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Just wondering...how many bees out there have lived with their FI's before tying the knot? For those that did, would you go back and wait if you could?
My hubby to be is planning to move in with me before the end of the year and to be completely honest...I'm a little scared freaking out!!! I've been on my own for a little over 2 years now and I LOVE it. I love having my own place/space and I'm really afraid of losing that. Is this nomal? Or could this be a major warning sign?
My fiance and I have been together for 7 years. We've lived together for 2 and a half years. We lived in the dorms for a couple years at school and were always in each other's rooms. Then we both wanted to get an apartment and it just seemed silly to have two separate apartments when we're together all the time.
I lived with mine for over a year before we got married, I moved in a few months after we got engaged. My mom wasnt too keen on it at first, but it actually made us closer. It was really hard for me, and I cried the first two nights. LOL! But, I am glad we did it, and it was great to iron out those living together kinks beforehand. It worked well for us. And like Beccs said, he's my best friend, and it was nice to have someone to veg with. Make sure you always have your time to yourself though. While we live together, we still make sure we have our own time (him on his games, me in front of the tv or computer) :)
Good luck!
I think what you're feeling is totally normal so I wouldn't beat yourself up about it :). Moving in with your SO and getting married are monumental periods in one's life and the transition can be a little rough for some people, especially if you're really accustomed to having a lot of independence.
As for my FI and I, we've been together for over 5.5 years and moved in after only dating for about 8 months. For us, it was a very natural progression I guess... My FI was a little bit hesitant about it at first, but then he quickly jumped onboard lol. We didn't have much of a choice because I was experiencing some money problems (with financial aid not coming through, etc.), and I literally would have been homeless and/or would have had to quit college if we didn't live together (it helped tremendously as far as paying for rent and bills). It's been a great experience though. It kind of goes against my personal belief system but at the same time, I couldn't imagine marrying someone without living with them first. You learn so much more about each other when you're forced to share the same space. Honestly, I think it would be a lot more difficult starting out married life without ever having lived together. I'd rather deal with those "growing pains" earlier rather than later. As a side note, we pretty much combined finances once we started living together so that's helped a lot too. We already have a system in place so there won't be any unpleasant surprises after we get married.
Totally understandable. I lived by myself for almost 5 years and loved every second of it, but I LOVE living with my FI! We make sure to have our own space-- he works from home so the office is his territory and I have my corner of the living room to cover with stacks of wedding mags and notebooks
I was worried, too, but in the end you'll learn so much more about each other and get all the kinks worked out now, so you can enjoy wedded bliss later!
My now-fiance and I moved in together about six months after dating. As someone else said above, it was more of a financial thing. "Do we do this or do I waste money on an apartment that I'm never going to be at, and deal with the hastle of having to go back in the morning and get ready for work?"
The money that I'm saving is basically going to help pay for the wedding, which is key. It was an adjustment at first - he hates that I don't rinse dishes out, I hate that he leaves EVERYTHING (cell phone charger, computer charger) plugged in when not in use. But now we joke about things like that, and it really hasn't been that big of a deal at all. I also am a person that enjoys my space, and he understands that. If I need to go sit in another room for a half hour and read, he knows it's for his own benefit and so that he doesn't lose his head after i snap it off. He's smart like that.
I think you'll find that the first month or so is weird. You have to plan things out like you'd have a roommate, but then it turns out that this roommate is that man that you're going to love forever! It's great being able to come home after a long day and have him have made dinner (I'm lucky) or just have him there, and not have to worry what time you're going to have to get up in the morning to make it back to your other place to get ready for work.
Good luck!
I've been together with my FI for six years now. I pretty much stayed over at FI's parents house about 8 onths into the relationship, rarely going home at all. They joked that I was their second daughter. I officially moved out of my parents house 3 years into the relationship and rented a one bedroom on my own, but my FI stayed over 5 out of the 7 days in the week. And about 3 months ago we purchased our first home together. We're set to get married in March, but we've been pretty much living together since the very beginning.
I wouldn't change a thing if I could go back and do it all over again! Over the course of these past 6 years, we've had ample time to adjust to the living styles of the other person, learn about their quircks and daily routines. I think sometimes the scariest parts for newlyweds is not knowing what living with the other person would really be like. I feel it's important to know whether or not you could actually live with a person in confined quarters for a long period of time prior to tying the knot is important! Afterall, if you can't stand living with the person, how are you going to spend the rest of your lives together?
i guess i'm going to be the odd one out here. me and my fiance don't live together (and are saving our first kiss for the alter~!!!) and it's pretty tough since we live on opposite ends of manhattan. he has his own apt (and i have roommates), so i usually spend all of my time at his place. but it's soo hard to leave and get myself going by 11pm because if i leave any later i'll get home after midnight and it's not too safe. though there are so many times i wished we were already living together so that i wouldn't have to leave him every night, it just makes our wedding/upcoming marriage all the more exciting. we are so excited and can't wait to finally be sharing a home~! (and not have nasty commutes home where half of the subway lines aren't working properly because of construction 
)
its awesome. dont be weary, just take it in stride. if you freak out about it, the problems will come.
I have to the odd-est one here.. 
I am from india n it is not ACCEPTABLE to live with him.. forget livng i cant take a holiday with him either until we are wed. so i just have to wait n be married so we can live together..
This is something I've been thinking about ever since I started reading weddingbee. It seems that the majority of the bees and readers live with their SO before marriage and that I am in the minority. My husband and I didn't live together or sleep together at all before we got married (or go on vacations/overnight trips together other than to our parent's houses)- we both decided, long before we ever met, that we would both wait until marriage. They were decisions made as young teenagers for moral and religious reasons, and I am SO incredibly thankful that we did. While we hated leaving each other each night to go to our respective homes, it made our wedding night and now our marriage that much more meaningful and special.
This post leads me to ask the question I've been wondering for months -- how many bees/readers are waiting till their wedding night?
PS - to answer the question -- I lived by myself for five years before getting married, and loved having my own space, my own things, etc., but being married and living with my husband is SO much better! Yes, we have had to make compromises and minor sacrifices, but that's what marriage is about. Living with my husband is wonderful!
My husband asked me to move in with him 3 months after we started dating! I completely freaked out and didn't give him an answer for a month. Finally I agreed, and I moved in once I graduated. It was fun, and hard at the same time because I loved living on my own. After a year, we moved into our own place, where I felt like it was OUR home, not his. When we moved into our own place, my hubby asked for my parents permission and sold it to them as "premarriage" and eventually they agreed. His mother was really helpful in talking it through with my mom when they met. His mother is Italian-American so her opinion really helped my Korean mother feel more comfortable about it. We got engaged a little over a year after that, and my hubby asked my parents for their permission again. I think that the fact he respected my parents permission and blessing, plus their input, really eased my parents through the whole process.
I took a big risk moving in with my husband that early on in our relationship, but in the end, it all worked out because we both knew we were extremely special to each other. After living together before marriage really made the transition easier, and YES, it does feel different living with your husband after marriage even if you did live together before.
My now-husband and I moved in together after nearly 3 years of dating. I was staying over at his apartment most nights, so it just made sense to take that next step when he bought a house.
I used to be against living together before marriage, but situation and timing was right for us. If I had to go back, yes, I would do it again.
My family wasn't thrilled, but I was 25 at the time and had been living on my own for 7 years. From my perspective, I did not need their permission or blessing. (Although the Mr. did talk to my dad about his intentions about 2 mo. into living together) I was surprised by the judgemental comments from both family and friends alike. To me, it's live and let live, ya know? We are all free to make our own choices.
My FI have been together almost 7 years now & we moved in together after about 6 months of dating. We had know each other for years plus he lived in another state when we first starting dating so when he make the decision to move to where I lived it just seemed to make sense for him to move in. We did live with other roomates for the first year and a half though. I was initally concerned to tell my parents, my father in particular but they had no issues with it at all. I think it was a good decision for us and I would do it again.
We have lived together for 1.5 years and even bought a house together once we were engaged. I think it's a good idea to find out how you mesh with each other in a living space before getting married, but that's just me. A lot of women say that was one of the most challenging things about getting married...learning to live with one another. Ted and I ironed out the kinks well before tying the knot...now we are able to just enjoy being married!
Best of luck.
My fiance has his own townhome and I rent my best frind's house. We are getting married in June and I might move in around March of next year. I have never lived with a guy -- primarily due to my parents' wishes -- and, quite honestly, never felt the need to move in with one. I highly value my own space and enjoy my own home. That being said -- we do flip flop nights during the week or weekend and it gets frustrating with which house has what items that we might or might not need to use at that particular moment! I am really excited to move in with him -- a new adventure that I have never experienced.
But I must admit -- it is nice when I am working on wedding related stuff at my own place - no hassles from him ever! :)
We've lived together (unofficially and now officially) for about a year. I think the opportunity to spread out the challenges of lifetime coupledom (cohabitating, planning a wedding, negotiating finances, sleep schedules, giving up privacy) has been nice. We won't have to figure everything out at once. I think it helps to go into the marriage with full knowledge of who you're committing to. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I am on the extreme end of this debate--I moved in with P on our second date(which was four days after our first date). I knew on our first date that he is the man I'm going to marry, so it was not strange for me at all. People tend to be a bit surprised that things moved so quickly, but I haven't found anyone who is particularily judgemental about it.Â
We've lived together for a year & a half. Before then we'd each lived alone for 8 years! We were both nervous to make the change but we LOVE it. We're careful to let one another have space - literally & figuratively and to be conscious of each other's plans. I love coming home at night and knowing that if he isn't already there, that he'll be coming in the door in a few minutes. Greeting one another after a long day is my favorite moment.
More than anything, it has helped us be prepared to combine our finances and understand our personal stresses better. We can each be a better partner knowing how the other one lives.
Feeling nervous or concerned about such a big change is normal in my opinion, if it doesn't go away or if there are other red flags, then maybe it would be time to reconsider getting hitched.
I guess I'm also one of the odd ones out. I don't think it's neccessary to live together before marriage. My husband moved in after our honeymoon, and we didn't have any problems.. and we've been married a year now! If you have realistic expectations and have been around each other long enough to know each other's habits and quirks, then there shouldn't be any suprises. I also think it made the time after we got married more exciting and new because we finally were married and living together.. little things like waking up together were a brand new experience!
I also can see how living together beforehand can be much more economical and a good choice, so I don't think its fair to judge anyone either way.
I think its normal to be nervous, sweetart.. it's a huge change!
Good luck
My FI and I have been living together for a little bit more than two year. We both love it. I especially like to wake up next to him every morning. I was worried that i'll lose my private space before he moved in. Amazingly, we get along very well under the same roof. We don't interrpt each other when any of us want to enjoy ourselves. I don't feel any inconvienence at all.
Relax. I think you just need some time...
My fiance and I have been together for 4 years and lived together for 3. We're getting married in 10 months so we've cohabitated for quite awhile before tying the knot. Personally I think that if you are not morally opposed to living together before marriage, then it's a good idea to try it before committing to one person for the rest of your life. It sounds bad, but it's sort of like a test drive before purchase, you know? Living together is very different from dating, even if you stay over often and spend a lot of time together. You don't truly see each other in your own element until you live together and I wanted to know just what I was getting myself into before I got married.
Turns out I was getting myself into a really great thing :) We're very compatible and complement each other really well in a living situation i.e. we dont' mind giving each other our space, I do the chores he hates and vice versa. I am very glad that we moved in together when we did and would do it over again in a second.
I think you just need to decide whether or not you're ready to move in together. It sounds like you do want to move in with him, you just don't know if you want to do it NOW. You will need to come to terms with eventually moving in together and giving up your own place, but don't do it when you're not ready or you'll just resent him. Also as others have mentioned, it is very important to make sure you each get some alone time when you live together!
e....I'm really curious. So you've never even kissed your FI? You knew you guys wanted to get married before a first kiss? That's really amazing and I've never heard that before! What a special moment that will be when you kiss at your wedding. And boy...you have willpower!
I've been living with my fiancé for almost 3 years now, and honestly if I would have to do it again, I would. I think that you grow as a couple when you live together... and especially with the 50% rate of divorces out there, you need everything to be in your favor.
My FI and I have been together 4 years and lived together for 3. getting married in 9 months. All of which are the best decisions I've ever made.
I just wanted to say that I don't think that people who have chosen, for their personal reasons, to not live together or sleep together prior to marriage have a monoply on "meaningful and special". I know (from my own beliefs and from conversations with friends who have been in the same situation) that my marriage will be meaningful and special, as will my wedding night and honeymoon.
meeps: boy..let me tell you..it's HARD. he *kissed* me for the first time on the hand when he proposed and since we've graduated to pecks on the cheek and forehead. when we told our engagement session photographer that we're saving the big kiss for the wedding day, he was shocked and said he'd just have to be more creative with our poses~! this was something we kind of decided from the beginning. we didn't want to move too fast early on in the relationship and instead, wanted to spend time talking and getting to know one another. that's how we got to know each other and found out that we were perfect for each other.. :)
We were together for about a year and then we moved in. It was so hard on us because we are both used to our own space. So much that it lasted for exactly one year.
We were both unwilling to compromise and adjust. It was living with a roomate. We loved each other but we wouldn't let small things go.
We broke up moved out and that lasted for 6 months. We missed eac other a lot and decided we needed to work out our issues more than we neede to hold on to petty stuff. So we compromised got a bigger place, and have been living together for the last 6.5 years. We are getting in February next year and its great! The trail run of the first time really made us aware of how things could go wrong if we didn't work on them and compromise.
Yes, I still hate that he doesn't take out the garbage unless I tell him and he loathes that i forget to rinse out the dishes before I put them in the dishwasher. I hate when he leaves his clothes onthe floor in the bedroom and he hates when I leave wet towels hanging off a chair in the bedroom.
BUT we love each other more tham those things and we don't fight about them and we compromise and I love that we make thing work.
aaron and i lived together before marriage. i went straight from my parents home to living with him. but i'd never change it!! i know my parents frowned upon it, but i'd never been able to marry without living with him. it put everything into perspective.
i learned how he kept up after himself, what was expected of me, and how to share a bed after sleeping in a twin for 20-some years by myself!! honestly, that was one of the biggest promblems we experienced was sleeping together in one bed. he's a cuddler - i would rather be alone and untouched.
but you learn and grow and love deeper.
Personally I lived with my Fiance before we became engaged. We had been dating for a very long time and I knew that an engagment would be occuring in the near future, but I definitly reccomend living with your future hubby first.
Even if you think you "basically" live with the person (i.e spending 6-7 nights a week with that person) ACTUALLY living with that person is a whole differnt story. After graduating from college and moving to the same town, fiance and I spent a lot of time together and i thought moving in together would be the exact same, i was surprised at the difference! Thankfully, I loved it and it only brought us closer together. However, my best friend had the opposite occur, realized upon living with her boyfriend ( they also had been talking about engagment, dating for 4+ years, and were expecting to get engaged this christmas) that it would not work. As she has said though "she is glad she found out about it now before they were engaged, or even worse married, its one thing to end a relationship ( still hard) but another to end a marriage". I think that each person has there own comfort level, I also know many couples who didnt live together first and have happy and healthy marriages...it really is a personal decision, and people do vary.
If you are worried about "giving up your space" I don't think thats a deal breaker, I think thats normal. Just make sure that you still find stuff to do for yourself. A hobby, a sport, a book club, Anythign! I joined a Junior League in my area, so I can volunteer, meet other woman and have an outlet of something that is just ME. Thats the best advice I could give!
Sweetart, I know what you're going through! We will move in together for the first time the week after the wedding. I am 36 and have been on my own since I moved to college at 17, so I'm VERY used to my own time and space! Even now, whenever we spend a weekend together, on Sunday he can't bear to drag himself away, while the whole time I'm thinking "Gee, look at the time! Things to do! Mr. T needs to go bye-bye!"
my fiance and i moved in together this past february. we have been together for about 4 and a half years.
this is how it came to be: we were both living in austin and had our own apartments, but were with each other almost every day. we did like that we had a place to go when we wanted "me" time. i moved 4 hours north for grad school and he moved to central california to get over his quarter-life crisis, so we did the long distance thing for a year. talk about hard...i saw him every day for almost 2.5 years, then only say him 5 times that year, for about a week at a time.
he finally wanted to move back to texas and was searching for a job in my area as i finished up my last semester of grad school. it was just understood that we'd move in together. it was a financial thing, as well as an "i'm ready to share my small space with you constantly" thing. i was very excited about this becacuse he was moving back to be with me, but i was also nervous because we spent so little time with each other over the past year (mind you, we had a lot of web cam converstations...highly recommended for anyone in a LDR).
anyways, it has been a learning experience; a fun learning experience. we got engaged this past june and are getting married february 2, 2008...the day he moved in was february 4, 2007! i don't think that i would wait to move in together if we could do it over again. i agree with BSAM up there...living together is different from spending A LOT of time with the same person.
I am in the minority also. My FH and I have never lived together, and even weirder is that we both still live at home. I pay rent, which is much cheaper than the rent I would pay elsewhere, and his mom hasn't kicked him out yet. We plan on having an apartment to move into once we get back from the honeymoon. We have been together for 8 years, and I think throughout that time I have learned his quirks and such. I don't think living togther prior to marriage is a requirement to get to know your SO. It also makes both sets of parents much happier knowing that we aren't living together prior to getting married.
It truly is a very personal decision -- no decision is right or wrong, so do what is best for YOU and your FI!
Personally? Living together seemed the natural progression for us. When we first met, we lived 2 hours away from each other. We were long distance for the first two years, seeing each other pretty much every weekend. That got to be very hard and it was difficult to know what the next step in our relatioship would be without knowing what it was like to see each other more than just on weekends.
So, he got a new job and moved to the area, getting his own studio apartment 15 minutes away from my apartment (where I had lived alone for a year -- my first time living solo). He started staying over my place a few times a week, and it eventually turned into every night. For the year he had his apartment, he literally slept there probably 12 times! Suddenly I had to let someone know if I was going out after work or running errands (not that I "had" to, but I was courteous of the fact that he now planned his evenings around me, and vice versa); I didn't just have a "weekend boyfriend" anymore! I used to love living alone and enjoyed all the "me" time, so it was a little hard sometimes when he was always there, but the nights he wasn't there, I found myself missing him and I realized that we truly did work together.
It became clear to us that we always wanted to be together, and although money wasn't the deciding factor, it sure seemed like we were wasting a lot of money when we could be sharing one rent and all the utilities. He moved in a year ago, and we got engaged five months later.
We definitely learned a LOT about each other since living together, and worked out some kinks in our relationship. I agree with the previous poster who said that "basically" living together is very different from "actually" living together! There are little things that you just don't know about until you share the same space 24-7. We have both learned to be a bit more flexible and accepting of each other's flaws. I think that our first years of marriage will now be a little easier to adjust to, since we have already gotten used to living together and we won't have TOO many more shocks in store.
Good luck!
Hey Sweetart... I am totally with you... Fi and I have been together for 5.5 years and haven't lived together... I have lived on my own for 4 years totally by myself and I know that moving in together will probably be one of the initial hard transitions into marriage. I didn't want to move in together until we got engaged, and then, once we got engaged, it didn't make sense to do it before the wedding with leases and such, so we just haven't yet...but that day is coming.
I do think it will be a bit of a transition, we're both going to have to get rid of furniture and bad habits and adapt to each other's schedules... Right now when I am at his place, I pretty much let him do his own thing, but know that we have different eating habits, television watching, etc... and part of marriage will be learning how to meld these together, or even just compromise on the trash.
I am pretty stubborn and we're both rather independent, so yeah, it's a concern, but at the same time, there's no one else in the world who would want to live with me or whom I would ever want to be with, so as long as we both remember that in the more trying times, I think we'll be fine.
I have to agree, the choice to live together or not is a very personal decision! Â
I have never lived with a guy, and not yet living with my FI. I have lived alone for 8 years, and I LOVE it. FI has lived alone for at least 10 years and he LOVES it too. We are both very independant and enjoy our quiet and alone time. We have had talks about what will work best for us to adjust to living together and <gasp> sharing everything! I have no doubt we will be compatable and work it all out, but it will be an adjustment for both of us.
I'm currently in escrow with my condo in preparation to sell and move before the wedding. When escrow closes it will still be 2 months until our wedding date . . . and I don't know yet if I will go home (to my parents) for 2 months, or just move in with FI before the wedding. It's definitely something that is on my mind lately . . .
My hubby and I were together 5 years before we go married. We decided to live together 4 years into our relationship...and that decision was based on finances. I was spending the majority of my time at his house (5 nights a week) and it just didn't make sense to pay two sets of rent and utilities.
I was nervous about moving in with him because I wouldn't have my own space anymore and I had read all the studies that say it's a bad idea to live together before marriage. I was especially scared that things between is would change somehow. Plus there were cultural/religious issues (my family's Muslim).
Being a therapist, I sort of demanded that we talk about the new living situation...what was working and what was not. We had a handful of talks in the first few months and we were able to work out issues pretty easily.
Good luck to you.
My FI and I have been living together for the past 5 years (we've been dating 7+ years). I didn't plan on living with him so early, but he had to move away to a different city for school. We didn't want to have a long distance relationship, and it didn't make sense financially for me to move there and get an apartment of my own if I was to moving to be with him. We weren't ready for marriage then, we were only 2 years out of highschool and not independant/mature enough to be married but everything was great. After the first year or two of living together we knew we wanted to get married but decided to wait until he graduated to get engaged (which is this year).
It was hard to get used to living with a guy. I have 4 older sisters and no brothers so it was a whole new experience for me. We both have to take some alone time every once in awhile. I'm glad I moved in with him when I did, we totally know each other completely. I don't think it will take away anything "special" from our wedding night, but thats just my opinion.
I, too am apparently in the minority here. I feel also that it is absolutely not necessary to live together before marriage, and even a risk to the relationship. However, every relationship is different and every person is different - we all make our own choices in life and have to deal with the outcome, good or bad. I am not meaning this to sound judgemental - it's not. Honestly how many people, women especially, look at the risks before moving in together when they're blindly in love?
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