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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?
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.
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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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