I have a young friend who was kind of given an ultimatum from her b/f and she''s really struggling and stressing about it. She is 22, he is 24. They dated for 2.5 years, broke up for 2 years and are now back together and talking seriously about the future. They have talked about marriage, kids, housing, getting engaged, etc. The trouble is, he says he would "never marry anyone he didn''t live with first". Her family is very against this, but not just on moral grounds. Financially, it seems impossible as the young lady will not be finished her education for 3 more years. She lives at home and has expenses covered by her parents. Secondly, she personally feels she would be more comfortable if they were at least engaged first, which would be more "suitable" to her family, although marriage is her ultimate preference. She is sure about him. He is unwilling to compromise at this point. What do you think of this situation? The other totally unreasonable part about this is he doesn''t have his own house to move into yet, and when he does buy it (within the next year), he plans to have 1 or 2 roommates to help pay for the mortgage, and she really doesn''t want to move into a small house with one or more boarders. She feels like she is being judged whether or not she is "worthy" to marry at all, and is feeling the stress from trying to make everyone (her family and b/f) happy. If she moved in with him, she''d have to give up her car as she wouldn''t be able to afford insurance or gas, and it would be a much farther commute to school as he plans to buy a house in a different town from where she lives now. Stress! Just looking for opinions. I''ll show them to her. I hope it all works out, because other than this issue, they are a beautiful couple. I don''t know why is he adamant about this issue right now, when 3 years from now it will all be different.