All Their Judging Stares
February 26th, 2008 @ 3:50 pm by Mrs. Milkshake
That is my quick sketch of something featured in a past Seattle magazine issue. Photocopier? What’s that?
Okay. So I guess every one of my friends could unanimously say that any one of these houses is the house for me, each boasting old hardwood floors and some really fantastic architectural feature inside, like a brick chimney exposed along the wall of a sloped-roofed attic. This past fall Mr. Milkshake and I ended up buying a circa-1974 split level home, and while it’s not the great character house I had envisioned, it’s definitely home.
What does a house have to do with our wedding? I had never wanted to live with any guy before I was married, but moving to another country with my then-boyfriend-now-fiance really didn’t make it the easiest. We’d managed for a year, renting separate apartments for $2500 between us, but it came to the point where I couldn’t stand throwing the money away when I could sink that very same rental amount into a monthly mortgage payment. It’s not the 1950’s anymore: aside from the fact that I didn’t spend the last 5 years living with my parents and learning to cook and bake, and aside from the fact that I moved out at 16 to go to unversity - bottom line is, we are 150 miles away from the homes we grew up in.
After we’d bought the house, my banker was itching to ask Mr. Milkshake about our living arrangements when he touched on the fact that we’d have two separate bedrooms in the house. By the time I saw her later that day she was just bursting to ask me. It may not be the 1950’s, and we may live under one roof, but I’m still conservative.
We lived in separate apartments across the street from each other for a full year. We “float” for our jobs, which means we have different coworkers everyday. Wven people who are 50+ years old, who I would have thought to have old fashioned values were flabbergasted to find out we lived apart. Why is this such a shock? We each got this reaction from everyone we met, and they made us feel like idiots for it, too. I certainly don’t have any qualms about other people living together, but I was shocked and somewhat offended that I received pretty much the opposite reaction from people about me not living with my then-boyfriend - like in some twisted way I was being judged for not “living in sin.” It made me feel like I was from outer space, or that I was at least a terrible outsider in today’s society.
Maybe the west coast is too socially forward, and things are different in other parts of the countryt? How many of you out there aren’t, won’t, or never did live with your man before marriage, and what parts of the country do you hail from?
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44 Responses to “All Their Judging Stares”
I think lots of people are afraid that young couples are going into marriage with their eyes not quite open. I can see why older folks would think that since you have the social opportunity to live with each other pre-marriage, why not go for it and get all the adjustments out of the way? I also think there are lots of married (and divorced) folks out there who would say “why wouldn’t you want to know as much as possible if this person was compatible with your life?” For sure they don’t know your situation or your relationship, but I think that although some are judgmental, some folks are just concerned and truly wanting you to be as prepared as possible.
My fiancee & I are from the East Coast. We moved in with each other at the 5 1/2 year mark. We are now approaching the 7 year mark and getting married this summer.
I live in Chicago and don’t live with Mr. Jasmine, but I think that has less to do with where we live and more to do with our cultural background— our parents would kill us.
my husband and i are from orange county and we didn’t live together before we got married. we had a lot of people question that, especially since hardly a day went by that we didn’t see each other or were at each other’s apartments, but let’s be honest, seeing each other every day in each other’s homes and actually living together are two totally different things.
i realize that the west coast tends to be more socially forward but our christian faith is conservative. therein lies the reason why we didn’t live together before being married. 
i don’t feel like we went into this ill experienced. granted, there’s been a period of adjustment and i expect that to continue for a bit since we just got married this past november, but we’re chalking it up to being part of the newlywed experience and enjoying the ride!
I’m from Virginia - I have the same beliefs - no living together before marriage. He ended up moving in about a month before the wedding. Mostly because of his dog - it was a real pain in the butt moving the dog back and forth between our places depending on where we were hanging out. Or me having to go take care of his dog if he was working crazy hours. So the dog moved in with me and he pretty much followed.
Granted we only dated for 15 months before the wedding - so it’s not like 5 years of paying separate mortgages or anything. The only flack we seemed to get was the 4 month engagement. Everyone knows I’m the ‘good girl’ anyways
(He did live with two previous girlfriends in the past - which if I think about it too much, starts to bother me)
I’m from the Bay Area in California. My FI and I have never lived together. We are getting married and three months I am I looking forward to being able to live with him though. Everyone seems shocked when they hear we don’t live together since we’ve been together forever, but it’s cheaper this way since our parents are allowing us to stay at home.
if those are sketches dayamn, my stick figures are like boogers. hahaha, nice! neway, yeah. nix on the living situation for my fiance and i too…its not in our beliefs but if ppl are saying flack…let them yap away. do with what feels right for you and your relationship. you will have years and years to live together after u get married. 
My fiance comes from a very conservative, Catholic family, and he wanted to wait until we were engaged to move in together. I think he used his family as an excuse (they lived far away and never visited), and eventually I got frustrated, thinking he wasn’t considering my side (I wasn’t going to get engaged without finding out if he was someone I could live with and share those intimate details of everyday life with, and I was stuck in a very unpleasant living situation). I finally lost my patience right around the time that he bought the ring. Long story short, we moved in together about 6 months before he popped the question, to my knowledge his mother has never said a word about the living arrangements, and it worked out perfectly. We live together extremely well, and have had a chance to learn and accept one another’s quirks so there will be no surprises after the wedding.
I live in Seattle and I live with FI. I get a lot of questions from people about the fact we do live together. My boss was shocked. I never thought I would live with someone before getting married but it made a lot of sense for us.
my husband and i did not live together until we were married. when he moved up to my city after a year of long distance, everyone assumed he would move in with me…when he didn’t, most people were flabbergasted. they usually didn’t ask a lot of questions, probably out of politeness, but i knew the questions were stewing in their minds. we currently live in the midwest. anyway, we love living together now that we’re married and it’s been a fun adventure…no regrets whatsoever!
My FI and I do not live together. Granted, we are currently at different duty stations, but we have discussed that once we are at the same place, we will live separately until we get married. We’re both traditional Catholics, and come from conservative families. We’d rather just wait until we are married.
i’m in the Southeast and we never lived together. in fact i had to constantly correct people on the fact.
during football season when my FH would invite others over for the game, the guys would always ask “shouldn’t you call your gf first?”thinking that he needed my permission for them to all come over to OUR place.
but i am with you….even though the South is supposedly known for its conservatism, many people are surprised to learn we didn’t live together. and when my FI moved away for his post doc 6 months ago, people were even more shocked to learn i wasnt going with him.
my question always was “why would I?” i’ve got a job here, family here. I dont uproot myself from life for no reason. I am not married. and shacking is not an option for us.
so now we live 900 miles apart until our wedding day and i live with my parents to save money and pay bills. not a choice many would make, but it’s what’s best for us.
well, we both moved from the midwest to so cal, and we’ve lived together a few years - it’s too expensive to live separately! i was shocked our families were fine with it, but oddly enough i’ve run in to a few people out here who act all horrified. go figure!
I’m from the midwest originally and I never wanted to live with someone before we were engaged or married. FI and I were friends for 2 years before we started dating and even then he was shocked when I said that I wouldn’t even consider living with him before we were engaged. Now that we are engaged, I will move in with him once my current lease is over in July, mostly for financial reasons like the $100K that I have in law school loans. But for me it is not a religious thing, it’s more of a practical thing and a personal preference.
First, I felt like any guy that really wanted to be with me would have more incentive to propose if we weren’t already living together. I also felt that I wanted the only man I lived with to be my husband. There isn’t a lot of “firsts” that I still have since I’m 27. FI is not my first anything, except he is the first man that I will live with.
I live in Vancouver, and I think almost every couple I know lives together, and 90% of them aren’t engaged or married. Among my social circle, it’s definitely considered strange not to live with your partner if you’re engaged or past the 18-month mark!
The only exception is an engaged couple I know who both still live with their respective parents, while they save for their wedding.
I live in California, getting married in June, and everyone wonders why we don’t live together yet. I’m just proud that we’re doing things the way that *we* think is right. Why people care so much is beyond me…
I’m in the south, have fairly conservative parents, and we still lived together before we got married. I’m just not religious and don’t feel that it’s an issue beyond what works best for us. My mom was a bit miffed, but really…she got married at 19, whereas I was 28 when we moved in together.
I’m from Virginia and a pretty conservative family, and I wouldn’t live with my bf before marriage. I was a roommate with a dating couple who were unmarried but who technically had separate bedrooms (for appearances). To each their own, I say. The statistics that couples who live together before marriage actually fare *worse* as married couples have convinced me that it’s a bad idea.
we’re moving in together next week. ask me in a month if it was a good idea.
we’ve been together for 3 1/2 years and engaged for 7 months, and we’re getting married in another 15 months. we won’t be saving a lot of money rent-wise, but we’re both tired of being alone.
I’m from Nor Cal and my mom said we’d be crazy NOT to live together before marriage…she was afraid after I’d “seal the deal” unaware of all Mr. Peng’s disgusting manly habits…
Turns out I’m the one with the disgusting manly habits though, so its a good learning experience for Mr. Peng too
My mom learned a lot of stuff about my dad that she wasnt too crazy about when they got married (they didnt live together before marriage) so she said that living together would be a good opportunity for us to evaluate eachothers habits and decide whether or not we could tolerate them for the rest of our lives…because marriage is not ALL about love and commitment, its a lot about just being able to GET ALONG after 20, 30, 40 years Maybe thats a totally bleak outlook on marriage but its realistic in some ways.
I’m in Chicago and my fiance and I live together. He moved in about 4 months before the engagement. We met with a pastor this weekend about being an officiant for our ceremony, and he came right out and told us that because we were living together before the wedding our marriage was doomed. Not a great first impression.
Birdy: It’s correlational. Just because you choose to do it vs. not choosing to do it doesn’t make you or your relationship a different thing. It’s most likely people who were more committed first vs. not as committed or religious vs. non-religious. There’s also discussion that it possibly doesn’t even exist when the couple is engaged at the time of moving in.
Julia453 — i can’t speak on behalf of all christians everywhere, but personally, i am very sorry that you met with a pastor who took it upon himself to pronounce such judgement on your upcoming marriage. while it’s true that christians in general don’t believe in premarital cohabitation, it still isn’t right for him to have pronounced your marriage “doomed.”
personal observation: i think the success of a marriage is dependant on two people’s daily practice of the commitment they’ve vowed to each other. there’s nothing in that that has anything to do with whether or not a couple lived together prior to becoming married.
My fiance and i aren’t living together until we’re married. We did the long distance thing for two years and when I moved back I figured why not wait until the wedding since we’ve made it this far and then it will be really exciting to get married and start living together. While I hated being far away in a way I was glad because then we could make that decision. I know if we were in the same town we would have moved in together. It’s hard to argue paying two rents. But I didn’t want something like bills to have anything to do with it.
everyone is different though. Most friends I have live or have lived with a boyfriend. (Here being Canada).
The only thing that bothers me is when friends say something like ‘ you can’t really know someone truly until you live with them’ etc. making arguments about how their living together is more meaningful then our ENGAGEMENT. I’ve known my fiance since we were five! ( common-law couples who have actually made a commitment to be together forever are different in my mind then couples who have just moved in with each other- they are married)
anyway, sorry for that rant.
I have read that couples that haven’t lived together before marriage have lower incidence of divorce but I’m inclined to think that’s because they are often very religious and just generally less likely to get divorced.
I really good book about this topic, written by a woman who lived with her husband for I think 7 years before marriage, and her conflict with her hapiness with that decision and her sadness of not having that kind of ‘fairytale’ don’t live together until your married idea. I think its called ‘ notes on a modern wedding’ by Kate Cohen.
I live in Australia. Here it’s considered strange if you don’t live together before becoming engaged or getting married. Australians generally aren’t as religious as those from the US, so that would have a lot to do with it.
champagnebride - you were way more eloquent than me! Very well stated.
I’m in the same situation as Penguin. The first year we lived together was really, really hard. There were a lot of adjustments to be made because we had both lived alone beforehand. We learned a lot about what was important to the other person, how to function around one another and work as a unit, etc. I think that’s why people say things like, “you don’t really know a person until you live with them.” I’m sure that’s not true in all cases, but I learned way more about Mr. Cream Puff from all of those learning experiences than I would have otherwise.
I’m going to agree with a comment up-thread and say I think the likely reason people are more surprised when you live on the West Coast or any place with ridiculous rents is simply the economics.
Between us, my fi and I saved over $600/month by moving in together! $7200/year! That’s a wedding budget right there!
Also, lots of people dislike having a roommate with a boyfriend/girlfriend who is over all the time - so there is some social reason to do it too. (the cost comes in here too because most people I know can’t afford to live alone)
So between the two that makes living together make so much sense that people are surprised when someone still feels like its important to live separately, given that there is so little stigma attached to living together now.
Not saying that living apart is a bad choice, let me make it clear - but the savings are so significant that in my case my very Catholic grandmother even approved us moving in together! So it seems to take some strong will to stay apart.
I will say that I don’t believe I learned anything new about my fiance when we did move in together - we really were together all the time before (including sleeping over), so it didn’t change much.
(Except that he can’t load a dishwasher. But that is only because neither of our old places had a dishwasher.)
I’m currently a SoCal girl with a NorCal heart but the FI and I have lived together for over 5 years, and we’ve been together for over 6. Part of it was due to finances, because rent here is ridiculous, and buying a house even more so.
I’m totally for people living together once you’re old enough to make your own decisions and are paying your own way. Gotta learn sometime! The first few months was a complete adjustment period.
However, I’m not religious at all and neither is he. Although our cultures don’t really accept people who don’t live at home, we didn’t move back home when we graduated from college and wound up moving in together.
We haven’t killed each other. 
We’re from central California. My fiance and I didn’t have plans to live together before marriage, but we found a great real estate opportunity and bought a house together. At that point, it only made sense that we’d live together. And it’s been great and I can’t wait to marry him in June!
I’m from the mid-Atlantic region and my husband is from the pacific NW. Neither of us is conservative or religious, but we didn’t want to live together before marriage. I guess we wanted to save *something*. We waited until a month before the wedding. Nobody has criticized our choice.
my husband and I lived separately until we married last october. We’re from Portland, OR and YES!!!! EVERYONE we told was shocked and dar I say apalled? that we didn’t live together. I definitely starting feeling awkward when people would just say, “So how long have you two been living together?” and of course I would say we weren’t. Dropped jaws and big eyes were sure to follow. And after the wedding, people who knew we had only just started living together would ask me, “Are things okay with transitioning to living together? or is it really rough on you guys?” It shocked me! I think that people thought I didn’t really know what I was getting into because I didn’t live with my husband beforehand. Pretty hilarious. I can say the transition has been seamless and really really fun! We knew each other for 3 years before we got married and knew what we needed to know before making the huge decision to be married. I wouldn’t have done it any other way!
i’m not yet engaged. we always say if we were a few years older we’d already be planning the wedding (people don’t understand why 20-year olds would want to “settle down so young”). however, with his family (catholic and first generation maltese/italian) and my southern-girl roots, plus our strong christian faith and desire to wait until marriage, we both have decided not to live together before our big day. it’s hard leaving him at the end of the nights but we know that it’s helping our future marriage. plus living with our parents helps to save us a TON of money!
Mr Beefcake and I moved in together about six months ago - but that was because he had to move to Winnipeg for school, and I wasn’t about to stay behind for 2+ years after we had been together for three! I never wanted to live together before marriage, but sometimes things work out differently. I did insist that we get engaged first though - as “insurance” - you don’t want to move all your stuff across the country, set up house, and then break up!
Living together hasn’t been too much of a revelations, because two summers ago we went on a cross-continent backpacking trip of Europe….travelling everyday with someone while wearing a 60 lb backpack, sleeping in tents, and eating nothing but bread and nutella was the real eye opener for us. After that, it’s been smooth-sailing!
I think it does have to do with location, in Vancouver, everyone lives together and no one blinks and eye. In Abbotsford, (the offical “bible belt” of BC) where I went to high school, most kids are married by 21, 22 years old. I’m one of the couple of girls still unmarried in my grad class! An old maid at 24!
I’m from Texas, and FH and I do not live together, though we haven’t gotten any comments about it really. We’ve always known that if we got married that we would move to a different city together. Therefore, it just made sense to wait to move in together until we moved to that different city, saving us a move since we were already settled in our separate apartments. We went to a pre-marriage seminar at church on Saturday, and one of the priests mentioned that, since 1973, almost everyone he has done pre-marital counseling for has lived together.
I’m glad we’re waiting. Somehow it just feels right for us to do the whole moving, moving in together, and getting married thing all at once.
I’m from Ohio, and we waited until we were married to live together. We are Christians, so we wanted to wait.
We’ve been married a year and half now and we didn’t have any problems adjusting. We had realistic expectations and we had been around each other enough to know the other’s quircks and habits.
It made our newlywed stage really exciting because it was all new to us. We had fun setting up our apartment together and it was so exciting to finally be able to fall asleep together.
Like, champagnebride, it frustrated me when people would imply that their relationship was stronger or they were closer or because they lived together. I wasn’t judging them.. I don’t think they should judge me.
We did not live or “sleep” (literally or figuratively) together until after we were married. It was never a question. Our faith and relationship with Go dis of utmost importance to us. And it was welllllll worth the wait. I am also most recently from the South, and my best friend in Vegas says things are completely different down here (when she visits). But no matter where we lived, we would not have lived together. We’ve been married 2.5 years and never looked back. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Hang in there!
Refrigerator Art’s and ChampagneBride’s comments are really touching. I, too, hate the way that boyfriend-girlfriend couples living together think their relationship is just as deep and committed as the one between my HUSBAND and I. No, it’s not. Otherwise, you’d be walking down an aisle or going to the courthouse, too.
We’re from NY and TX, both of Christian faith, and we didn’t live together before marriage. Yes, it was always painful to say goodnight; it was painful to spend most of our days (while at work or school) apart. But, as the comments above say, it makes being newlyweds that much more exciting.
Just some facts: 40 percent of couples who live together actually end up getting married. For those who do get married, they have a 50 percent higher rate of divorce than married couples who do not live together first. (According to the Journal of Marriage and Family)
Couples who live together display aggression at rates twice as high as married couples (again, Journal of Marriage and Family). Married couples have the lowest rates of domestic violence, while cohabiting couples have the highest, even higher than those who are divorced or seperated. (Journal of Family Violence)
3/4 of children born to live-in couples will see their parents split up before they reach age sixteen, compared to only 1/3 of children born to married parents. (National Marriage Project)
Also from “Should We Live Together” (National Marriage Project)
*Cohabitation increases young people’s acceptance of divorce. The longer people live together, the less enthusiastic they become toward marriage.
*Cohabiting couples report lower levels of happiness, lower levels of sexual faithfulness and sexual satisfaction and poorer relationships with their parents than married couples.
*Unmarried individuals who live together are 3 times more likely to be depressed than married person.
With all the research that goes into marriage vs. living together, it amazes me that people actually ENCOURAGE couples to move in together without taking the vow of marriage in front of their family and friends. It’s a lot easier to leave, or give up, when you haven’t made promises in front of the people that you love. I think it’s good that you’re maintaining SOME distance by having seperate bedrooms–living together before marriage often becomes playing house without taking on the full responsibility of commitment.
Just how I see it, I suppose.
Jessica, someone already pointed out upthread that those statistics are correlational, but do not show causation. You could come up with stats that said 40% of blonde people get divorced… but that doesn’t mean the divorce is caused by hair color.
For example, to refute your first statistic, it could be just as easily explained by the fact that typically more religious couples are the ones who did not live together, and those folks also tend to be more reluctant to divorce.
My husband and I lived together before marriage. For us, it made sense. I am surprised that Miss Milkshake got so many comments… here in the Bible Belt, we got a LOT of judgy comments FOR living together. Heck, we’ve been married for 9 months and I still have people giving me shit for it!
OK, I’m confused. Are we talking about sleeping together or living together before marriage?
I think it all depends on our commitment levels. When most people move into together before marriage they aren’t thinking of forever. When you are married you think forever.
For me personal we are living together but it doesn’t matter what happens we are forever. I am planning my wedding even though we aren’t even officially engaged.
We both considered ourselves ‘married’ to one another even though we haven’t had the wedding or signed the papers yet.
Allot of people don’t understand this even my extreme Christian parents. And that’s fine you don’t have to understand it. It’s all a personal choice and I don’t think that either is wrong.
It doesn’t matter to me what people say about what we are doing because I just want to do what’s right for us and not what’s right for someone else.
There are many religious people I know who married and didn’t live together but are so unhappy in their relationship but wont get divorced because their religion teaches that that’s wrong. I am not saying that divorce is right or that moving in together is right for everybody but I just wished that instead of a rushed engagement they had taken the time to get to really know one another before getting married.
If you choose to get married and not live together more power to you but really get to know the other person. And if you choose to move in with someone make sure your both thinking ‘forever.
Chrissie, you’re right, it’s is all about correlation and not causation. I’m not saying that living together before marriage means you’re going to get divorced. But there IS a correlation, and I don’t think all of those people are religious.
You said, “it could be just as easily explained by the fact that typically more religious couples are the ones who did not live together, and those folks also tend to be more reluctant to divorce.”
That’s totally true. I think people who have a religious background are more likely to struggle through a marriage than to divorce; for ‘religious’ people, marriage is usually a commitment between two people, and to God, that it’s “forever.” Usually divorce is seen as alright when it comes to marital unfaithfulness, abuse, neglect, that sort of thing, not just arguing or “falling out of love.”
But according to http://www.religioustolerance.org/ and the Barna Research Group,
“Divorce rates among conservative Christians were significantly higher than for other faith groups, and much higher than Atheists and Agnostics experience.”
So I guess it can’t all be chalked up to religion.
You’re totally right, correlation, not causation. But there’s still something there that deserves to be taken seriously. Even if you discount divorce and look at things like domestic abuse…
These statistics can’t just be thrown away; they mean SOMETHING. I’ve known a lot of couples, a lot of friends who are living together, thinking of getting married, or who are engaged. I don’t think they’re the devil, but I do think their relationship would look different if they had lived seperately. I hear of lot of people who were living together and then get married say “not a whole lot changed.” If there’s ever a time in your life that a relationship should change and grow, it’s during a marriage. It’s not really about religion, it’s about giving yourselves the opportunity to have the strongest relationship possible.
Mrs. Milkshake, Seattle/Vancouver, BC
Age and Occupation: 23, Pharmacist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Pharmacist
Engagement Date: May 2007
Wedding Date: August 2008
Blogging Since: December 6, 2007
Venue: Victorian Mansion
About Me: Despite the fact that I’ve invested many long years of my life studying the sciences in college, I’m glad to be out of there and I would never do it again! I’m super artsy at heart - I run an indie craft site, I grew up shooting and developing my own film, doing jazz and ballet, and the whole gamut of art classes. I’ve been called a Jane of all Trades… but I was also told many years ago not to make my passion my career because it’d suck the fun out of it. Hence my choice of day job. We live in Seattle but are having our wedding in Canada to be fair to all our family and friends.
I’m in Chicago, I didn’t live with him until after we got married, and I didn’t get a lot of flack about it… until now. For some reason it comes up every now and then that we didn’t live together until we were married, and I get treated like some kind of dumb goodie two-shoes.
Maybe it’s because I used to work for a semi-religious nonprofit and I now work at a university, but I still always wonder what made it anyone else’s business.