It’s very easy to get excited about “playing house” with your mate. That is, if you have no understanding about the consequences of the decision. And I’m not trying to moralize here. I’m not concerned with the moral, religious or social implications. And though I have seen them, I am not personally concerned with any statistic about people who live together first and their rate of divorce -until they can explain the reasons why. But this is, in a sense, a “no turning back now” kind of decision. Not that you’ll never be able to end the relationship once you’ve moved in. Though you definitely will have made it extremely challenging to do so. Your lives become incredibly enmeshed when living together, make no mistake about it. It’s not something to try if you aren’t thinking “forever”. But it’s also that there is no going back to any earlier stage of the relationship once you have lived together. So if you take this step before you are ready, and things go sour, the relationship will end. So what does “ready” mean?
My husband and I were together about three months when we found ourselves talking about moving in. The question came up because his lease was up and he had gotten a new job, so he was going to be moving. I was on a month-to-month, and we both knew I wasn’t happy there. But we were trying so hard to be smart. “My lease is up” is NOT a good reason to move in together, nor is “I hate where I am living”. We both seemed to have a sense that this relationship was heading in a marriage direction, but it was clearly too soon to be talking about that, so clearly also too soon to be talking about moving in. So for a while, we didn’t talk about it. We talked about creating a situation with his move that would leave the door open to our making that decision “at some point”. “At some point” meaning within a year, since the issue was about whether he should avoid signing a year lease so we are free to move in whenever we want, or get a big enough place for me to eventually join him, but then have to shoulder that bill until we decide to move forward. And though neither one of these scenarios was ideal, they were also, in our opinion, not reasons to move in together.
So we moved in anyway, and I’ll tell you why – because even with full knowledge of what a big step it was, even with complete understanding about what were the wrong reasons operating here, and what the consequences of the decision may be, we still just really wanted to do it. Because even with the full foundation of wisdom we felt we had as adults, we still got REALLY EXCITED about “playing house”.
May 14, 2008 at 4:22 pm |
I lived with someone in a relationship for a while and concluded afterward it had been a big mistake, for some of the reasons you’re talking about in the blog entry, plus other reasons. After that I felt like an idiot and I felt pretty judgmental toward other people who were doing that, which was a lot about my own stuff. I happen to know that, for you, living with your partner before marriage worked out just fine. Here’s what I know about the statistics on cohabitating and divorce. Researchers don’t know why more people who live together before marriage get divorced more than those who don’t. One guess I’ve heard someone make is that people who live together before marriage mistakenly think that everything will stay the same after they sign that piece of paper, then they find out it’s actually significantly different to make a socially sanctioned lifelong commitment, which they might not really have been ready to make. What isn’t clear from the research is whether it’s something about some people who choose to live together before marriage or whether it’s something about living together before marriage that leads to the higher divorce rate.
Something to think about is age and maturity. I got married about 10 months after meeting my wife, which I thought was pretty quick, and I had no concerns about that. I was still infatuated with my wife when we got married, and that made the wedding more exciting than if we’d waited. We were in our late 30s. I think part of (hopefully) being somewhat mature is that I could see the infatuation for what it is. It’s a great feeling to be enjoyed while you’ve got it, and it tells you very little about how a good a long-term relationship you’re going to have. I could hold that infatuation lightly and look around it to see what else was going on in my relationship, and I knew it was a good one. So we got married. We chose not to live together before marriage, which was a value my wife grew up with, and I respected that. I see some real advantages to it, but I’m not about to preach it as “the right way.” My main point here is that, like I think you’re saying Randie, living together can be fun and exciting and that’s great, but it’s also where the rubber meets the road in terms of having a relationship that’s about real everyday stuff. Sorry this is so long, just had a few things to say about the topic.
May 14, 2008 at 9:37 pm |
I think that if you move in together too quickly, you miss a really important part of the courtship. It’s GOOD to miss the guy your dating, and get excited to see him when you go out on a date a couple times per week. And I also think it’s good for him to miss you. My husband asked me to move in with him pretty quickly after we’d started dating and I said no. His intentions were noble – we knew we’d be getting engaged soon, and he just wanted to see me all the time, but I didn’t want to skip over the fun stuff. And mainly, I wanted him to miss me a little longer. I didn’t ever want to be taken for granted as I had been in the past. I wanted him to have to call me on the phone to make a date with me like a respectable gentleman, and take me out to dinner or for a drink and DATE me. It’s good to have official dates and go out and do things together and talk. I’m not saying that you don’t do this while living together, but it’s not the same. People should think about whether they really want to skip over the really great dating period and zoom right along to seeing your lover’s dirty socks on the floor. My husband and I moved in together after we were engaged, six months before our wedding, and it’s been amazing ever since!
May 14, 2008 at 9:51 pm |
Carolyn, this is an excellent point, and I am so glad you have posted it. This blog was in response to a question from a reader, and I was thinking mostly of her situation when I wrote the response. I am so grateful, therefore, for your additional perspective on this. I definitely agree that it is worth considering whether you will miss this part of the journey too much to give it up yet. One person’s answer may be “not really” (as it was with me), another’s may be “absolutely, yes”. And yet another’s may be “I’m not sure”, in which case I would also encourage them to think more about it. Thank you so much.
May 14, 2008 at 10:09 pm |
You both have got me thinking. A large part of why this worked so well for my husband and I is the unusual circumstances of our courtship (while it lasted). We lived an hour and a half from each other. So we went longer between dates than many, but when we did get together it was for entire weekends. So we had this unique experience of both missing each other a lot, and then having these somewhat domestic weekends together where we were forced to come to understand a lot about how each other actually LIVES. So we had our courtship, but we also had a lot of that information already, on top of being in our 30’s and having a bit of adult wisdom about the relationship and our partners. Having said all that, I think we are all in agreement – it is a serious decision, there are clearly right and wrong reasons to do it, you should know your partner, yourself AND the relationship well. But ultimately, if the decision is made consciously, with integrity, and with JOY, one will know what they are really ready to do.