Living together before marriage?

[tricolors]

Dr. Bill Maier raises some interesting points on cohabitation in this article - Dr. Bill Maier on Cohabitation - Focus on the Family. If his numbers are correct, it doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

 

Which is just super if you like getting your information from some holy roller with a host of kooky ideas.

 

Focus on the Family - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Face the facts:

 

The only reason presented in this thread for NOT trying out living together before marriage is based on religious ideas, not logical ones.

Edited November 19, 2013 by tricolors

[crederer]

Yah for sure. I'm not marrying someone that I don't know how they conduct themselves as a live in partner.

 

Any info I've ever found suggesting living together before marriage is a bad idea is always backed by a religious medium or the author themselves are religious.

[MissBee]

In my experience, a big part of marriage working is sharing financial and household responsibilities. You can't really learn how well you two do that until you do, in fact, share the bills, expenses, etc.

 

You can do that or get a great sense of that without having to fully live with the person.

 

It's like having kids. I won't know FOR SURE if a man will be a good father and how I will be as a mom until we have children, but no one would suggest that you should only get married to a man who already has kids so you can see and know he's a good dad. You have other factors that can give you a clue if you've been with them for a period of time.

 

With my exes: we did grocery shopping together, planned for trips together, daily had to negotiate paying for gas, dates, other big and small purchases etc. and that gave me a very good idea about their financial habits. I went to different countries with two of them, woke up with them, cooked together, spent lazy days around the house and had the experience of living with them without actually having one lease and had I married them I wouldn't have at all been shocked about anything in terms of living together and finances.

 

People make it seem like you meet the person online and then marry them and have only ever been around them in person a week before the wedding. I think LDRs, for example, are trickier and these kinds of warnings might apply more so there, as you just have less face time so in those cases where you really aren't sharing enough of their physical life, some things may be harder to know and you need more face to face, seeing them in their "natural habitat" before you marry. But if you're a couple who lives in close proximity and thus spend lots of time with this person in their natural environment, it is a bit wild to really think that sharing a lease is some magic step that tells you more info than all the rest of other stuff.

Edited November 20, 2013 by MissBee

[Phantom888]

It's a MUST. In fact my parents totally advocate it because it takes time to know someone, and the best way is by living together before marriage. But I would not recommend moving in too soon. I would move in AFTER being engaged, so that you can learn about each others' habits, and plan for the wedding together. There must be serious commitment first or else it's just a real pain to break up. Imagine having to move after you two break up... it's so awkward and painful. I know this from experience, so I would advise against moving in together before an engagement. And if you have small kids, take EXTRA time before moving in together because kids take time to accept new adults in their lives.

[ThomasD]

. . . It's like having kids. I won't know FOR SURE if a man will be a good father and how I will be as a mom until we have children, but no one would suggest that you should only get married to a man who already has kids so you can see and know he's a good dad. You have other factors that can give you a clue if you've been with them for a period of time . . . .

That's a great analogy!

 

My wife and I (married 39 yrs) didn't live together before marriage. However, most of our dating was done as houseguests of each other's families. By observing each other's family homes; how we interacted with parents, brothers, sisters, friends, and neighbors; household chores like meal preparation and cleanup, lawn care, household shopping, etc; I think we caught a pretty good picture of each other as a domestic partner.

 

We didn't have sex or sleep together before marriage, either, but well before our wedding night I could tell that "sexual compatibility" wouldn't be a significant problem, and she'd be a great bed partner.

 

Our 39 years of marriage seem to have confirmed the accuracy of our observations.

[bumpyroad]

In my experience, a big part of marriage working is sharing financial and household responsibilities. You can't really learn how well you two do that until you do, in fact, share the bills, expenses, etc.

 

Yep, that's a big thing.

 

There's absolutely no way I'd marry someone without having lived with them first. And it'd need to be for a good couple of years before I'd want to get engaged.

 

I also think, having learned from experience, that ideally you should move in together on equal terms - i.e choosing a new place together; start out on an equal as possible footing.

 

It's a funny thing, I've known 2 couples that have been together plus living together for 10-15 years, then once they got married they split up within 1-2 years.

Edited November 20, 2013 by bumpyroad
typo

[Woggle]

Some people don't buy a car before test driving it. I am one of those people so I lived with my wife before marriage. Some others prefer not to. Different strokes for different folks.

[ThomasD]

Some people don't buy a car before test driving it. . . .

Surely you can do better than this over-used and inaccurate cliche'.

 

A "test drive" - even in the days when a dealer might let you "rent" the vehicle for a weekend for a nominal charge - is a superficial glance at what the car might be. Even an hour behind the wheel (know many car salesmen who'll even let you have it for that long?) tells you very little about the car's behavior in the wide range of driving situations you're likely to encounter in just the first few months of ownership. And tells you virtually nothing about the long-term performance.

 

If you want to make analogies I'd say the "test drive" is more like a "first date".

[man_in_the_box]

While the analogy might run a little short, the idea behind it is to 'test-drive' your compatibility in a shared household. And that makes a lot of sense. It does last as long as needed and if it falls short then at least you don't have to dissolute a marriage. The test-drive scenario you just described just doesn't match with living together before marriage.

[ThomasD]

. . . And I agree with Thomas D. We spent a lot of time with one another's families. That helped us tremendously.

Thanks for the compliment.

 

I should add that by spending a lot of time with each other's friends and families, they were checking us out, too. When your friends and family make sincere, honest, and well-supported comments - either good, bad, or neutral - about your boyfriend/girlfriend it helps your own realistic evaluation of that partner.

[AMusing]

"The best way to test your compatibility for marriage is to date for at least one year before engagement and participate in a structured, premarital counseling program, which includes psychological testing." - Maier

 

I hardly think this advice is "kooky" or religious for that matter. My wife and I did premarital counseling. That's where we ironed out a lot of the practical details of our marriage.

 

You pulled one sentence that was based on common sense; just because everything FotF (and Maier) says isn't ridiculous doesn't mean they aren't a biased, "kooky," religious-based group (I would've gone with hateful, bigoted, and narrow-minded, but kooky fits too). FotF supports abstinence-only education (yeah, that's been super useful in preventing teen pregnancies), prayer in public schools (seriously?!), and corporal punishment (holy crap); they also claim that the separation of church and state is unconstitutional (seriously, look it up, that's some grade-A kookiness right there).

 

So yeah, obviously people should date for a decent amount of time before marriage, and counseling is never a bad idea. And yeah, getting to know your SO's family is smart too. If you choose to stay celibate until marriage, good for you. Ditto if you choose not to live together before marriage. But the findings on living together before marriage are not black/white. They are complicated, require context, and conflicting. The numbers given in the article you linked are.... let's say they're misinterpreted and simplistic (and lacking any references). Which is a kinder stance than most scientists take, who accuse FotF of deliberately misrepresenting scientific research.