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I have to admit, Mr. Barrettes is not the first boyfriend I’ve lived with. (Although to be fair, I told him I would not move in with “boyfriends” any longer. He took the hint.) I lived with 2 previous boyfriends. Now before you gasp in horror please consider that I am 29 years old; it might be scary if I was only 20.
Cohabitating with men is definitely a learned skill and I cannot be happier that I have nestled into my shared-living style before marriage.
Some say it takes the fun out of it, but I’m all for learning experiences and I’m thankful to have learned a few things before I lived with Mr. Barrettes. I’m the cleaner. I don’t mind doing dishes, completing laundry (what’s with men and not folding?), general clutter-removal, scrubbing tubs, floors or any other dirty surface. While I can cook for myself, cooking for others is not my strongest suit, especially not for Mr. Barrettes.
We have different needs when it comes to food. The man is almost 200 lbs. of muscle. He needs to eat. Real food. A lot. Me? Dinner could be a turkey sandwich and a handful of carrots. Don’t get me wrong, I can eat, but during normal daily life I’m a pretty simple foodie. Mr. Barrettes, on the other hand, knows his way around the kitchen and isn’t afraid to show it. Never have I tasted an herb-crusted tuna steak at a restaurant better than his. Meat and potatoes? Fuhgetabouit. His creations always have texture and color and a hint of I-don’t-know-what. Tell me to create something and I’ll only ever whip you up a vegan lasagna.
We live very well together and respect and accept each other’s strengths and weaknesses—something that has taken me 10 years do to.
Personal time is also something I’ve learned is important. Sometimes it’s nice to be busy doing separate things. I love my computer time and sometimes I just want to read for hours. Uninterrupted time is sacred these days in the world of constant communication. Have you sat by yourself for 2 hours and written in a journal with your real handwriting lately? Me neither, but I’m trying. I’m learning when you have filled your personal reserve of energy, you have more energy for others.
If this applies, are you happy you lived with a partner before marriage? Or do you wish you hadn’t?
I am sooooooooooo glad that we decided to live together! Our first year of marriage might have been a little rough! 
I love now that I know pretty much everything about him so after the wedding we can enjoy being married!
FI and I have lived together for close to 3 years now and Im so happy we have done so before getting married. We have learned a lot about each other and learned to work together as well as have our own time. FI loves his video game time and I love my trashy TV shows or talking on the phone, or yes, writing in my journal with my real handwriting - I try to do it at least a few times a week!!
I’m sorry but I think it’s only smart. I have been cohabitating for… 2 whole years now. You discover it’s much easier to get along while talking about how awesome the symphony was or that dinner was while dating, as opposed to having conversations such as “I’ve taken out the trash for 3 weeks straight, it’s your turn.” Sometimes it’s hard but I think it’s an invaluable experience, and now I can’t imagine not coming home to my sweetie every day.
I am happy that we’ve lived together for so long….it’s helped cement the fact that we can live together and still love each other endlessly….I would be scared to marry someone if I didn’t know what living with them would be like first!
We’ve made it over two years in a one bedroom apartment with animals. That gives me a MUCH greater feeling of certainty about signing up for forever with him. I know his bad habits and he knows mine, and we know we can live with them.
Mr. G and I moved in together after 6 months and were married by 2 and a half and honestly I wouldn’t have married him if we hadn’t lived together for a while first. We are plunging into an international marriage which has its risks and I want to make sure I can live with him forever. And it’s been great!
I feel like given how many adjustments we needed to make moving in together (I’m not always the cleanest person, he’s OCD about everything having a place), I am glad we lived together for a few years before we even got engaged. I feel like we are going into this totally prepared and ready, with nothing to really be nervous about. I’m all for pre-martial co-habitation, even if my parents weren’t haha.
DH is the first boyfriend I’ve ever lived with and I am so happy we moved in when we did. Not because anything was surprising that we had to ‘learn’ actually the opposite. We just couldn’t stand to be apart from each other and it was a huge strain on our relationship when he finally had to go home to get clothes, pick up a package, etc. When he moved in, it was like a huge weight was lifted off our shoulders and our relationship imrpoved substantially. Of course, we have our differences when it comes to running a house but that all worked itself out so smoothly, I feel so lucky.
Me and FI have lived together for 6 months… and I am glad we moved in together before we got married! We have ALOT of differences on silly things like, how clean the house needs to be on a daily basis, what can be classifed as a dinner (cereal anyone?) and how often the lundry need sto be done! But I think we will have a stronger marriage now that we have lived together!
Mr. Husky is my first co-habitant, but we’re more than 3 years in and I’m so glad we did! I think those years have really given us an opportunity to iron out the wrinkles without the pressure of “ohmygod, he left his shirt on the floor AGAIN. and the hamper is Right. There. Is it going to be this way for the rest of my life? What did I get myself into?” I think being unmarried and cohabitating has really helped us to adjust to one anothers, um, quirks - before walking down the aisle.
I guess I’m the only one around here who decided not to live with my hubs before we got married. I’m so glad we didn’t because being married feels so much more special now that I come home to him and not an empty apartment. Here’s why we didn’t cohabitate before we wed.
1. Our parents- yes we are adults at 25 and 23 but we didn’t want to upset our parents. Plus we are pretty traditional too so it was a mutual agreement between us too.
2. He has a roommate for most of the time and this is because I graduated college two years before he did. So his roommate needed a roommate for financial reasons.
3. When his roommate transfered last summer I could have moved in but I was living 3 blocks away from my work and with the horrible winters we have I couldn’t put a price on not having to drive to work! (I now carpool which helps!)
4. I feel good knowing that I can support myself. If something were to happen to my husband I would have this experience to help me know that I can live by myself.
Thank you all so much for your personal insight on living together! I think it’s definitely beneficial to learn about each other (including nuisances) before tying the knot. I also am not going to move in with my bf nor my FI when we’re not married, mostly for the temptation of “doing the nasty” when we’re both hoping to hold out until our wedding night. : ) What’s that about not buying the car before you test drive…? Haha.
We try our best to share important and essential aspects of our living styles and are planning to keep the first few months very open and complete with nit-picking so we can work out the kinks– trying not to let the little things build up inside of us. Even the little things you guys mention is something we can try to talk about in advance, which rocks. It’s nerve-wracking, certainly! Hopefully, I think because of our personal faiths, finally being able to be together will help us through the toughness of settling into each other!
I am not married, but I’ve been living with my BF for almost 3 years. I’m 25, but I also have been divorced at the tender age of 22. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t get an annulment because my ex and I were married for 2ish years.) It was definitely a roller coaster because I moved in with my BF around 6-9 months after my separation with my ex.
I did it both ways. I waited until marriage for my first one to live together. In fact, we were married for 3 months or so before we even had the opportunity to move in together (leases and all).
This time around, living together certainly does help you see what you’re signing up for when you marry. Given, some people would see marriage as the contract to keep you together. However if one partner is unhappy with a living arrangement they will either confront you about it or break up with you regardless of a wedding ring on their finger.
I’m so glad we lived together before we got married. Like you Miss Barrettes, it helped us really figure out our roles in the relationship and where the compromise has to happen.
I didn’t live with my hubby until almost halfway through our engagement and I’m glad we didn’t rush it. For me, it was important to me that I was engaged before moving in. Before I got engaged, I worked hard and took a lot of personal pride in being independent and having my own space. But when we eventually moved in together, it was a total natural progression and I don’t feel like we had to go through any adjustment period.
Question…just about every Bee says they love the fact they lived with their husband and their timing was right for them. But for the Bees who have cohabitated with others in the past, do you regret those experiences? Or were they just not serious relationships? Just curious….
I’m sure they were serious relationships, Absolubettie, but there are always misplaced aims for living together. Some do it for financial reasons, and in this economic climate it’s more tempting to move in if you’re saving a few hundred bucks with your hopefully-future-spouse. Given, this isn’t a wrong gesture. No reason is wrong. It really depends on the couple.
For myself, I regret not living with my spouse before marriage because he was able to cheat under my nose. I trusted him based on the fact that he was my husband and when he said he was going to be out late it was with “friends” I thought he was honest.
With my current BF, it is really hard to keep that face and story up because we live together. You really do get to know them better, know about their upbringing and such. You really can’t tell people these things, moreso that they are things you observe over time.
@hrev2010 We decided against it also. For many of the same reasons as you: parents, we have our own places, we are financially ok with being on our own. We are getting married next month, and we’ll see how it goes. We still have some things figured out, things we can tell will bother each other just by spending time together (he is horrible for leaving clothes on the floor, I’m horrible for leaving dishes in the sink). It may be a rough couple months for the change, but we aren’t going into this expecting it to be perfect right away and will get through it.
When we would visit each other on the weekends we picked up each other’s little habbits so and since we’d been together for four years we had time to pick up on it. Some of it is I’m lucky to find someone who is completely himself no matter what when I’m around; so here we are a month after getting married and nothing new has been discovered. We definatelyl talked before we got married about what habbits we find annoying, we shared and it was no big deal since we are both pretty level headed and don’t get offended easily.
My FH and I live together and have been for a little over a year now. He is not the first person I have lived with, I actually lived with my first “husband”. I use quotes because we never had a wedding, we secretly got married by a judge after we got engaged so we could live together and I would get his military benefits. Needless to say we never made it to the real wedding. I don’t think there is right or wrong when it comes to such a personal decision but I’m so glad to live with my FH now because we know how well we work together and I have no doubts about us making it for the long haul. I still think it will be special once we are married, some people say it is just a piece of paper but to me it is so much more than that and it will be so special once we are husband and wife.
Mr. O and I will have lived together for four years by the time we get married, and I think it’s the best decision we could have made. Also, he is the cook in our household too! He’s a great cook, and he’s like Mr. Barrettes in that he wants a MEAL for dinner. I am totally fine eating yogurt, almonds, an apple, and whatever else I can scrounge up, but he wants an entree with two sides for every meal. So, he cooks 
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Mrs. Barrettes, Tumon, Guam/Napa, CA Age and Occupation: 29, Dancer Fiance's Age and Occupation: 31, Licensed Building Contractor Engagement Date: November 16, 2008 Wedding Date: October 2010 Venue: V. Sattui Winery About Me: I'm an East Coast girl, living on a tiny little island in the Pacific, twirling, leaping, and shimmy-ing my way through life, and now, wedding planning! I'm equal parts nerdy and cool... okay, mostly nerdy. I love satin bows, red lipstick, black & white graphic anything, the shine of sequins and the sound of a champagne "pop". My favorite books are The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James, and Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I can also conjure a pretty good Patronus Charm. I started my appreciation for good red wine while traveling on the high seas, and it's only fitting that my passion for wine drinking led me to my Napa-bred honey. We bonded over bottles of Cabernet on my oceanfront porch and haven't looked back since. We're sealing the deal at a winery in the Napa Valley on a 'perfect ten' of a day!
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