Living Together Before Marriage - Comments

Sort of meant as a joke Just with the meaning that you need to test things out and not rush into something that is long term.

I think another good way to test the relationship is to get a pet, and then you can see how the other person is when it comes to doing the dirty work and devoting time and love to the 'baby' etc. That can show a lot about someone as well, especially if having a family is really important to one of the people, and then hopefully it will be less likely that after being married for a few years and having a kid or two that a divorce will be wanted.

@ house of cards.
I agree. And I don't think premarital sex is bad either, but I can at least understand why someone might want to wait. The not living together thing just honestly doesn't make a lot of sense to me. (And thanks!)

@ Anchor and Hope.
I agree. There is a lot my husband and I know about each other by now that we would never have known about each other if we hadn't lived together. (And thank you! I'll be posting about it soon, I hope.)

@ Lyra
To be honest, I agree. I just don't want to call something stupid when I don't understand someone's reasoning for thinking the way they do. But to me it's basically saying, "No, it is morally wrong and overall a terrible thing to do to live with someone for a few months before agreeing to live with them for the next 70 years." =/ There might be some dealbreakers you won't know about until it's too late that way. But thanks for your congratulations. I know he and I will have a great life together. =)

@ brienne.angel
I don't know how I feel about comparing something like a relationship to the purchase of a material object, but in a sense, yes. I think a person should really know what kind of person they're marrying before marrying them. If you want to see divorce rates lowered, make sure people know what marriage will be like before they commit to it, y'know? That's my view, anyway.

I feel like that is sort an old fashioned view on things. All of the younger people below me share my opinion, which is that it's important to live with someone before you get married. You really do learn so much about the other person, and you realise just how good you are at things like communication (which is crucial to a relationship). I think it's a really great way to enforce whether or not you would want to marry the person.

As for premarital sex, I don't see that as a bad thing, but I feel like if someone, for example, has a religion that they stick to and they aren't allowed to have premarital sex, then they won't do it regardless of who they're living with. Personally, I'd like to know what I'm getting myself into before marriage, because if the sex is absolutely awful or he's really disrespectful, etc, then I wouldn't want to be 'stuck' with that for the rest of my life.

For both of these things, I think of it like buying a car - you want to give it a test drive before you purchase it

Personally, I think it's stupid not to live with someone before marriage. You can't truly know someone until you live with them, and marriage is supposed to be a lifelong commitment. How can you promise to live the rest of your life with someone, if you don't know what they're truly like? My parents didn't live together before they got married, and my father turned out to have a gambling addiction. This caused our family lots of hardships, and she would never have married him if she had known.

In my own experience, I found out my (now ex) boyfriend was slightly alcohol dependant, something I would never have found out if we hadn't lived together. If we had married, than moved in together, we'd be divorced. Living with him was definitely an eye opener. People can change when they're together all the time, and it's best to know what you're committing to before you sign the legal papers.

Also, congratulations on your marriage. I wish you all the best for the future!

I actually think it's important to live together before marriage- mostly because you see an entirely different side of someone when you live with them. The way they live could be a total deal breaker, and I personally don't want to find out that the way the man I'm supposed to marry lives in a way that totally repulses me until after I've already married him (i.e.- my ex who believed laundry and cleaning was a woman's job, or, ya know, only changed his sheets every six months) That still makes me want to puke, by the way.

And as far as premarital sex goes, I don't think not living together is going to prevent it.

Congratulations on the wedding! I can't wait to hear about it!

I honestly don't understand the viewpoint of it being bad. In my opinion, it's better to live with someone or at least have spent 24/7 with them at some point, even if it's been on a holiday. You don't truly know what someone is like until you've yelled at them 14 times for leaving their dirty underwear on the floor, asked them nine trillion times to clean up their dirty dishes or gotten pissed because they've stolen the shower before you could get in (all experiences I had when I spent 5 days in a caravan with two of my best friends). I think you find a lot of nasty habits you didn't like that you know you'll need to get used to when you live with someone, so I think it works in your favour because as nasty and heartless as this sounds, you know that if you can't stand a certain thing they do (I hate people who leave their underwear lying around - I could never share a house with one of my friends after sharing a room with him for 3 days) then you're not tied into anything, y'know? It's like you said, you can date someone and not know what it's like to live with them. You could hate it for all you know.

Then again, I don't think premarital sex is necessarily a big deal either so maybe my views are all screwed up and backwards. I just think that knowing what you're letting yourself in for is much better than realising that you literally can't stand the bad habits of someone you've just pledged the rest of your life to.

[ oh, and congrats on your wedding! ]