Wedding Blog
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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Share this post: On Cohabitating
Mr. MagPie’s a West Wing junkie, too! Okay, back to reading your post…
Also, I have to say — you write very well, and that makes your posts extra enjoyable to read. 
Oh man. If we hadn’t lived together before we got married we would not be married. It was such a hard adjustment - I can’t imagine that, plus the stress of getting married rolled into one transition. Plus I can not imagine wedding planning while not living under the same roof - it would have been 100x as stressful. Also, I love living with my husband, it’s so fun, there is nothing anyone could do to convince me that it was bad for our relationship that we lived together before we got hitched.
hahaha! We didn’t live together before we got married! It was a joy to put together a house from scratch - we both lived at home, and we had nothing that was our own. THe funny things we discovered were a joy. I’m glad we did things the way we did. Coming home to our new house on our wedding night was very special.
I feel the same way; like we’ll be missing out on something after the wedding because we already live together and share finances - and all the “newness” of that stuff won’t exist.
West Winger here too
i think it’s not about living together, but the sex before marriage part. sorry, to be a little blunt. but that’s what my church emphasizes on.
My fiance and I just spent our first week together under the same roof. While I suppose it is too early to tell, I know that living together before we get married was essential to our sanity. We both lived at home (although I was only there for a month after I graduated college and he had been living at home since June 08) and we NEEDED to get our own place. It was putting a serious damper on our, ahem, “private” lives and ultimately making us mad at the world. So far things are going well and we’re slowly settling into *our* place. My view is, you have to test drive the car before you buy it. I know that I want to be with him forever, but getting the kinks out ahead of time just makes sense to me. I feel like I’m going through the “newness” now, so I don’t feel like I will miss out on anything the day after the wedding.
We didn’t live together before we were married but we spent so much time together before that I felt like we practically were living together. Once we were married and living together I realized how different it all really was. On top of that we had the added stress of combining two apartments into one new one and I kinda wished that all that trouble of moving in together had been taken care of beforehand so the first couple weeks after we got married were spent in bliss instead of tons of boxes and the frustrations that can come from moving.
my fiance and I live together and we have for a little over 2 1/2 years now…and i wouldn’t change a thing. I love living with it and works for us. Living in the South and living together is another thing though…. One of my best friend’s Dad is a Pastor and we’re planning on having him officiate our ceremony…the other day he asked if we lived together and I told him yes (I wasn’t going to lie!!) and he was definitely disappointed. Like you, I don’t feel ashamed that we live together…I personally don’t see anything wrong with it and we’re a very happy couple. I would much rather live with someone before and know every single thing about them and still be totally head over heels in love than not live with someone and be shocked to find out certain things upon moving in with them. My friends that don’t live together that are engaged spend every night at their fiance’s house (or he at her house) and it’s really no different than that…except that we have courage not to hide the fact that we spend ALL of our time together. But think about it this way…you have a lifetime together that willed be filled with “new” experiences…whether it’s buying a house together, selling a house, moving to a new town, having a baby, sending your kids off to college….and on and on. I don’t think we’re missing out on anything by spending all of our time with the person we love….maybe it’s them that’s missing out on something 
I lived with DH before we were married and we had sex,and I also lived on my own and with roommates prior to that so I knew I could be on my own. That wordked for us, But to each his/her own.
I sometimes wonder the same thing. Granted we’ll only have cohabitated for 6 months “officially” by the wedding (I kept a studio apt for almost a year I didn’t use….long story). However, I also think that being a bit of a commitaphobe it was also the best idea possible for us. I got to tiptoe into the water, and go back to the apartment when I started freaking out (the longest was 24 hours).
My parents aren’t happy about it still, and we aren’t bringing it up unless asked while finding an officiant….but it has been perfect for us. Sadly everyone doesn’t see it that way…..and I wish I could say that didn’t bother me just a little bit.
OH and after we got married it did feel different. YOu can’t just break-up!!!
Aww…I love you dumplings! It’s so cute, the part about you being messy and Mr. Dumpling being neat is exactly like me and my bf!
I’m glad that you’re not really letting the statistic bother you. I first read this statistic on Weddingbee and it was right before I was planning on moving in with my bf (it wasn’t a big deal, we were just out of college, my roommates were going their separate ways and I was merely moving in with him while his roommates were still living there), but I was a little hesitant because obviously I would want to get divorced if we ended up getting married. I can’t believe I actually let that bother me for one second! Due to career choices, I now live at home with my parents but I really miss living with the bf!
Ugh! I hate statistics like that! What they don’t tell you about those types of statistics is that they include people who were living together/got pregnant/then got married because of that, or other situations where they were living together and got/were forced to get married but maybe shouldn’t have or weren’t ready to. Just because you live together before you get married doesn’t mean that you fit that statistic.
I live with my fiance and when we moved in together, my aunt sent me several articles and studies about those same statistics. What drives me crazy is that people take them as a blanket statement, and don’t look into the factors that drive them!
If it’s right for you, then it’s right for you. Personally, living together has been such a huge adjustment over teh past 1.5 years that I can’t imagine doing that with the added pressure of knowing we’re already married! I think that it’s allowed us to be more open and free with our discussions, arguments, etc.
Good luck!
i know exactly how you feel. my fiance and i were actually roommates before anything else, so we went totally backwards: we lived together before we even had our first date! and i definitely feel sad on missing out on those milestones sometimes…but you know what? we all end up at the same destination (at least those of us that end up married and living together) so how we got there is less important. the thing i am most excited about (which may be a little dorky) is the day i get to hold his hand and feel the ring there.
We lived together for four years before getting married. For the most part everything has stayed the same, but I still like seeing his wedding band when we watch TV. There also does feel like there is more “gravity” to the realtionship… if that makes any sense.
Yes, those stats do not lay out whether divorce/”living in sin” are causal or correlated. To me, there is a HUGE difference between choosing to live together because you are already committed to each other and choosing to live together because you want to “see if it works.” If the research was more full-bodied, I suspect the 50% divorced might lean more towards the latter. Regardless, everyone should do what works for them!
And as a former professional researcher…. those stats can be made to say anything and everything! I hate stats. They are so way more subjective than most people realize!
Great post!
I used that “50% more likely to get divorced” study as a case study in my sociology degree, and found a lot of other studies that basically said that the living together before marriage doesn’t make you MORE LIKELY to get divorced. Statistics actually show that people who live together are just more likely to get married to someone who they wouldn’t have married if they didn’t live together. Does that make sense?
Essentially people who live together are more likely to just get married because it’s the next logical step and is easier than breaking up. Of course, that’s not to say that people who don’t live together don’t wed for the “wrong” reasons and end up divorced too. It’s just more common in cohabitating couples.
I say this, of course, as an affianced woman who has lived with her FH for the last 4 years (though to our credit, we spent about a year living apart, just to make sure that we were still together for the right reasons and not just because it was ‘easy’).
Great post!
I agree with Alissa07! Statistics are SO easy to manipulate! We lived together for a year before we got married. Things feel different and special, if you make it that way. Did you feel any different or special when you got engaged? Probably, but it didn’t change your house, car, job, family, friends, or daily life. Basically everything will be the same, but things feel a little different - plus it’s fun to say “husband” after all this time of “boyfriend” and “fiance”! It’s nice looking over first thing in the morning and thinking “there’s my husband!” or driving home from work thinking “I’m going home to my husband because we are married”. Things feel special if you give the little things special meaning.
I don’t quite know to how explain that it is different, but it does feel different. I think it has to with knowing that, legally not just emotionally, we’re a family now. No one can question that. Husband and I lived together for 3 years before marrying last October, and if anything it feels better. I wasn’t ashamed of our living together, though I handled telling my parents badly.
Even though you may not be packing up your room and moving in with your husband, there is definitely a rite of passage in the wedding itself. Revel in that.
I’m in the minority: We waited until marriage to live together.
I definitly see the pros and cons of each decision.
The pros of waiting were that marriage really did feel different. It was so neat to wake up to each other and even simple, silly stuff like all of our laundry all mixed together made me smile. Prior to the wedding, we were so anxious to get married so that we could finally live together.. the build up was really fun. And we definitly had a long “newlywed” stage.
Unlike a lot of people, we didn’t have a rough time adjusting to living together. We had realistic expectations, and had been around one another to know each other’s quirks and habits. We also did pre-marital counseling, which helped prepare us for marriage and living together.
Mr. Cookie and I lived together before we were married, and I won’t change that for the world! We learned so much about one another that first year — the good, smelly, and ugly — that I think would have put un-needed pressure on our first year of marriage. Also, I KNOW for certain that I can live my husband for the rest of our lives. My parents got divorced and are a classic case of people who love another but can’t live together. But I also think living together before marriage is a personal choice that each couple should make for themselves, regardless of statistics!
Wow… I seriously could have written this blog myself! It’s like you read my mind!
I have ran into the same thing with churches, down to my pastor in his guidelines for officiating email he sent us, it says that he cannot perform a ceremony for couples living together, and requests that if you are living together that you separate before the marriage because it goes against what he believes in! How bad does that make me feel?
My FH and I live together and it has made our relationship better. Seriously. We have our little routines all worked out, we know what each other wants and needs in a living situation. It is GRAVY! We have our share of snafus, I hate that he squeezes the toothpaste in the middle instead of from the bottom up, and he hates that I always leave to go cups on the bar where the cat likes to knock things over. (lol) I’m messy, he’s clean, yadda yadda, but we work it out and have become better for it.
I guess it just bugs me that the church we’ve been attending for 4 years wont marry us if they find out we’re living together, and goes to (almost) extremes when it comes to talking about how awful it is in the eyes of God, which makes me feel awful! The kicker is: this is the most laid back church ever. They’ve never seemed to force any views onto anyone for anything ever and are super understanding.
What the heck!!!
*end rant*
haha sorry for the long comment!!
<3 Laura
We moved in together out of necessity, he was traveling a lot and his roommate got married and the roommate decided that they would live there. To make things easier, he moved in with me. Part of me is glad we did and the other part is still out on this issue.
About that stat….I don’t believe it is true or it is not in the right context. I have seen that stat a lot, but not once have I seen the source for it (not saying there isn’t one, but I’ve never seen the source when it was quoted). What was the study and what was the population that the stat came from? (I hope I’m not coming off as mean, I just really hate stats without sources). I’m sure you’ve heard the “stat” that 100% of divorced people had one thing in common….they got married first.
I mean’t “wouldn’t want to get divorced”, duh. =P
Good topic. As a researcher, I agree with what’s been said above about statistics. The data they show are *correlations* and imply nothing about *causation*. There is something different about couples that live together that can’t be controlled for with co-variates. You’d have to do randomized controlled trials to figure out exactly what was causing the association. Obviously, that’s not too ethical!
Still, statistics being what they are, for some reason I am superstitious of this one. When fiance was going to relocate to WA for me, we thought long and hard about living together. Ultimately, we decided doing so was practical. I put my foot down though, we had to be well on our way to getting engaged before I’d consider it. He saw it more as an engagement trial which made me nervous. I guess in our case I shouldn’t have worried, since he popped the question just a few months later… basically after he settled in to his job and our house.
Every couple is unique, so I would never judge someone’s decision on how to live. There is no right or wrong way to do this. If there was, there would be no divorce and marriages would come with instruction manuals.
Part of the coorelation between living together before marriage and divorce could be that those who live together dont’ have the same “strict” views on that being a bad thing. Those who do think that living together is somehow bad or wrong and usually also those who don’t beleive in divorce. So that other 50% could be in unhappy marriages because they don’t beleive in divorcing! just a thought…
I never wanted to move in together before marriage and even didn’t tell my parents or church about it for a really long time. He initially moved in with me and a girlfriend of mine when our other roommate went to study abroad for a semester. Then when we started feeling too old to live with college kids he and I got our own place, and that was when I finally let the word out. Yeah, my parents think we’re ‘living in sin,’ but I guess the church we attend is pretty liberal, - we’ve gotten some looks but never any words from people there. Honestly I think its a little weird to move straight from your parents’ home to your married one. I have a wonderful relationship with my parents but moved out for college 5 years ago and never looked back. Living with them made me feel like a kid, and kids don’t get married.
Good post Dumpling….FI and I have been living together for about 2 years in his dad’s house. LIke you, we had no real need to do it, it was just easier then me always going between his house and my parents (even though we’re still in the same neighborhood!) I love living with him and wouldn’t have done it any other way. Living together before marriage has been a requirement of mine for as long as I can remember…I feel like you can’t really know if you can spend the rest of your life with someone until you’ve seen it all and been there for everything.
I was very secure in our relationship, and knew that eventually we would take the next step. But I do agree with others that its really nice to have all the kinks and weird habits figured out already, so I think the rest of the planning process and newlyweddom will be a smooth ride because of that
Nothing’s really changed for us… we bought our condo together 2 years before marriage. I felt a strong sense of “content” for a few months after the wedding… like when I sat down on the couch with Mr. Peng, I just felt utterly “complete” after we got married. I still feel that way but it’s not this overwhelming sense that I used to feel. So that’s really nice! But other than that, not much has changed! I absolutely 100 percent loved living together before marriage, no regrets. I didnt have to wake up to discover all of his quirks (of which he has very little, but I have TONS… like you… hurricane Pengy! Hahaha) in the first few months of marriage. We could just enjoy it and relax and unwind from the wedding craziness!
My parents lived together for three years before they married, and have raised a strong family & been happily married for 32 years!! My fiance & I have lived together for 6 1/2 years and are getting married next month. We aren’t religious and aren’t having a religious wedding. You have to do what is right for you, and for us, this situation has worked out perfectly. Before we moved in, we had both lived on our own for 4 years (me) and 6 years (him). We have always loved living together and it was a very easy transition for us - maybe because we were so young & hadn’t had time to develop set habits yet. My only ‘marriage requirement’ for myself was that I be over 25, because I have heard time and time again how much you change in your early 20s. I wanted to make sure that I allowed myself that freedom to grow and change my mind, and not make the intense commitment of marriage until I was fully an adult, and 100% sure. Now we both cannot wait to take that next step in our relationship and are really looking forward to being a married couple!
I’m very surprised by this finding. In the Netherlands I think 90% of couples live together before they marry (if they marry at al). Our divorce rate is lower than the divorce rate of the US. Hence, I must conclude that there is no real “risk” of living together for your marriage.
If anything, I would agree with what somebody else ahs said before. The same reasons that make people choose to NOT live together make them decide to stay together if times get rough. One can debate whether that’s a good or a bad thing.
(PS: divorce rates are considerably lower among people with a higher education, and people that marry when they are older (>25/ 30). I assume that none of you will now start worrying about the future of their relationship, just because they are young, or don’t have a PhD…. Really, the thing with these numbers is that they apply to a group. But as an individual, you and your partner are the ones making your relationship a success, not your demographics!)
We are living together before marriage and I wouldn’t have it any other way. My parents are divorced and it makes me really think about my relationship with my fiance. I wanted to completely know what I am getting myself into pre-wedding day. We have been together for 5 years and there is so much I have learned about him pre-wedding through our living together.
Like, I know he will never do laundry, but we have learned to compromise, and I’m ok with that. Little things like that may have bothered me if I didn’t know about it until after marriage, now we have penty of time to get to know each other and work on any issues pre-wedding.
My rule for myself was that I wouldn’t live with chicago husband until we were engaged. It’s probably just my personality, but I didn’t want to risk becoming financially intertwined with someone unless we were certain we wouldn’t break up. (To me, that meant formal, ring-on-the-finger engagement.) We lived together for about four months before being married. For us at least I think it was a good decision, it helped us get over a lot of the bumps in the road before we were officially married. But I also sometimes feel whistful that we didn’t have that magical “coming to our new home” type of experience.
I had to fill out our info form for our pastor yesterday, and I felt so weird putting the same address for both of us. I know that so many couples live together, and it’s been so special for us to spend this time together before we get married, but I still feel like he’ll somehow look down on us. But, I guess we just looked at our situation as our situation and didn’t have expectations for how we would be treated. Your relationship with Mr. Dumps seems so cute:)
Ugh, I hate when people quote that study because this fall they revised it and determined it’s NO LONGER THE CASE. The data was originally pulled from the 1980s when living together was much more taboo, and people who choose such a risky life actually were less stable. Today, that is simply not the case.
News for your Pastor: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-07-28-cohabitation-research_N.htm
Ditto to all the folks who pointed out the fallibility of statistics. It’s the same when people look at the 50% divorce rate, though. Yes, that’s the overall average, but FI and I will be 32 and 28 when we marry, and we both have college degrees, so our personal chance of getting divorced is actually much much lower, when looking at couples similar to us.
We waited until we were engaged, but about a month after that we moved in together. My lease was up and he owned a place, and it didn’t make any sense for me to renew for a year when we were going to be married before that anyway.
The adjustment hasn’t been too hard, but that might be because I was practically living here already My parents weren’t terribly pleased, but they lived together for a year before THEY wed, so they couldn’t really say anything! (And they’re at 32 years!)
just remember that any statistic can be skewed for a purpose!!! the reason that the divorce rate is higher for couples who lived together before marriage is that those couples are more likely to have liberal ideas about both living together before marriage and about divorce.
to comment #38: thank you for that article! My FI and I just went to our Engaged Encounter Weekend (Catholic pre-marital counseling) and i think we heard the stat 38% get divorced at least 5 times. When we first met with our priest we weren’t living together, so we could answer his question about it with a no. but by the time of the wedding we will have been living together for almost a year. It just worked out financially for us, and I have enjoyed it. Sometimes I wonder if the ‘new’ feeling will go unnoticed, but only time will tell!
Thanks for this post!!
We will have lived together for three+ years before we get married. Living with him makes both of us really happy, and since I went to law school, we would not see each other…at all…without living together.
50% of couples who live together before marriage end in divorce is a crock. Not only does it not include causation; it includes second marriages which have a generally higher failure rate.
I kind of unofficially moved in with my now husband a couple of months before the wedding (long story, but it wasn’t how we planned), and I kind of wish we didn’t have to live together before we were married. Either way, it drives me crazy when people ask, “What’s it like now being married?” They refer to the whole living together thing and all that, but really you are with the same person you were always with so relationship wise everything feels pretty much the same and I honestly don’t always remember he is my husband because we are how we were when we were just boyfriend/girlfriend.
My FI and I live together (and have been for just under 2 years). I honestly think that we wouldn’t be where we are today if we didn’t! And I’m so glas we don’t have to go through the ‘learning’ period with each other right after our wedding… not that we arne’t still learning things about each other!
We’re also not at all religious and it seems like a lot of the pressure of *not* living together is coming from the places that are supposed to be supportive… living together before marriage does not make you bad people, nor does it put some random strike against you tipping the scales towards eventual divorce!
I’ve said it a couple of times on these boards, but living together has been a really awesome thing for us. I think the thing that made it even better is that we live together with roommates. This way we can learn all of those little quirks without all of the pressure of it being just us. Plus, now we’re super excited to have our own place all to ourselves!
I have always been traditional and old-fashioned, in that I always believed that I would marry first before living together. BUT, I have to admit things didn’t exactly go as planned… My fiance and I recently moved in together with only 4 more months til we tie the knot. I figure we are engaged and honestly it made no sense paying rent at my place when I seriously spend 5 or 6 days a week at his. I didn’t intend to keep it a secret from my parents but I didn’t exactly advertise it either. Anyways, both my parents know now and seem to be fine with it. The most important thing is we are happy with the decision and life is easier being and living together. We cook meals together, snuggle, play mario kart, snuggle, share chores, snuggle… we love it! I think it can be great or it can be a disaster for some couples but whether you stay together or not depends on how much you put into the relationship and how committed you are, NOT whether you lived together first or not. Statistics, Shmatistics.
My views are very similar to so many others that have posted, but because I feel strongly about this subject I thought I’d add a quick comment. I’m a newly wed, my husband and I were married this past September. #1. I’m not religious and neither is my husband. We certainly have our beliefs, but do not regularly go to church, etc. It seems strange to me to read that someone’s pastor has made them feel bad. I just don’t get that, and maybe it’s because I’m not religious. I understand that a pastor’s “job” is to educate and guide others, but it just seems like a contradiction to look down on someone else in a position like that. #2. My husband and I have lived together since we graduated college in 2004. Not only have we lived together, but we have uprooted and moved to an amazing new place (from Oregon to Montana). We found amazing jobs and even bought a house here past summer. None of this would have happened if we weren’t living together. To me it seems downright impractical to NOT live together before marriage. I agree with so many others — post wedding at home was smooth sailing, we already understand and even appreciate each others’ living style differences. #3. Lastly, about whether life is different post-wedding, I agree with several others. Looking over and seeing my husband’s ring is amazing, truly indescribable! Obviously we were intimate before, but that served us well, as we were through the “test drive,” and know each other well. Adding the emotions of marriage certainly intensified out private life as well. I wouldn’t change a thing and almost find it comical that others don’t live together prior to marriage — but, to each their own.
great post dumpling! mr. onion and i actually got engaged the night we moved into our first apartment together. we were engaged for 17 months and it was wonderful. if you can live with someone 24/7 (i work from home and for a number of months mr. onion was looking for a new job after his got shipped to india), in a maybe 400 sq. ft. 1 bedroom apartment — and find you’re even closer and love each other more…you’re going to have a happy future.
it’s a personal choice for each couple, but i’m so glad that we lived together first. you get to know each other’s habits, likes and dislikes, and you are better prepared for “the rest of your lives.” for me, i don’t feel like much changed, but it was wonderful to call each other “husband” and “wife!” and things are still getting better and it’s been a year and a half since we got married. i’m sure you two will be great!
i’d like to clarify again,
it doesn’t have anything to do with living together.
since you ARE getting married at a church, i assume that you follow what is preached in the bible, which talks about not having sex before marriage and keeping sex holy. and i suppose what your church official is concerned with is that since you guys live together, you guys don’t follow what has been said.
I didn’t want to live together unless I was married or at least engaged. We moved in together 2 months after getting engaged and 5 months before the wedding. I wish I had been able to wait until we were married but logistically we couldn’t justify the expense of maintaining two places for 5 months only.
I think cohabitation is a lot more serious of a commitment than many people give it credit for. I am against cohabitation except when the parties have agreed they are in it for the long haul—a marriage-like commitment—before they move in. Usually that’s engagement or unofficial engagement.
I don’t buy it when people say they want to “try before they buy.” Yes, there’s something to be said for working the kinks out ahead of time, but if you truly believe that day-to-day logistics have the potential to destroy your relationship, then you shouldn’t be getting married or moving in together.
“Trying before you buy” is called dating. If you don’t like the product, a few words are all it takes to send it back. But moving in together as a way to try before you buy is like buying something that needs assembly, setting it up in your living room, throwing away the packaging, losing the receipt, and then deciding you don’t want it anymore. Technically you could still take it back to the store, but doing so would be really aggravating. And in the face of that aggravation, I think many couples try to live with what they’ve unwittingly created rather than go through the hassle of returns (or of splitting up their finances, furniture, who gets the dog, you get my drift). So they get married, hoping it will fix their relationship. Cohabitation makes breaking up so much harder to do, even when breaking up is the right thing to do.
Many our fiances and husbands are our opposites in habit, and yet we stay with them—because we are willing to work to find compromise and equilibrium. The essential ingredient is having a partner who’s equally as committed to making it work despite what differences may arise, and cohabitation is not necessary to discover that.
So that is why I am wary of cohabitation, because I think it is too often entered into lightly. I think it should be almost like getting engaged, because in practice that is its effect. I’m not trying to accuse anyone, because only you know your own relationship, but remember we are the success stories. I’m sure we’ve all seen some of the failures.
Miss Dumpling, great post!
We live together and have for about 1 year. His mom and my parents were thrilled about it — but that could be because we were 29 when we moved in together, or maybe because most couples around us (we were raised in Minnesota and Wisconsin) move in together before marriage. I don’t believe any of my friends’ had a pastor or priest freak about cohabitation, even the Catholic priests.
Nice post! My husband and I lived together for nearly 7 years before we got married. We had moved in together in college with a couple other roommates… it was supposed to be temporary, but it just worked. We went through many ups and downs and even broke up for nearly a year when we didn’t think we could work through our differences. But, we missed each other horribly and ended up working through it. We bought a house and then got married last October. Things were different when we came home from the wedding. After 9 years together, it was truly like we’d fallen in love all over again. Instead of the butterflies of new love, this felt much deeper and more intense. We both feel more committed and more responsible. We still have our issues, but we’ve learned to communicate better. I don’t know if we would have felt the same way if we hadn’t had all that time to grow. Nor do I think we could have become so committed without living together.
Ironically, I am very satisfied with our decision to co-habitate before marriage, but I also agree with many of the things said by chelseamorning (as usual!). When we chose to co-habitate, it was at the point in our relationship where we were ready to make a marriage-like commitment to each other. We didn’t know if we would every get married at that point, so for us it was enough to articulate our desire to be together forever, and buying our condo and living together was good enough for us. In my mind, there never a rule around the steps, because marriage wasn’t necessarily an inevitable step for me (and West Coast Groom felt that way too). Living together helped us grow together, and that in turn made us want to get married.
This is a popular thread. We live together, and did not find it a transition. We’d been dating 5 years when we moved in together a year ago. That’s us.
But here’s another stat I’ve read a lot: couples who get married under 25 have a 50% higher divorce rate. Yes, I have read that in many places. We compare an immature 18-year-old with a mature 24-year-old in that stat. So it’s not fair, either.
What a great post, Dumpling–and what great comments! Thank you!
I’m a little tired of all this “what grown-ups do” stuff people pull. “You have to own a home if you’re married/have kids”, “you have to have kids if you get married, and should never have them before” and even the idea that people have to get married at all. I got to experience the “newness” or moving in together already, so why would I feel like I’m missing out on it later?
Also, churches may emphasize fornication as bad, but most of them are equally hard on living together, even to my engaged friends who are both virgins!
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Mrs. Dumpling, Las Vegas
Age and Occupation: 27, Finance
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 34, Real Estate
Engagement Date: March, 2008
Wedding Date: March, 2009
Blogging Since: August 26, 2008
Venue: Catholic church ceremony & golf course reception
About Me: I grew up in the Deep South, and while most people say I have a thick southern accent, I tend to think it only comes out when I need to use it. Living in Las Vegas has definitely been an adventure and Mr. Dumpling and I are loving every minute of it! We are planning a traditional Catholic wedding ceremony and a reception with lots of DIY! We might even get Elvis to show up! I'm a HUGE Beatles fan, love The Office and can't wait to become a Mrs.!
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