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Moving in together.

PrincessNatalie

PrincessNatalie

Shiny_Rock
Joined
Apr 30, 2010
Messages
382
I have read a couple of books lately that have tried to indicate it was a bad decision to move in with D.

They seem to think you should keep SO from seeing you at your worst (examples given were with no make up, yelling at the next door neighbours dog to quit barking) if you are serious about wanting a ring.

I am super frustrated every time I read something like this because honestly, if a guy doesn’t want to marry me after seeing me at my worst, then he does not deserve me at my best. It makes me want to throw these books at a wall. I have to live with him first too, and I still freaking want to marry him!

I know some engaged ladies still read this forum, do any of you honestly think moving in before engagement hampered or delayed the engagement? Or does anyone think not doing so helped?

The girls who are still LIW in both camps (live together and don’t), what are your thoughts on the issue?
 
Honestly, living together before an engagement is a bad idea imho. For me, it seems like playing house (granted I did this for over 4.5 years with my ex) and brings to mind "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free." I think though, even without living together prior to an engagement, you can see the best and the worst in each other. I may be jaded on the issue though since I did get burned last time.
 
I think it's different for each couple. For some, living together will be a great way to ease into the idea of marriage, and of course it can really strengthen a relationship by seeing each other at their worst, etc. On the other hand, it seems like for some, it really is - why get married when you have all the trappings of marriage without the bad parts? You just have to decide, based on your personality and that of your SO, which is the best decision IMO.
 
I lived with my FI before we got engaged and I don't think it had any effect on when we got engaged.
I wouldn't agree to marry anyone I hadn't lived with, but that's just me.

I think for us, finances were definately a key factor determining time (and living together helped us save money), but I think we've both been pretty much on the same page about what stage our relationship was in and what our timelines were etc.

Either he's going to marry you, or he's not. If living together helps him/you feel more ready to take the next step then do it. If you're not "the one" then living together or not isn't going to change that.
 
Well monnie is spot on, but I'm not particularly one to care...

I lived with J & his roommate. Thought I wanted to marry J. J and I moved into our own apartment. It became glaringly obvious that I did not want to marry him. He still wanted to marry me. That ended awkwardly...

Lived with D. He had open heart surgery and needed me to live with him and essentially do everything for him for several weeks. Knew I wanted to marry him from very early on. He moved in with me in my place. He proposed. We have now been together for almost 5 years and married for just under one year.

I recommend doing a search...
 
It anoys me when some random person makes up a "rule" which applies to all relationships. Nothing applies to all relationships. People should makes desisions based on what they feel is right as a couple not based on just one persons opinion- a person who dosn't know you or your partner. Just because they got a book published, dosn't mean their word is gospel.

Anyway, if this persons reasoning is that not living together stops him seeing you at your worst, that seems a litle like playing games to me. So your bf proposes to his perfect gf, you get your ring, you move in together and SURPRIZE! bf/fi finds out that his future wife gets psycho PMS, is a clean freak, can't cook for sh!t and pops her zits all over the bathroom mirror.

I kind get the buying the cow when you get the milk for free thing a little more, I think this could totally apply to some guys but not all.
 
I would have to agree that it's not a black or white thing. For some, it delays engagement. For others, it speeds it up (which was the case in my first marriage - which was a HUGE mistake to rush into but I felt pressured by family because we were "living in sin" when I was 20). For my now FI, we lived together first but we knew our time line (roughly) BEFORE living together. Sharing our lives 24/7 just helped us be even more sure that we were with the person we want to spend the rest of our days with. :wink2:
 
To add my own experience - my ex and I lived together most of the three years we dated. We also broke up. Not saying living together was the cause, but he was VERY comfortable with the living together/non-married status quo, and I felt like there was no way he was going to push himself to move things forward. Lots of fights about getting engaged, etc. In the end, we broke up because we had very different personalities and life goals, but living together - sometimes I just wanted to strangle him (and I'm sure vice versa). I missed my own space! I missed the apartment being neat and the dishes done and boy clothes not flung everywhere! I won't say that I'll never live with a guy before engagement but I'll take a LOT more time before making that decision from now on.

And to add a counter to Freke's story - my ex has epilepsy. I witnessed over a dozen seizures over the first year we dated. At first it brought us really close together and probably was a big impetus for us moving in so quickly, but then later, as he really didn't take care of his health despite his epilepsy, it also drove us apart.

So.....I still hold to what I posted above. Different strokes, different folks. What works for one couple won't work for the other. We are all unique snowflakes :D
 
Mmm, chestnuts.

For me, living together has resulted in the death and dismemberment of all of my relationships, with the exception of my SO. If we had not lived together and have it work out wonderfully, there's no way I would have agreed to marry him.

Some say why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, I say why buy the car before you test drive it?
 
We do already live together.

It just makes me so mad to read that they think you should prance around and pretent to be a perfect little peach until his decides "yes this is the one for me" then shatter his illusion.

Its like the people who write these books have never been in a real relationship before.

If they think I am at my worst at home with no make up (who cares!? he doesnt wear make up around me! lol), just wait till they have met me sitting in an airport waiting indefinitely hours on end for our plane to be ready for take off... thats when I am truly insufferable! He's been there, done that, got the T Shirt! lol
 
In my experience I find that living together is most successful when marriage has already been discussed, there is a timeline in place and the living-together arrangement is more short-term (less than 2 years).

I say this because:
1. Living together is a big step, and I think it helps immensely to know that the relationship is definitely heading toward marriage. That way living together doesn't feel like a "test" for the relationship, it's more of a clear next step.

2. If you're already in the mindset that this relationship is headed toward marriage, then when you start living together, you are in a marriage mentality and treat the relationship as such. You set up your finances more like a marriage, you figure out who does what around the house in a way that makes sense long-term. I feel that this makes the transition from living together to marriage much easier.

3. You see this all the time, right? Woman moves in with man thinking it's the "next step" to marriage. Five years later, woman is still waiting for man to propose. There needs to be a long discussion (likely several long discussions) about what moving in together means to each of you. I think a timeline is an absolute must before moving in together. If the relationship isn't ready for a marriage timeline discussion, then you're not ready to move in.

I lived with DH for something like 7 years before we were married. We were in a long-distance relationship and D had recently graduated from college, so it made sense for him to move to my city (I was in college) when I was 19. 19 is way too young to live together. We did have a marriage timeline set up, but it was a 5+ year timeline since we were so young and I didn't want to think about marriage until I'd graduated and settled into a career I liked. Long story short, it was a bad idea. D got so used to living together, that after several years he didn't see the point in marriage. Now we are happily married, but my transition from living together to marriage wasn't easy for me. Especially financially--I still insist on paying for half of everything. You develop habits while living together that are hard to break in marriage.
 
I'm of the opinion that people who don't live together before they are married are crazy (for exactly the reasons that books says you shouldn't live together) You need to see people at their "worse" (did the book seriously say that seeing someone with no makeup was a "worse", INSANE, what are you supposed to do, sleep with your makeup on or in the dark? If someone won't marry you after seeing you with no makeup something is seriously wrong!).

Living together is a test. Yes, it can cause issues to come to the forefront... but how exactly is that a bad thing? Would you rather be married and then learn you could never live with someone???

Ugh.

I know you already live with D ( I also live with my SO) and have pretty much stated what I just did, I'm just as frustrated with the book as you are, I'd say throw it in the trash :)
 
Living together had no effect whatsoever on my engagement. The only thing that has an effect is whether or not your SO wants to propose. I moved in with DH well before we had discussed marriage. We even got a 2 bedroom just in case it didnt work out and we needed to have separate bedrooms while we found a new arrangement.

Once the marriage talk started, we were simply honest with one another. We talked about it frequently, he told me what his plans were for engagement, and I told him what my thoughts were. I told him that if ever he thought his plans would not coincide with mine, that he should tell me so we can talk about it. We stayed on the same page, and he kept his promise.. actually he did it a little ahead of schedule!

Bottom line, I trusted him 100% to live up to his word. He absolutely did. That's why we married!
 
I'm not one for mind games, or pretending to be someone I'm not. I can't believe there are books out there telling people to not live together for the reason of not letting your man see you without make-up on ... talk about making us women feel even more self concious about our looks :nono:

SO started casually staying at my place (shared with my roomate) within the first month of dating. Simply because he lived 30mins away and worked only 5mins from my place. I was the one who offered to have him stay over, it eventually turned into him only going home on weekends and I would go with him and hang out with his family. After about a year of this living arrangement our lease was up and we decided to go forth and get our own place without a roomate. We have now been together for over 5 years and are moving into our new house we just bought next month (aghhhh!!! :appl: ). I couldn't imagine what it would be like if we never lived together, it just wouldn't seem logical. I'm not upset at all about not having a ring on my finger, I'm thrilled that we have a beautiful house, are madly in love and have great family and friends surrounding us. The ring and marriage will come, but until then I don't see why I can't enjoy living in the now and enjoying my life to its full potential.
 
I absolutely think living together before marriage is necessary, but it really depends on the couple as to WHEN to move in together.

My boyfriend and I basically moved in 2 days after we met. Now when I say moved in, I mean... we were both living with parents (I was 19, he was 20) and I slept at his house every night for 4-5 months, had clothes there, etc. Then I had to have surgery, so he slept at my house every night for 2 months and helped my family take care of me. THEN we got our own apartment together. So yes, from day 2 pretty much. It was very fast. I have mixed feelings about it. Our "honeymoon" stage was shorter because we lived together already.

I think we would be engaged already if we didn't live together right away. Maybe even married. That part I partially regret, but at the same time we're still together and that's what's important. I try not to make engagement/marriage SO important when it's really about us being together. But then again, maybe that's me rationalizing the fact that we've been together 4 years and aren't even engaged. I went into the relationship with a lot of debt that I'm still working on and he's working on a career that will actually make him enough money to support us. So.. financially we're not ready to buy a ring or pay for a wedding and that's our problem right now. At least that's what I think the problem is right now. We'll never be wealthy and money will never be EASY to come by, so who knows when we'll decide enough is enough and it's time to take the next step. But I think if we didn't live together, things would have been very different.
 
elledizzy5|1289405229|2760038 said:
Once the marriage talk started, we were simply honest with one another. We talked about it frequently, he told me what his plans were for engagement, and I told him what my thoughts were. I told him that if ever he thought his plans would not coincide with mine, that he should tell me so we can talk about it. We stayed on the same page, and he kept his promise.. actually he did it a little ahead of schedule!
Click to expand...

IMO, this is the perfect arrangement. I'd only live with SO if we were ready to make this sort of promise, and have that trust. Hence, why I'll be living by myself for a while. :blackeye:

With an arrangement like that, I don't see any problem with living together. However, shacking up several years before getting married is not my cup of tea.
 
I really do think it works differently for every couple.

I heard that their are higher rates of divorce among couples who cohabitate before marriage, but I always beleived that could be the result of several factors. For instance, maybe it is easiest financially, which means finances can be an issue, and finances are the leading cause of divorce. However, I have recently heard that the number of divorcees among people who cohabitated before marriage is NO DIFFERENT than those who did not IF marriage was already discussed and on the plate.

My husband and I lived together for about a year and 3 months before we got engaged. We have talked about it, and agree that those first few months living together were the very hardest in our relationship. But, it made me believe in living together before marriage. It was awful, and we got through it because we both wanted to be together. Instead of discovering that hardship after getting married, and hating the first few months of marriage the way I hated the first few months of living together, the first few weeks of marriage have been totally blissful!
 
I think it depends on your living situation and your personal situation as a couple...but for my FI and I it absolutely made sense to live together before getting engaged and I am glad we did. It did not delay the engagement at all because both of us saw living together as a step towards marriage. We got engaged after 3.5 years of dating and 1 year of living together which was right for us :)

I think the most important thing is honest communication about what the expectations are if you are going to live together-and really about anything in a relationship!
 
i think the reasons your book gave are stupid. however i still don't agree with living together before. anytime you have sex before marriage you are putting yourself in a position to get used because you aren't fully committed to each other. it increases the chances of the relationship not working out also. and this is coming from a guy.
 
Omgosh I'm having the HARDEST time not speaking my mind in response to that. I respect your opinion, but absolutely disagree. That is all.
 
I am guilty of not reading all the replies, so forgive me if I sound redundant....


but I would ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, NEVVVVEEEERRRRRRR marry someone without living with them first. So I too am annoyed by the books reference, and the idea that you shouldnt live together before marriage. I think its imperative to really get to know someone's little quirks and annoying habits before progressing to cohabiting with that person for the rest of your life. I know multiple warm and fuzzy, everything perfect, head over heals relationships (who did not live together before marriage), that ended with a split once they learned they couldnt take the person for more than their accustomed 2 dates a weeks, or seeing each other on the weekend. They saw annoying habits, fought about ways of keeping a home, cleanliness, bills, chores, etc. and realized they werent in it for the long hall. I know someone who was with a guy for almost 15 years (15 yrs old to 29 years old) before getting married and moving in together after marriage, and their marriage ended in about 7 months. Shows things are different.

I was with my husband for 10 years before we got married (15-25 yrs old), 6 of which were prior to living together, and we still found out things about each other after moving in together.

All I'm saying is you find out things about the person, that you don't find out by dating or living separately. Their ability to save, pay bills on time, messiness or cleanliness, chores, cleaning, things that you find out that could definitely be deal breakers that you would not have known before moving in together. Or simply realizing that you cant stand seeing them ALL the time. Its not "playing house", its real life. Living together with you spouse, is REAL LIFE. And like someone said....why by a car before you test drive it? People never lived together before marriage back in the day. Guys were so eager to sleep with girls and get to that point, they probably proposed WAY before they should have. But hey, they had to to live with or sleep with someone. So why have so many of those marriages ended in divorce? Dunno, maybe its a coincidence.

And save the bashing of my post, I know every relationship is different. Do what works for you. I just hate when people refer to a guy "getting comfortable" or it "delaying marriage"...."why buy the cow?" etc. The men who put off marriage when living with someone are the men who were commitment phoebes anyway. And would have delayed marriage living together or not. Any man, who wants to get married, and knows he is with the woman he loves through and through, would not let moving in with her, and seeing it works, put their marriage on hold. Are there men that get comfortable? Yes. But they were never ready to get married in the first place IMHO.
 
i think the reasons your book gave are stupid. however i still don't agree with living together before. anytime you have sex before marriage you are putting yourself in a position to get used because you aren't fully committed to each other. it increases the chances of the relationship not working out also. and this is coming from a guy.
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OK so first of all this thread is about living together, not about having sex (you can live together and not have sex, and also have sex and not live together...)

but any time you are putting yourself in a relationship you are putting yourself in a position to get hurt, any time you open up to someone and love and trust that person...yeah, you are in a position to get hurt-but that's not a reason to not date...it's just part of the growing process until you meet someone that you can build a long-lasting relationship with.

NakedFinger, I totally agree-the men who were commitmentphobes before moving in are the same ones who are going to not want to commit after moving in. For us, moving in was the logical choice and I am so happy we did-it would seem weird to move in together on our wedding night (not to mention trying to arrange apartment leases/etc).
 
NewEnglandLady|1289392574|2759906 said:
In my experience I find that living together is most successful when marriage has already been discussed, there is a timeline in place and the living-together arrangement is more short-term (less than 2 years).
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really, ditto to everything NEL typed but i thought it would be a really long quote. DH & i lived together for about a year before getting engaged and then during our year long engagement (we also moved across the country together :o ). neither of us had lived with an SO before. i moved into his house (that he owned) mostly because all of my roommates were moving out & i really didn't have any one to live with (and def couldn't afford living on my own); however, that said, before we moved in we had discussions about our future & knew we were headed toward marriage but also knew we weren't exactly ready for engagement at that period. i said to him when were discussing co-habitating, "i want to live with you, but you understand once i move in here, i'm never moving out. if you're okay with that, then i'm ready to live together." he said "okay." and the rest is history at this point :bigsmile: :bigsmile: :bigsmile:
 
I don't think living together delayed our engagement whatsoever. I think that if we DIDN'T live together it would have delayed the engagement for a very very long time. Living together allowed us to see if things could truly work out for us in the long run. I cannot imagine being engaged first and THEN moving in with him. I don't think anything positive would have come from that kind of situation. We lived together for almost two years before becoming engaged and I think it worked out really well for us. I am currently living back home because I have to take some classes in my home state (cheaper!) and its interesting to see how he acts now that we haven't been living together since May. He tells me often that he cannot wait till I come back (Jan.) and start living with him again full time.


P.S. I agree, this is not a black and white matter at all.
 
My personal belief is that I wasn't going to live with anyone unless I was engaged. This is because I'm not into "playing house", and I've seen way too many of my friends/family members get burnt by spending 'X' time waiting for a guy to propose to them, only to be left high and dry. HOWEVER, I do currently live with my boyfriend (sooner than we both planned, more info in my thread lol) but I already communicated to him my beliefs and he understands. If he doesn't put a ring on it before the year ends, we'll have a problem lol...........TBC!
 
Just as others have said, this is really a choice that depends on the relationship.

I lived with my FI for 5 years before we got engaged, but this was by design because we just weren't in a rush to get married. This quote from slg is exactly why it wasn't a big deal:

slg47|1289420605|2760280 said:
I think the most important thing is honest communication about what the expectations are if you are going to live together-and really about anything in a relationship!
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Both FI and I knew for those 5 years that neither of us was going anywhere, so we were able to move forward together and even use our non-married status to our benefit. Now that the time is right, we are going to make it official. We never had any fights about not being engaged, but we've always communicated well and been open about our commitment to each other.
 
I don't think it has a part to play on whether you get engaged sooner or later. Well at least for me , my SO and I have been together for three years and living together for two. While we decided to live together wasn't under normal circumstances and I was originally opposed to the idea while SO was the one who suggested it. I wouldn't change a thing if I had to do it over. I've really got to learn more about my SO in the time we've been living together as opposed of when we didn't. I've learned how behaves in the morning his very grumpy and how he tends to live the room (clean up wise) plus I love coming home and waking up to him each day. I know the reason why we haven't gotten engaged is not because of the living situation rather his saving up money for the ring. He is also waiting on me to graduate finally next December and get a job before he can propose and we can buy a house together. If all that we already in place I think it might of been sooner than later. Although like previous posters have mentioned it also depends on the couple.
 
In my case it actually got us engaged sooner. Pretty early in the relationship we decided that we wanted to get married when we were 28 (we became a couple when we were 18) and I informed him that I wanted 2 years to plan the wedding. We moved in togheter this summer at the age of 22 and a couple of months later he proposed. I had always been clear that I wanted him to propose when he felt that he wanted to do it NOW ( of course if I hade turned 27 without him proposeing it would have been an issue).

Living toghether does not really change if a guy is going to propose. Unless you are using it as a bargaining chip to make him propose, which I don't believe in. You should only get engaged if you both are on the same page. Of course there can be times where one parter wants to spend the rest of your lives toghether but does not feel the urge to get married ever. Then I truly believe that thru caring for each other and good communication they will get married if the other partner feel it's important.

Communication is key, both partners need to understand each other. If this holds living togher before getting engaged won't be a problem, baring other issues.

As many other posters, I would never marry without having lived toghether before.
 
NakedFinger|1289427044|2760393 said:
People never lived together before marriage back in the day. Guys were so eager to sleep with girls and get to that point, they probably proposed WAY before they should have. But hey, they had to to live with or sleep with someone. So why have so many of those marriages ended in divorce? Dunno, maybe its a coincidence.
Click to expand...

High divorce rates in the US are a fairly recent phenomenon, starting in the 60's and spiking through the 70's and 80's; the 60's and 70's are also often characterized by increased sexual exploration (free love movement/sexual revolution)..so, the two phenomena coincide with each other.
 
I think its best to be 85-90% sure you want to marry someone before moving in together. In my case, we'd already ring shopped before we moved in together. In fact, I believe the ring was on order. We lived together for just over a year before we got married. Four years in right now. FWIW, I'd never previously lived with a man & I was over 35.

There's a lot to be said for living on your own for a long time. Knowing how to be completely independent. It really helped me *appreciate* being with someone, with all the petty annoyances that come along with that.

Just my opinion. There can't be only one right way to do things. Depends on the people.


ETA: I do wanna clarify that just because I wasn't living with guys I dated -- I wasn't "prancing around" pretending to be perfect EITHER. My boyfriends saw alllllllll the real stuff. The flu. The clutter. The days spent in pajamas. The dirty dishes. No makeup. etc.
 
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