didn’t trust me at ALL! So I didn’t marry him, and ended up leaving his ass in California! SO glad we lived together before going down that road!

osfan4life
wrote on July 30 2009 @ 11:05 am: [report]

So, I know that people have already said this, but I really think it depends on the person here. I have lived with a boyfriend once, and I am not planning on cohabitating again until getting married. I wouldn’t say that I necessarily regret having done it because I learned a LOT. I learned more about what’s important to me in a man, and how to, well NOT make a relationship work. Living together is no walk in the park, and the next time I do it, I want to make sure it’s with someone who’s 100% committed to making it work.

nickric
wrote on August 15 2009 @ 02:45 am: [report]

They do them every year, and come up with the same numbers. Apparently our columnist knows better.

The simple logic is, those of you who have opinions like this columnist are very likely to get divorced. It’s not the moving in before marriage thing that gets people in trouble, it’s the idea of moving in to “discover so many new things about” a potential mate, and then the subsequent MOVING OUT. Moving out is basically the same as divorce.

So you have lots of people who move in, move out, move in and move out. And then they randomly decide to get married to one of them (marriage success is based much less on laundry compatibility than this columnist seems to think) usually out of fear or infatuation, and then they proceed to do the same thing they have always done. And that would be “discover” some “new” thing about living with the person that they do not like.

And there you have it. Modern divorce logic. The move in advocates usually repeat the process again and again and again. Move in move out move in move out *divorce* move in move out move in move out *divorce*. If you want to get married three times, go for it. NOT for me.

My advice, if you want to get married, and stay married…do not move in “to see” if it works out like this columnist. And if you’ve had a move in relationship, and you’ve moved out, do some serious thinking about what is wrong with you and don’t do it again unless your for real. If you’ve had more than 4 live in relationships, go to therapy and stop blaming other people for your problems.

shawbrooke
wrote on November 17 2009 @ 12:59 pm: [report]

New study?? Research has been showing this same result continually for at least 40 years - people who live together first do divorce more often!

If you lived together and want to stay married, take heart. Many research results show that about 35 % of marriages that started with living together last long enough to raise the children of the marriage and longer. Your marriage could be one of those! One specific positive situation is that recent studies show that those who did not move in until there was a ring and date within the next year, have a much lower divorce rate than marriages that started with other living together situations. Over time we’ll see if those results are confirmed.

As to why this is, no one seems to know. Income, degree of religiousity, and other social factors do not change the finding that divorces are more frequent among those who live together first.

jennblackula
wrote on November 17 2009 @ 01:58 pm: [report]

I find these sort of studies to be a bit of a scapegoat for the real reasons relationships and marriages fail.  It’s pretty clear that relationships fail because of lack of commitment, different goals, different values, lack of intimacy and communication, lack of nurturing, disillusionment and skewed ideas of what marriage really is… the ability to love and grow through all types of weather.

Knowing the fundamentals of what makes a relationship continue to grow and thrive or the opposite (wither and die) is really all that matters when wanting to learn what it takes to make it work for the long haul.

These sort of studies only breed fear and anxiety and give people just another thing to worry on their last of relationship worries.  Yes, there are many obstacles to face, but the bottom line is that there is no perfect formula that works for everyone.  Every person is an individual and when two people come together to create a living relationship, that too is individual and can only be treated as such.  Stop comparing your relationship to everyone else and the statistics and focus on keeping the roots of your relationship strong and tending to the fruit. 

Relationships are difficult no matter what their stories are, but if the people involved are honest and are in it for the person they love as well as themselves, then they have at least some of the components needed for the alchemy of making it work and work well.

RabbitArcher
wrote on November 17 2009 @ 05:27 pm: [report]

I moved straight in with my boyfriend from my parents’ home when I was 19ish, and we’ve been living together for almost three years now.  Everything is great between us and we talk about marriage, but every once in a while I can’t help but wish I had waited just a little longer before taking this step.  Don’t get me wrong, I love him, and I’m definitely not thinking of breaking up with him.  I just wish I had taken the time to live on my own for at least a year or two before I moved in with him, and now it’s too late.  If all goes well, I will NEVER experience living alone…