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Did you live together before marriage?

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Isolde

Isolde

Rough_Rock
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I''m curious to see who is or isn''t living with their SO, currently. What have your experiences been like, and what are some of the positive and negative aspects you''ve encountered? Married girls, feel free to chime in!

My FI and I don''t live together, I live in an apartment with a roomie, and he is in a similar situation. We don''t plan on moving in with each other anytime before the wedding.
 
I think there are positives to both sides.

DH and I lived together for 7 years before marriage. The first 1.5 years of living together was a big adjustment for us, but by year 3 or 4 it was gravy. We''ve been married for 5 months and while emotionally we do feel differently than when we were just living together, our daily lives are the same.

On the other hand, we''ve had several friends who have chosen not to live together until marriage and for them, I think it added an additional layer of excitement and anticipation for becoming married. My sister did not move in with her husband until the week they were married and she was more excited about that than the wedding, haha. Was the first year of marriage really tough because of all the adjustments? Yeah, but for her that was part of being a newlywed and she still considers that first year to be the most exciting.

I think the more you can agree on before moving in together, the better. Things like chores, expenses (if you aren''t completely joining accounts), etc. can be worked out beforehand, which makes it a little easier to work out the smaller nuances that don''t reveal themselves until after you''ve moved in
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I moved in with my FI once we were engaged and had the wedding date set.

positives:
-saving money
-making sure you are compatible with eachother on a daily basis day in and day out.(this is a biggie, IMO)
-setting up the financial basics before marriage (ie paying pills, daily expenses, grocieries,etc)
-going to sleep next to eachother every nite
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negatives:
-between moving and wedding planning all at the same time, this was tough. The weekends were spent moving,visiting vendors, and more moving. It was a bit stressful.
 
FI and I bought a house together 3 months after we got engaged. Up until that point we had lived separately. I guess most of the negatives are also positives in some way. We tend to eat in/stay in more often. It's good right now when we're saving money for the wedding, and healthier too. However I do miss going out regularly. We've also gotten to know each others bad habits that we didn't always see when we didn't live together. I've realized FI can be really messy sometimes and I thrive on everything being clean and in order. We're working these issues out though and coming up with solutions that keep us both happy. I.e. I put a clothes hamper down in the basement, so when FI gets home he can empty his dirty clothes from his gym bag directly into the hamper instead of on the floor. On the purely positive though, I love being able to see FI every day, and the quiet moments we have together in our home. I'm glad we decided to move in together before the wedding, it was the right choice for us.
 
live with him, yup. we are not religious at all and carry no view of this being ''sinful'' or whatever. we are buddies and have fun hanging out, so why not do it 24/7??
 
my FI and i dont live together, it a personal choice that we made not too. i dont think its bad to live with him before we just made a choice not too because of our beliefs. im sure there will be alot of adjusting to do once were married but thats part of the new stage in our lives. so yea...we dont live together, we both still live at home because im also a full time college student, actually he lives in an apartment in his parents building with one of his brothers.
 
My FI and I have lived together since 2003. It was out of convenience as we both moved to DC after college. I moved to DC for work first and lived with a roommate that I found off of Craigslist. He had a more difficult time with finding a job and waiting for his security clearance (government position). When he finally made it down to DC, he lived in a studio by himself. My living arrangement was ok, but as soon as my lease ended, both of us squeezed into his tiny studio for about 4 months until we found a much larger place.

I think living in the studio was incredibly challenging as we did not have any privacy. Sometimes, I would sit in one of our large closets just to get away. It was definitely a huge adjustment and a test to start living together in such a small space. However, I think that it helped us and now, things are really great.

I didn't think that I would live with my FI before marriage, as my parents are very traditional. However, they came around on the idea since we don't have family in the immediate DC area, and did not have many friends when we first moved here. I think that they felt better about having someone they trusted live with me and look after me in a "big city".
 
Date: 2/12/2008 10:03:26 AM
Author: emilina22
my FI and i dont live together, it a personal choice that we made not too. i dont think its bad to live with him before we just made a choice not too because of our beliefs. im sure there will be alot of adjusting to do once were married but thats part of the new stage in our lives. so yea...we dont live together, we both still live at home because im also a full time college student, actually he lives in an apartment in his parents building with one of his brothers.
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We''re in the exact same situation; we''re full time college students as well. I know it''s going to be a huge adjustment, but I look forward to commencing that stage of life, when the time comes. We are religious, so we personally wouldn''t feel comfortable living together before we''re married (among other things).
 
I am going to say kind of. Technically, we do because I am a full-time college student and we live in the same apartment; however, this is not my permanent address. So we live together while I am at school, but when I go home obviously we don''t. He moved here after he graduated from college and got a job. So we live in a two-bedroom (mostly college student) apartment complex.

Pros:
Cheap!! I agree with that one, especially for him. We split the bills, split the groceries, etc, and our rent is great. We each have separate leases so we pay rent separately. Can even save money on doing laundry since we have a laundry room.
I love seeing him every day, and I couldn''t imagine not seeing him. Life wouldn''t be the same. He is so fun.
Best roommate! I am an only child and just don''t do well with roommates, so an "apartmentmate" is so ideal for me. We even both have our own bathroom which rocks.
Since I am busy with school, he cooks often, which so is so nice!
I hate living in dorms! Apartment is better.

Cons:
A one-bedroom, one-bathroom place would be kind of difficult. Don''t think I am ready for that, ahhh!
Cleaning, I usually have to clean.
 
We''re in our late 20s. We lived together for about 3 months in his studio apartment last year, but we don''t currently live together because we live in different cities for work
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. He''ll move in with me about 9 months after we get married.
 
My FI and I have been together for 7 years and we''ve lived together officially for 5 years. But prior to us living together we spent the night at each other''s place almost every night. We figured it made no sense to pay for two apartments when we were really only using each 50% of the time.

I don''t think I had a hard time adjusting to living with him. We''re both really laid back, so we don''t really have arguments or get on each other''s nerves. We have a dog and a cat together, so we have a mini-family already.

The main "drawback" (other than faith/moral beliefs being broken) is that I feel like nothing will change once we get married. People who are married say things do change, but it seems to me that there won''t really be much different in our day to day lives. I guess I''ll just have to wait and see. I guess we will (hopefully) not be living with roommates anymore after we are married, but that''s about all I can see as changing.
 
Well, we didn't plan to live together before marriage, but my rented house was literally falling apart. The final straw was the rat infestation after a blocked field drain was cleared (it was a farmhouse). My then BF had moved to a village nearby to be closer to me, and I'd helped him find a house. I went to stay for a while, until the rats were dealt with, but my lease was due for renewal, so we decided I'd give up the lease and we'd live in his house together.

It was a tiny 18th Century cottage, with one reception room and two tiny bedrooms. While we loved it, it wasn't big enough for two people (and two peoples' furniture!). We bought a house together a few months later and to be honest, I think that brought our wedding plans forward a little. We'd been really vague about getting married, both of us. Once we had the house, we couldn't wait and he proposed quite soon after (the day after a friend's wedding).

It made a real difference to our relationship - feels different to be married than to be co-habiting, although we've enjoyed both.

The tiny house was our first home together and we felt fairly sentimental about it - I sold it to a friend so I still get to visit!
Jen
 
Yep! We've lived together for over 1.5 years. We got engaged a few months after moving in, and the wedding's in 8 months.

Positives: it simplified things. We had been practically living together for the past 2 years--he spent nearly every night at my apartment, and most of the day (we were students at the time). We moved in right before our last semester of college. It actually helped in a big way, as far as timing: it was like "one step at a time." We moved in and got engaged, THEN graduated and adjusted to "real life" together.

I honestly can't think of any negatives. It's been very smooth sailing for us. One of his sets of grandparents isn't happy about it, so they choose to pretend that we're living separately. Other than that, the rest of our friends/families think it makes total sense... so we've come up against no "backlash" to it.


ETA: We thought there would be a tough adjustment period with merging our lives, but there wasn't. We haven't really had any arguments over household stuff. I think we're both too lazy about the house to care enough to fight
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haha
 
We moved in together two years before the wedding, after dating for about two and a half years. It's been great. Sure, there were a couple of issues at the beginning, but it felt very normal and natural and easy. And I'm glad we did it before the wedding because it was really nice to come home from the honeymoon and be HOME. I will say it would have been nice to have my own place during the planning, or when I was going NUTS, but in the end, I'm glad I had him there to keep me sane, to comfort me, and to see what I was going through.

He says his only regret is not moving in together a year earlier when I had suggested it. I like that.
 
Date: 2/12/2008 11:19:35 AM
Author: musey
Yep! We''ve lived together for over 1.5 years. We got engaged a few months after moving in, and the wedding''s in 8 months.


Positives: it simplified things. We had been practically living together for the past 2 years--he spent nearly every night at my apartment, and most of the day (we were students at the time). We moved in right before our last semester of college. It actually helped in a big way, as far as timing: it was like ''one step at a time.'' We moved in and got engaged, THEN graduated and adjusted to ''real life'' together.


I honestly can''t think of any negatives. It''s been very smooth sailing for us. One of his sets of grandparents isn''t happy about it, so they choose to pretend that we''re living separately. Other than that, the rest of our friends/families think it makes total sense... so we''ve come up against no ''backlash'' to it.



ETA: We thought there would be a tough adjustment period with merging our lives, but there wasn''t. We haven''t really had any arguments over household stuff. I think we''re both too lazy about the house to care enough to fight
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haha
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Same here! People always ask if we fight a lot, and I am like ummm no, we don''t really fight at all.
 
our apartment is less than 500 square feet...and we never fight. if we do okay in our shoebox, i think we''ll do okay in life.
 
We have llived together for almost 2 years until I moved up to Canada and he stayed in NYC to finish working. Another situation where we lived in a TINY apartment, and also had a roommate living with us. It was very challenging but I definitely think it has helped us learn more about each other.

We moved pretty quickly, I moved in with him and his roommate after about 6 months of dating, we bought a house in Calgary after about 8 months because we knew we wanted to move back at some point and the housing market is crazy here, then we lived together in the tiny apartment for the next year and a half. I moved to Calgary in December, he went back to NYC to finish up his job and will be moving back here in March. We rented out the house we bought until July so we will be living with his parents for 6 months right before the wedding (I am living with his parents now). I guess the moral of my story is that if we got through the living situation for the past 2.5 years, we can get through anything!

Before I met FI, I thought maybe I wouldn''t want to move in with my future husband before we got married so that we could save the excitement, so I can see both sides. But I''m really glad we did move in together because I think it has really prepared both of us for the road ahead of us and all the challenges. We are both EXTREMELY stubborn and if we hadn''t lived together first I think it would have been a really hard adjustment.
 
We''ve lived together for 8 years. We never had a rough year until the first year we moved to NJ (3 years after we''d first moved in together) and last year (first year in CA). I don''t know how marriage will change things, but I''m looking forward to it.
 
We have been living together on and off, mostly on, since we started dating over 4 years ago. I have yet to come across a single con of doing it that way and would not change a thing.
It is a lot cheaper
We don''t have to do the chores we hate ie, I hate doing dishes and he hates cleaning the bathroom so if we were seperate would would have to do the hated chores
We get to spend a lot more time together which cements the relationship
our cats live together so they don''t get lonely
I get to wake up to him every morning which makes my day better
we know how to live with each other so we don''t have to try and sort it out while moving in togehter, getting married, dealing with family, etc
it makes our realtionship more "real" to our families which is a major plus when dealing with FMIL

It does take away some of the novelty and excitement of getting married, but I am glad for that too. My FI grew up in a rural area and his friends didn''t live together before marriage, were so excited about that part that they picked bad partners and got divorces. I met my FI when I was 18, far too young for me to get married but living together took off the pressure to do so.
 
I started writing a reply to this and then realized it was way too long. LOL

I did live with FI before marriage. And I strongly recommend it, as does he. I have had several roomates over the years and I can tell you for a fact you learn alot more about people when you live with them. Now, noone will ever be able to know everything and at some point you gotta just have faith and take the plunge, but, if you have a way of gathering up some more information before you do something so permanent as a marriage should be, I honestly feel that it is the responsible/reasonsonable thing to do. Just like you (and not to be cliche) testdrive a car, or audition a band for your wedding, or taste test things, or trial runs for new ideas at work. People who you think you are very close to and know so well can really surprise you. and sometimes, no matter how hard you work at it, a relationship will fail because of it. My own personal experiences with living with significant others has been great, it really has. But, going through college and such, I have come across many other roomate situations (my own and others) that have not been so positive. It is a chance I am not willing to take. On the other side, i am not religious or have any beliefs that would prevent me from ever thinking that living together is just the natural course of a relationship. No guilt or fear or anything that it isnt right.

Pros
#1 Money (1 rent usually less then 2 even if you add in another bed and bath)
#2 Convenience. If you are already spending the night at the other persons house then you have probably had a situation where you brought the wrong thing to wear next day or forgot something. Then there is the extra time driving between houses, work and school. not to mention mileage and gasoline prices lol
#3 my FI and i have so many common interests it is great to have a "friend" there to hang out with. We are both super game lovers and most games take more then one people. I have a constant partner/opponent.

Cons - to be honest, i have had a great experience. couldnt imagine my living situation any different. Then again, i sometimes think i found the male, much taller version of me, but here are some things that seem common in most roomie situations
#1 I suppose if you didnt have alot of common and similar interests that it could cause some friction. I say common and similar b/c you could both be huge movie fans but he loves romance movies and you love SciFi. Ten your constantly debating over what to watch/tivo and end up watching all the stuff alone or watching stuff you dont like and getting resentful
#2 if you dont have the same lifestyle/cleanliness habbits, there is going to be friction
#3 going to the bathroom around other people is always weird...atleast for me but i have always had 2 baths so Its not so bad
#4 sometimes people have different perceptions of peoples roles (usually what they are used to in their family) If his mom cuts his dads meat, it might be weird that you dont (honest to god true story)

I guess the con is there will be friction. But if you are chosing to marry this person, you are going to go through all that eventually so why not do it and make sure that you can stand up to it before making it legal and binding that you have to?

One thing that I cannot stress is that I think that it is extremely important to live on your own (and by that I mean atleast out of your parents house) before you get married.


My 2 biased cents
 
My dh and I did not live together until the day we can back from our honeymoon! I am glad we waited, it made it all the more special for both of us. We had both been married before and had lived with our spouses prior to marriage, so we wanted to do things differently (the more traditional way) this time.
 
I officially moved in the night we got engaged. Like, it went from me "staying over" from Thursday night to Sunday night (I don''t work on Fridays, and he rarely did) and having to go home during the week to me being "allowed to" stay all the time and that was that. We had both wanted to wait until we were engaged before living together, but eventually I was ready to be engaged, he was "99% ready" and I just wanted to move in already.

It was about a half hour drive to his place (now our place) from my mom''s house, where I was living before. I got tired of living out of a suitcase, having to bring clothes, makeup, toiletries and everything back and forth every weekend. If we had been living together before I would have been ok with taking a little longer to get engaged, but as it was, my hurry to get engaged was really a desire to live together. (He still made me wait about 6 months until we got engaged, lol, so I didn''t actually pressure him into proposing or anything.)

We both are very glad that we''re living together before we''re married, because even early in our relationship we were both kind of clingy, haha, and wanted to be around each other all of the time. It just felt right to us. And since I''ve moved in, we''ve adopted 3 adorable kittens (all brothers!) and they are our babies, and it makes going home from work every day all the more enjoyable. I really missed not having cats when I was over at his place before, because I''ve lived with cats all of my life (my mom has 4) and it was weird not to have pets around.

We do fight more than we used to (we never fought at all before I moved in, really), but it''s all over stupid stuff like dishes. We''re both messy people, and dishes tend to pile up until we either have no more dishes left to eat on, or one of us cracks and gets fed up. He usually gets fed up first, so he starts getting on my case about helping with dishes, and this almost always happens right when we were supposed to start doing something else, like making dinner or watching a movie, and I get pissed off because he does this EVERY TIME, and when he tells me we''re going to watch a movie I expect to watch a movie, not have to do dishes first, haha.

So we fight about chores, mostly. We''re getting better though, and it''s not so much fighting as it is little bickering back and forth, but that''s life. The funny thing is though that when we started dating and I was staying over at his place a lot, I used to try to help him with dishes and he wouldn''t let me. Like, he flat out refused, said he could do it himself, and I got upset because I was trying to help. The argument ended when a dish fell out of his hand, shattered, and we both made up, lol. But now sometimes I say to him, "Remember when you wouldn''t let me help out with chores? Can we go back to that time?"
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He always says no, though.
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Living together is really hard the first few months. There''s friction about physical & emotional space, chores, cleanliness levels etc. If one works more than the other, there may be certain ideas of who should be doing most of the chores.

1. I would not do it, if it''s less than 6 months until you are getting married. There can be so much discord while figuring this stuff out that you wouldn''t want it to start overshadowing the wedding planning. If you have to move in together during this time, treat it more like a roommate situation - we have our own stuff, and we do all our own chores...that might help lesson the stress.

2. I would not do it until both are sure that they''re ready to stick through the relationship through "thick and thin" (not necessarily engaged but have that level of commitment). Doing it for convenience sake is the surest way to get the party who is less committed starting to think they should ditch the whole operation.

What''s worse, in either scenario, if there is a more passive person in the partnership they''re more likely to keep all their concerns bottled inside until x date (until after the wedding or until the lease is up and they can move out). This is obviously unhealthy and unfair to the other partner who will have to deal with all this built up resentment.

But hey once you work that stuff out; it really is awesome. No more feeling like you''re living out of your car, you actually start feeling all snugggly and domestic, make dinner together etc.
 
i lived with my 2nd serious bf for 6 months and after we broke up i decided that i would not move in with anyone unless we were engaged.

with FI, we were basically living together for about 1 year but i did not give up my apartment until we got officially engaged - actually this month is the first month that i am officially living with him. i lived in my old place for 10+ years so it is a bit emotional moving out of MY place and moving in with FI. also now we feel more like a couple, sharing in everything related to living together.
 
I moved in with FI about 3 months after we met.

We are both incredibly similar and compatible so it''s really a piece of cake. We both have hobbies that we are very obsessive about, so most evenings we sit in the same room doing our own thing in comfortable silence with lots of hugs when one of us gets up to get drinks/coffee etc

To be honest we have never had a real argument in 3.5 years - I can''t even remember the last time we had a disagreement. I don''t expect anything to change after marriage as we are basically married anyway. I see a lot of people saying that you have to work at relationships, I must admit that I don''t really understand that as neither of us have to put any work into our relationship at all - or if we do without being aware of it, well it certainly doesn''t feel like work! My parents have never worked at their marriage either - I asked them last time I was at home - and they are totally besotted with each other after 37 years.

I think having children is likely to be the only time we might find it a big change, and I will be interested to see how we are with a 3rd person in our lives!

Both sets of parents were thrilled when we moved in together - I had been very ill and living with my parents for 2 years so I think they were glad to get rid of me
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and they had been very worried about my moving to London with no support system or knowing anyone (I''d lived abroad for 8 years). My parents also don''t agree with not living together before marriage.

FI''s stepfather is a vicar as is his mother, but they are very liberal. His mother still keeps telling me how grateful she is to me for being with her son and making him so happy!

I have lived with 3 other bf''s before I met FI, and it is true that you learn a lot about a person when you are with them 24/7. There is no ''being on best behaviour'' because you are out on a date. You get to see them when either one of you is feeling anti-social and grumpy - which I think some couples might find difficult at first. It''s very easy to start feeling that you''ve done something to upset the other, and without good communication people can get very hurt. Learning to give each other space is very important.

Both of us are secular humanists, so there weren''t any religious reasons for not living together, but I do think it''s quite a risk not doing so before marriage. The men who I lived with before I had no interest in marrying at all - they were very much ''fun for now'' boyfriends. But when I met FI it was obvious from the beginning that this was a very serious relationship and if living together worked then it would become permanent.

I think a lot of couples who live together end up marrying when they shouldn''t because it''s too much hassle to move, they are used to each other, it just seemed like a good idea. This almost certainly skews the divorce statistics, but I think when two people know that they are moving in together with a definite eye on a marriage that it is a very good idea.
 
We moved in together after dating for 3 months and all of our friends thought we were crazy.. but we''ve been living together for 1 year and 7 months with no problems. We''ve never even had a serious fight. We get along perfectly.. doing chores together to make it more fun. I''ve heard horror stories of other couples not being able to live together or having a hard time adjusting but from the very first night that we moved in together it just felt normal...
 
We lived together before we got married. We moved to a new state 1.5 years into our relationship. We lived together almost 4 years before we got married. It worked for us.
 
I had lived with 2 other bf''s in the past, and neither of those relationships worked out... so with FI I decided we should wait til we were engaged.
Well, after I bought my house, he was unofficially living there anyway, so I broke my "rule" and he moved in. I''m glad we live together now, for us we have already hashed out sooo many of our living style differences. (and we are saving $ each month!) I do think that if I had stuck to my guns we might have gotten engaged a little sooner, but that is all water under the bridge now!
 
Date: 2/12/2008 1:39:38 PM
Author: Pandora II
I see a lot of people saying that you have to work at relationships, I must admit that I don''t really understand that as neither of us have to put any work into our relationship at all - or if we do without being aware of it, well it certainly doesn''t feel like work!
Click to expand...

pandora, i hear ya on all of that. never understood that ''relationships are work'' comment eitehr. i will just assume that it was created by a five-time divorced self-help author and keep on not working at my great relationship.
 
I''m living with my FI, and have been for the past few months. We were practically living together before anyways, with us taking turns staying at one another''s places.

For us it worked out very well. We save money, have a larger place, don''t have to do the back and forth anymore...it''s much more convenient. And we have very similar habits and living styles, so there wasn''t any adjustment period. I''m relieved, because I HATED having roommates before. It drove me nuts. I like things a particular way, and I can get a little neurotic about it. But FI does his fair share of housework, and I rarely even have to ask him - he just takes care of things.

Downsides? Living with his son! Hahahaha, ok, just kidding. His son is ten years old and a complete doll. I mean, he''s still a ten year old, with the requisite temper tantrums and messiness, but we get along really well, he''s getting straight As right now, and he behaves in class. And he does his share of housework as well. We enjoy spending time with him, but we also live in a neighborhood with a lot of kids, so he goes out to play and we get a little peace and quiet as needed.

I feel fortunate to have things running so smoothly. FI and I have our spats once in a while, but they rarely last for long.

Ask me in a few more months, maybe I''ll have a different answer
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