Living together before marriage...

[reena]

Date: 11/22/2004 7:35:45 PM
Author: cflutist
Reena, LOL !!!! Websailor has SO MANY piles on the floor in his office at home that I cannot vacuum in there. We do have a rule at home ... his office is his ''cave'' so he keeps it as MESSY as he likes. I did insist once that he clean up the potting soil on the carpet that he has spilled by knocking a houseplant over in there. It sat there for days before I made a stink about it. Thank god, his office is in one of the back bedrooms of the house.

LOL--just yesterday when i was cleaning up one of his piles (well, i call it "cleaning", he calls it "purging") i vowed that when we move to SD we''ll have one room that will be "his space", and he''ll have to confine the sinister piles to that area alone. I CAN''T WAIT! i can''t stand piles. i just absolutely cannot. i am very much the "a place for everything, and everything in its place" kind of girl. whereas, the FI is very much the "if i wear my sweatpants every night, why should i bother putting them away? i''d rather hang them on the bedpost" kind of person.

one time he actually tried to convince me that he should be permitted to sling his dirty dress shirts over our stairway balcony upstairs (our apt. door is upstairs, our bedroom is downstairs) every day when he gets home from work, and should further be permitted to KEEP them there all week long (instead of using, oh, i dont know, a HAMPER), because "then they''ll all be right there on saturday morning when i go to the drycleaner, and i won''t have to go downstairs to get them".

HA!

NFW.

 

[Nicrez]

What is your method of man-control Reena? Mine seems to have stopped working. it was working fine when we started dating. As a matter of fact I used it a lot less...

Dear Rand had a charming habit of hanging up his dress pants when he got home from work and changed. Now he just uses the over the door hooks to hang pants (with the belt still attached), and used dress shirts. What happened? Do I need new batteries?

 

[reena]

well . . .

i really do try hard not to nag him, but he knows that this is the one thing that really drives me BATTY. so i always try to just ask in a nice way if he can pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease start picking up after himself a little better. and usually he will listen and try to do that. (of course, occasionally i just LOSE IT while picking up the fourth pile of unopened credit card offers or whatever, and start vowing that i''m going to go around the apartment with a flame thrower and just TORCH anything that''s not in its predesignated location. but that''s rare.)

also i have had to learn to compromise with him a little bit . . . which is why the box to the mac (which we''ve had for over 6 months now) still resides under our stairway, and why he has not one not two but three different work bags resting next to the TV (you never know which one you''re going to want to use on a particular day, now do you, and the closet is just SUCH a trek in our 1000 sqft apartment), and why we have the last FOUR (1-2-3-4) issues of SI camping out on our coffee table, and why the top shelf of our bookshelf is currently reserved for his various personal electronics and associated paraphernalia.

but i''m okay with that. really. can''t you tell?

 

[hoorray]

For us, living together was a good way to take the next step in our relationship. I don't really get the "wait until you are engaged" theory. We lived together, assuming our relationship was going somewhere important, but we were not ready to make a final committment. Living together forced us to learn new things about each other, and learn how to compromise etc on areas where we were different, etc. as we are very different from each other I took getting engaged very seriously. It was a committment to get married, which to me is a huge committment. Living together helped us really know whether we were right for that committment.

But...I'm like Reena -- it wasn't a big issue for us morally, and we didn't have years under our belt like many couples. it worked out well for us -- we've been married 18+ years now, plus the year we lived together.

And, I agree with Jennifer. Being married is very different than living together. The committment is different. You can't mentally walk away or write the relationship off when you are angry. Living together didn't change the magic of getting married for us at all.

 

[websailor]

Gosh, I just don't know where to begin!!!!

First, it looks like everyone has lived with their SO before marriage, whether they thougth that was correct or not.... where are any of the folks that DID NOT live together, if there even are any????

Second, all the relationship cr

p is very interesting....lots of good points. Primarily I'll say that living together and being married is different. And that it doesn't hurt to get to know each other (piles of valuable stuff none the less) before hand.

Lastly, I'll give my guy-perspective:
Free Sex!!!!!


Edited - Okay, the other half thinks this is crude and rude (it's not meant to be!), and says this is not "one of THOSE sites", but can't one even joke around a bit on the boards?

And somewhat seriously, dating is a heck of a lot more expensive than living together (as a number of people have said though perhaps not in reference to dating).

 

[blueroses]

My bf and I lived together unofficially in LA (in that rent a place for his clothes and mail to live in while he piles up HIS crap in my place way) for a while until I moved back to SD in with my parents for grad school....fast forward 2 years, we moved in together in NY while I was in a grad program here. We''ve now been apart again (long distance for around a year.) So it''s an unusual situation to have been together and then apart again....in hindsight, I don''t think either of us were quite ready for it. There was never doubt about our long range future so it wasn''t a "test the waters" sort of thing--but with NYC real estate it was necessary for sure. I think it''s definitely helpful to learn about logistical things--habits, use of space, value of posessions....like my being shocked at the sheer volume of his electronic equipment, and his not understanding why I needed ALL of those cookbooks in one of the few kitchen cabinets we had.

Reena, are you and your H2B moving from NY to SD? We''re living parallel lives! SD is my hometown where bf lives around 1/2 a mile from my parents, and Manhattan is HIS hometown where I live across the park from his parents. Wacky. Assuming I won''t be a lady-in-waiting TOO much longer, I will be joining him on the West Coast pretty soon.

AND....your honey and mine share that clothes-hanging up thing!! AAHH....We had a bikerack that hung in the front hallway--right next to a hat rack, mind you--and he always ended up hanging his work pants, coat, bag, scarf, EVERYTHING....NOT on the hatrack (or in a closet) but from the handle bars of his bike, the bannister of the stairs, or on a hook on the bathroom door.

 

[Nicrez]

BIKE?! How about an abandoned mountain bike in the living room?! I WISH it had a rack.... instead it has a deflated tire and a depreciating price tag that could easily capitalize into a nice jewelery set...

Honestly, I could put a bag of steamy stinky garbage in front of the door for him to take downstairs to the garbage, and he will move it to open the door and leave it a foot from where it was for WEEKS... Why do some people simply not see or care about the mess? I don''t get it? And in comparison, why do I care so much?

Reena, I compromise as well, sadly... As we still have piles of CDs and computer media all over our bedroom windowsill completely unorganized and wholly without any cataloging system. It''s not even color coded!

We have lived together for over a year, and honestly, we still have to compromise daily about what goes where, and when it should be moved... I personally have stopped steaming over the used clothes hung in the bathroom (a mere step away from the hamper)... I just wad them all up and throw them in and sigh now...

 

[sxn675]

Date: 11/22/2004 9:41:26 PM
Author: websailor

Gosh, I just don''t know where to begin!!!!


First, it looks like everyone has lived with their SO before marriage, whether they thougth that was correct or not.... where are any of the folks that DID NOT live together, if there even are any????

Well, since you asked, here I am! We didn''t live together before we got married. We bought our house a couple of months before our wedding and my husband lived here by himself. I moved in when we got married. It was fun to have something fresh and new. We certainly had an adjustment period, but that happens for two people whenever they first live together, married or not. We''re both pretty religious, so living together before marriage was not an option for us. It''s not like I judge people who do live together, but it just wasn''t for us (and we''re not very young either - we were both in our late 20''s when we got married)

 

[jenwill]

I will be moving in with my guy on Jan15th- a first for both of us with the living with someone thing (except for roommates). At 34 I am kind of set in my ways, at 31 he is TOTALLY set in his, so this should be interesting!

I foresee not problems with clothes, or electronic equipment (I have more of that than he does), but I do predict 2 areas of disgruntlement on my part...

1) he likes to step out of the shower dripping wet, and walk around getting the carpet damp. I detest damp carpet, and have managed to get him to at least stay in the bathroom until he isn''t dripping anymore. But, that means the bathmat is soaked! In my book that rates as a giant eeeeeeewwwwwww! So, separate baths for us! THank goodness his house has 2.5...

2) His baseball card collection. The man has 1000''s (really, thousands!) of baseball cards. In every drawer, in every room. Everywhere. When I suggest perhaps hemgiht want to go throghand organize them...nono, he knows where stuff is.Riiiight. WHen i suggest that perhaps he might want to slim down his collection to only those that are most valuable/sentimental. Nope- he wants them all. To look at. We have dated for just over 2 years and I have never seen him look at any of his cards, ever.

I am sure I will adjust, since he is being good enough to welcome my cats into his house along with the rest of my stuff, but it will definitely be an interesting melding period!

 

[blueroses]

p.s. Speaking og CDs.....how many of your boys can not put a cd in its matching case to save their life? It goes something like this:

Babe, where's the Norah Jones CD?

Try the Jimmy Buffet case.

Well, where's Jimmy Buffet?

Ummm....Sting?, yeah, Sting.

And Sting would be in.....

and so on.


eta: JenWill, I LOVE the new avatar

And I feel your pain!! My bf has the ability to completely bypass the bath mat and track water and wet footprints all over the apartment. That was probably my biggest pet peeve b/c my doggy would slip or I would step in a puddle in socks and have to go change.

 

[Nicrez]

Hey jen, how about getting him to put them in tupperware like shoebox caontainers, as many of my collector/hobbyist friends do. They do so not for organization but for PROTECTION, since lots of these cards can end up being worth something (oh about several diamonds worth)...

You can tell him to put them in these containers so that if he ever wants to give them to someone, sell them, or just keep them without oxidation damage, he should put them in airtight containers. Then quickly snatch them up and put them on tall dark shelves hidden away..... (just like that very precious picture my dear has of Marilyn Monroe)....protected....AWAY...

 

[jenwill]

Date: 11/22/2004 11:14:17 PM
Author: Nicrez
Hey jen, how about getting him to put them in tupperware like shoebox caontainers, as many of my collector/hobbyist friends do. They do so not for organization but for PROTECTION, since lots of these cards can end up being worth something (oh about several diamonds worth)...

You can tell him to put them in these containers so that if he ever wants to give them to someone, sell them, or just keep them without oxidation damage, he should put them in airtight containers. Then quickly snatch them up and put them on tall dark shelves hidden away..... (just like that very precious picture my dear has of Marilyn Monroe)....protected....AWAY...

Excellent idea! Very high shelves, that I wouldn''t need for anything of mine anyway......

 

[Rank Amateur]

We didn''t live together first.

Something about free milk and a cow...

 

[MrsFrk]

Huh, so no milk was being handed out before marriage, right?

 

[Tybee]

This thread has given me the giggles.
Reena, I too am a sinner! Not only am I sinning with this one, but I sinned with the one before! I learned quickly (okay, maybe not quickly enough) that the one before and I could never be. That was a heart breaker, and I swore to never co-habitate again. There is nothing more horrible than separating your CD''s and moving out.

Then along came my sweety. He is stinky and messy and has a lot of electronics. We were neighbors for a long time...and then I saw this wonderful house for rent. It cost exactly what we were both paying separately. It had a back yard for my puppies, and the landlord loved us! It seemed like it was meant to be. So I jumped in feet first--again--but this time it was great! He proposed last week, and yes, he is a filthy little boy, but I''ve got him making the bed every morning.

When it comes down to it, do what makes you feel comfortable. I am 36 years old. FI is 30. My family long ago gave up on me, so there was no shock at the cohabitation, now they are pleasantly surprised.

Living together is hard, though...harder than you think.

 

[websailor]

Date: 11/22/2004 11

9:20 PM
Author: sxn675

Well, since you asked, here I am! We didn''t live together before we got married. We bought our house a couple of months before our wedding and my husband lived here by himself. I moved in when we got married. It was fun to have something fresh and new. We certainly had an adjustment period, but that happens for two people whenever they first live together, married or not. We''re both pretty religious, so living together before marriage was not an option for us. It''s not like I judge people who do live together, but it just wasn''t for us (and we''re not very young either - we were both in our late 20''s when we got married)

Congrats! My opinion is that it''s up to the two people and what works for them. It sounds like you and your husband discussed what to do and made a good decision worked out great for you.

is all that matters....

 

[websailor]

Date: 11/22/2004 11

9:42 PM
Author: jenwill
I will be moving in with my guy on Jan15th- a first for both of us with the living with someone thing (except for roommates). At 34 I am kind of set in my ways, at 31 he is TOTALLY set in his, so this should be interesting!

I foresee not problems with clothes, or electronic equipment (I have more of that than he does), but I do predict 2 areas of disgruntlement on my part...


1) he likes to step out of the shower dripping wet, and walk around getting the carpet damp. I detest damp carpet, and have managed to get him to at least stay in the bathroom until he isn''t dripping anymore. But, that means the bathmat is soaked! In my book that rates as a giant eeeeeeewwwwwww! So, separate baths for us! THank goodness his house has 2.5...


2) His baseball card collection. The man has 1000''s (really, thousands!) of baseball cards. In every drawer, in every room. Everywhere. When I suggest perhaps hemgiht want to go throghand organize them...nono, he knows where stuff is.Riiiight. WHen i suggest that perhaps he might want to slim down his collection to only those that are most valuable/sentimental. Nope- he wants them all. To look at. We have dated for just over 2 years and I have never seen him look at any of his cards, ever.


I am sure I will adjust, since he is being good enough to welcome my cats into his house along with the rest of my stuff, but it will definitely be an interesting melding period!

LOL Double LOL!!!!
There is a fair amount of "it''s a guy thing" vs "it''s a gal thing" throughout this thread. I have to admit to laughing quite a bit as I read the stories about living together. Ya can''t live with them and ya can''t live without them!

Cflutist and I often have these interesting discussions re men vs women. Often concerning dirt or cleaning things up. Or driving. Or eating...

Every time I think of this one conversation, I still laugh (on the inside of course) - apparently there was some noticeable piece of dirt on our hallway carpet (which is brown in color). Make that noticeable to her.... So she asks me why I''ve kept walking past the dirt in the hallway many times without picking it up. I answer, totally honestly, that I didn''t see any dirt in the hallway. Nope, I never saw it, didn''t realize it was there, and had no clue why I was responsible for picking it up, whe she DID see it and also walked by it.

Let''s just say that that was a conversation that ended with both of us being completely baffled about each other.

She also doesn''t understand why I sometimes enjoy making the car tires squeal when going around a corner...

Or how it''s acceptable to drop a grape on the floor and pick it up and eat it (as long as it''s within the five second rule)....

I digress here, but I read a science fiction story once that made total sense to me - it seems that the original inhabitants of Earth were all men. They were happy, living in caves, wearing rough animal skins of all kinds, killing large animals and roasting them over smoky fires, drinking home made beer, throwing bones on the floor of their caves, smoking, and cussing up a storm.

Then a more intelligent species found Earth from their spaceship and decided to study it....they weren''t very good drivers however and crash landed their spaceship. Broke it all to pieces and couldn''t figure out how to fix it. This species liked to communicate, was clean, sweet smelling, wore coloring, well sewn clothes....

For some strange reason, this new species, called women, and the Earth inhabitants, men, found each other totally intriquing. They learned about falling in love and producing babies....but they''ve never ever fully understood each other.

 

[strmrdr]

My honest opinion is that its wrong and I wont do it.
But if its what floats your boat it does me no harm therefor its none of my business.

 

[MichelleCarmen]

Personally I don't see anything wrong with living together before marriage and did live w/my husband for EIGHT years before we ran off to Vegas & exchanged vows in a tradition appropriate to us. There are many variables, like having children, where my opinion changes. When we decided to have kids, we also agreed it would be a good idea to marry first. Another issue that would be a determinant would a boyfriend considering or using an analogy of a cow in reference to his girlfriend and sex. I'd say this is a definate warning that this is a man NOT to cohabitate with since it's US gals who are getting our milk for free. (I guess this doesn't make any sense, but for some reason it did last night. lol My boyfriend did pay for our milk and ALL groceries before we got married. lol)

 

[i_like_tiffany_please_dont_hate_me]

Date: 11/22/2004 5

5:35 PM
Author: Jennifer5973
We did it but we were engaged (as in ring was on finger!). We also did it mostly for financial/practical reasons--we were both going to grad school in the same city so it just made sense to be ''room mates'' with each other versus sharing apoartments with strangers! I also felt a difference after we were actually married. Being married IS different than living together. To each his own but marriage is another level of commitment. You just can''t get up and walk away any more.

Personally, I think it''s fine. However, I think people who live together soley because want to ''road test'' their marriage are fooling themselves.

I agree. my gf and I will pretty much have to live together before we are officially married, due to immigration reasons. my personal belief is that you should only live together for practical, financial reasons, and providing there is a strong commitment to each other. imho, living together to "test the waters" is a very negative reason, as they clearly don''t have a lot of faith in their relationship.

 

[AGBF]

Gee... does everyone here seriously practice some religion that frowns on sex except between a husband and wife? Or is it just the Puritan influence? Why does sex have to be about marriage? Clue: it doesn''t unless one adheres to a certain belief system! Some of us don''t think God-if there is one-has to be involved involved in it. That doesn''t make us amoral; it just means we make our choices based on criteria other than what a certain religion decrees to be correct.

 

[Aurora Borealis]

I''m Canadian-born Chinese, but it is the culture to live at home with parents until one marries, especially for girls. So I guess i won''t be moving in with nobody, lol.

 

[icekid]

i definitely say do what feels right for you, and don''t let people tell you what''s right or wrong.

my bf and i have lived together essentially since we have been together, but only officially for the past few months. he moved to a new city with me when i started medical school. so there was really no chance of me saying, sorry i know you moved all the way here for ME and you don''t know ANYONE here, but please find yourself a nice place to live plus we would just end up sleeping at my place or his every night anyway, so why waste the money on two apartments?! all parents involved are luckily not ultra religious and they are cool with it too which is a plus!

 

[marriahlyn]

I AM ANOTHER IN THE MINORITY!!

I did not live with my SO before we were married but for a different reason. I have a daughter from a previous marriage who was 3-4 at the time and I didn''t want to move her quite yet. We had just sold the house I bought after I divorced and moved back to my parents for a bit. We were just getting settled in and then he proposed. I had just bought her a massive bunk bed that she loved and she was just learning to sleep without mommy and I didn''t want to mess that up.

So 3 months later, we get married, move the massive bunk bed.......sell our house and move again ROFL.

I think it made a difference to my smart little cookie knowing we did not live together before marriage.

Now.........jump to a year later, dh changed jobs and WE''RE MOVING AGAIN!! We''re moving to the lake house temporarily but may move again after that. I''m finding this all comical.

PS When DD was with her dad, I stayed with him before marriage on weekends etc and had a stash of clothes there. If I didn''t have a child, we would have been living together.

 

[marriahlyn]

and to add that my evangelical Presbyterian father would not have been happy with me for moving in with him before marriage, but he would have dealt with it LOL.

 

[yanekie25]

this thread is so funny. reena and nicrez, I totally agree with the piles. His nightstand if you can see it is, just filled with receipts, old mail, books, metrocards with nothing on them. I usually once a month clean it all off, when it gets too much for me to ignore.

Here is my killer. He takes his socks off, but instead of throwing it in the hamper (right next to the dresser), he hangs them off the dresser drawer. Why??? He has to air them out before he throws them in the hamper.

I can''t comprehend that the hamper is filled with dirty clothes that all stink and will be washed clean. WHY, ohw why is that necessary. I am just livid I tell you. I usually snatch them and throw them in hamper, but he does it daily without fail.

 

[ame]

Date: 11/22/2004 7:32:25 PM
Author:snlee
How do you feel about living together before marriage? Good idea? Bad idea? Thoughts?

I think that ANY responsible person would do so. Either before or after engagement. While some might disagree, my parents being those some, you have to see if you can mesh and work things out before you plunk money down on a ring/house/wedding. I feel that if you cannot manage to get a groove and live together beforehand, you won't afterwards either. It's not necessarily a financial thing, though it tests your ability to mesh finances as well but it's kind of a "working the kinks out now" thing.

I just moved in with my fiance over the weekend. We bought a house together and knew that through our vacations and weekends spent in his apartment that we'd be ok. We are still working on our routines but we'll get there.

By living with some of my exes, I saved LOTS of money and time and frustration.

That all said: Ryan is and was a SLOB even when we first started dating. I am SO anal about how the bathroom and kitchen is. Week-old dirty dishes piled on the counter when they can be in the dishwasher, or better, CLEAN!, is just rank. I get on him about it a lot, I was always on him about it before we moved. He will NOT trash our house.

He likes to leave his underwear laying around, clean or dirty, which drives me nuts. I clear the dinnertable and deal with dishes and food because I don't trust him to put the dirties in the dishwasher

 

[fancyrock]

Date: 11/23/2004 11

4:14 AM
Author: yanekie25
this thread is so funny. reena and nicrez, I totally agree with the piles. His nightstand if you can see it is, just filled with receipts, old mail, books, metrocards with nothing on them. I usually once a month clean it all off, when it gets too much for me to ignore.

Here is my killer. He takes his socks off, but instead of throwing it in the hamper (right next to the dresser), he hangs them off the dresser drawer. Why??? He has to air them out before he throws them in the hamper.

I can't comprehend that the hamper is filled with dirty clothes that all stink and will be washed clean. WHY, ohw why is that necessary. I am just livid I tell you. I usually snatch them and throw them in hamper, but he does it daily without fail.

I was wondering when/if someone is going to mention "socks" habits. Old habits are impossible to break. You learn to live with it or ignore it. My mom had a friend and her husband has the habit of asking her "where is this... where is that...". One day, she was so fed up, when her husband asked her where his socks were, she answered... IN THE FREEZER!! and believe it or not... he went to the freezer looking for them!! And that's another thing.... i notice some men ask alot of the WHERE questions. What really gets to me is when the question is put it this way... "sweetie, do you know WHERE *I* put this or that...??" UGH....

Like my mom used to tell us... LOOK WITH YOUR EYES AND NOT WITH YOUR MOUTH!!
In the past, i have set a limit as to how many WHERE question can be used in 1 day.... did that work? NOPE!!!

My H2B is his piles too. There is a special corner on his dresser where he puts his necessary-daily-carry-on stuff there (watch, wallet, keys, notes & etc). If something isn't there THAT corner... he will forget. Kind of like... out of sight, out of mind thingy. But I must say, his piles hasn't gotten to me a bit. He has his working in the yard clothes in a pile and that's ok with me. He will take care of it when he thinks it's time for them to go to the hamper. There are times, i might ask him if this pile is ready for hamper toss and he'll let me know. I have accepted his habits b/c they work for him.

 

[Matata]

Ohhhh, I am soooooo sick of the cow/milk analogy. So, it''s ok to buy the cow and pay for the milk which means marriage is nothing but legal prostitution? Anyway, here''s a joke I found that gives another perspective:

For all those who say: “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free."
Here''s an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage.
Why?
"Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig, just to get a little sausage."

I didn''t preview my first husband; marriage lasted 22 years. I''m previewing the 2nd. My udders are dry so he isn''t gettin'' anything for free.

 

[sevens one]

Date: 11/23/2004 11:49:31 AM
Author: Matata
Ohhhh, I am soooooo sick of the cow/milk analogy. So, it''s ok to buy the cow and pay for the milk which means marriage is nothing but legal prostitution? Anyway, here''s a joke I found that gives another perspective:

For all those who say: “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free.''
Here''s an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage.
Why?
''Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig, just to get a little sausage.''

I didn''t preview my first husband; marriage lasted 22 years. I''m previewing the 2nd. My udders are dry so he isn''t gettin'' anything for free.

LMAO- udders!!!!!!!