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!
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.
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.
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!"
So I'm very freaked out about the moving in. Just worried that I'll get enough space and time to myself. And also somewhat because I foresee all the adjustments with cleaning, decorating, and whatnot. But be assured it's totally normal, and not a sign of anything bad at ALL. I still know he's perfect for me. It's just an adjustment.
(And then there's figuring out what to do with all the "big girl" furniture and whatnot that I bought to fill my home once I started working. Most of it won't fit in his tiny condo, but I can't bear to get rid of it for psychological reasons. It may wind up in storage 'till we move someday....)
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.
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!
My fiance is an Air Force officer and recently relocated to Mississippi to complete his pilot training. I came along for the journey and because a roommate would not be an easy find, we decided to move in together.
If it weren't for the military, I don't think we would be living together. We are both Catholic and our families weren't thrilled. So far, it has been great. We can spend time together when he gets out of class instead of talking on the phone for 5 minutes a night.
I have to admit, I was nervous, too, but just get a house/apartment that is big enough for each of you to have your own space. That will make things so much easier, I promise!
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.
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?
My husband and I knew each other for only 8 months before we got married, which gave us no time to learn living habits. I was 29 and he was 40 on our wedding day, which is also when we shared our first kiss. We had both lived on our own for many years and were set in our ways, and yeah, I was worried about how hard it would be to live with someone. But I knew it would all be worth the wait. And while our faith in God and His perfect design for marriage was the overarching factor that set our decision, we also knew God designed it that way for OUR good and well-being.
I carried a lot of pain from kissing guys (and more) when I was younger - giving that physical piece takes a piece of your heart and bonds a part of you to that person forever, even if you later marry someone else. I think our wedding day was that much sweeter for all we saved for that day: first kiss, making love, and living together. I knew when I met him that my next and last first kiss and everything else would be with my husband.
We just celebrated a year, and are more in love than ever. It's a lot easier to accept and get used to someone's quirks and habits when you move in with them under the covenant commitment of marriage. There is a lot more motivation to compromise and be accepting, as you KNOW you are there forever. I love it!!! It's so wonderful not to have to part ways every night and say goodnight by phone, yet we are so unbelievably happy we waited until marriage for all that. Even our first kiss, which we have a beautiful pic of that we'll have forever as well!
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
posted by loveletter 10 months agoMy 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...
posted by sweetjane 10 months agoMy 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!
posted by smartl 10 months agoe....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!
posted by meeps 10 months agoI'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.
posted by MissFlamingo 10 months agoMy 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.
posted by guinness257 10 months agomeeps: 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.. :)
posted by e 10 months agoWe 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.
posted by bree 10 months agoaaron 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.
posted by lindsaywillman 10 months agoPersonally 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!
posted by BSAM 10 months agoSweetart, 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.
posted by marquel 10 months agoI 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.
posted by lizardbnorton 10 months agoIt 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!
posted by MissBlushing 10 months agoHey 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.
posted by futuremrstaj 10 months agoI have to agree, the choice to live together or not is a very personal decision!
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 . . .
posted by Maegan 10 months agoMy 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.
posted by tigerlily 10 months agoMy 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.
posted by Deonise 10 months agoI, 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?