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We live together. Is that so bad? I wish I had some amazingly interesting story as to why we live together, but I don’t. We aren’t doing it for financial reasons. We don’t have a pet that needs to be shared. Heck, we both even prefer our own company from time to time. We just live together, because… well… we just do.
I love waking up in the morning with him right there, and going to bed at night with the TV blaring his favorite show, The West Wing. We know what makes each other happy and what pushes each other’s buttons. I know exactly the kind of food to buy him, right down to the brand, and he knows that I can’t go to bed without a glass of water on my nightstand… even if I don’t touch it. However, it makes me wonder if we are missing out on some “growing up and getting married” rite of passage. You know what I’m saying—living with your parents or roommates right up until your wedding day and then moving in together and discovering all sorts of things about your new spouse? Sure, we went through that when we first decided to live together, but it’s just not the same thing somehow. I hear stories from my friends about their sob-filled last night at their parents’ house and packing up their old room to take to their new husband’s house and I’m a little jealous sometimes!
Does that make sense?
Mr. Dumpling and I have been attending the required marriage prep classes at our church and have found that it’s best to keep quiet about our living situation. We never lied about it, and we don’t plan to, but we certainly don’t make announcements about it. The Deacon at our church kindly let us know that, “Couples who live together before marriage have a 50% greater chance of getting divorced than couples who did not live together before marriage.” I have no idea where that statistic came from, but he is so sure about it that he has mentioned it to us at least 3 times! It sort of makes me feel bad. Not upset, or ashamed that we do live together, but that someone else thinks it’s a bad idea for us.
All I can say is that living together before deciding to get married has been an extremely positive thing for our relationship and future marriage. We’ve had our share of ups and downs and being downright “ugly” to each other over the stupidest little issues (I am messy and only clean up after myself once a week and he is tidy and organized and sometimes can’t stand to live in Hurricane Dumpling’s mess), but we never, ever, go to bed angry at each other. We can always find a way to either resolve the problem or give up and call it what it is—frustration taken out on each other’s easiest target.
I’m curious to know, though, if it will feel different after we do get married. Will anything change? Will I feel like a wife and not just a girlfriend or a fiancee? Will he feel like a husband and do things differently? I guess I’ll just have to wait 2.5 more months to find out!
What about you guys—if you lived together before marriage, how have things changed? If you didn’t live together before your wedding, what was your biggest surprise/shock/discovery?
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