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I will echo the other bees in saying that only you can truly judge whether or not this is the best thing for you to be doing.
Case in point: I moved in with my boyfriend in May; we got engaged in July after one year of dating. However, when we moved in together, marriage was a regular topic of conversation with us. We talked regularly about getting engaged, and we both were on the same page with regards to our committment to one another and to our relationship.
My friend, however, moved in with her boyfriend of two years around the same time. She had given him the "I won't move in with you without us being engaged" speech, but was in a very similar situation as yourself- she was pretty much living with her bf anyway, staying there every night, had promised her mom that she wouldn't move in without getting engaged.... well, she obviously caved and moved in with him. Her mom was disappointed at first but she got over it. However... they are still not engaged, and there is definitely no ring on the horizon. Long story short, they fight all the time and he does such sketchy stuff (like hitting on other girls) that most of us are pretty sure they are NEVER getting married.
As long as you and your boyfriend are solid, things should be fine. If this guy is truly the one for you, your family will be able to see that and understand as well hopefully.
@Sirouhi: I don't really think across the board it's as cut and dry as "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free." When you're 25, sure you can wait 5 years for a proposal, but if you're 35 and want to have kids, maybe it's more reasonable to want a proposal before moving in together.
From my perspective, it's not about forcing someone in to marriage -- it's more about what a person can emotionally/mentally handle. If someone KNOWS they want to be married and engaged by "x" amount of time, moving in when they KNOW their partner is not ready for marriage may not be the best decision unless they are 100% okay with living together knowing it may NEVER lead to marriage.
In general, it seems like women are told to just sit back and wait to be proposed to. If you take control and say "no, I want to be engaged/married before I do x, y, or z" then it's made to seem like you're forcing a guy into something or somehow implying a guys don't just want to marry women. For me, I just think of it as being realistic and knowing that someone can and cannot live with. However, I agree, moving in doesn't mean that a proposal is less likely, but I still think that it has the potential to change the timeline of a proposal.
Funny story, I was listening to the radio this a.m. and a woman called in who had been with her boyfriend for 12 years. She called to ask the psychic on air whether her boyfriend was every going to marry her. They have two children together. The psychic told her that her boyfriend already feels like they're married and wasn't going to propse to him unless she basically left him. While this may not happen all the time, it does seem like it's not uncommon either.
My two cents for what they're worth. :)
i moved in with my boyfriend 4 years ago after dating for a year and a half. i always thought i'd be engaged by our 3rd year dating. i think that living together before marriage had a lot to do with not getting engaged quickly. that being said, i would never give up the experience of living with my boyfriend before marriage. he and i know each other so well now it's crazy. we have learned each other's little quirks and we're ok with them. i have friends who weren't living together before marriage and they fight all the time over petty little things. things that if they had lived together before they were married, they would have found out about each other. i feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to live with my boyfriend before we're married. i know that when we do get married, i'm doing the right thing and the little things he does aren't going to bother me.
I think the decision to move in together is a very personal one. Relationships can end whether or not you are living together if that is your primary concern. If you have underlying doubts about your relationship it would be better to find out now before you have to go through the added time and trouble of divorce and possibly children before finding out things about each other’s personalities that you may not like.
However, it seems like your primary concern is breaking your vow to your grandmother. By keeping a separate apartment you are obeying the letter of your promise but not the spirit of it since you’re at your BFs place every night anyway. Perhaps you should sit down with your BF and reemphasize your desire for marriage. The two of you should have an honest discussion about both of your expectations for the relationship and discuss each other’s timelines for moving forward with your relationship (which might not be all that soon if you will be starting school soon). At that point you can have a conversation with your parents/grandma and discuss your goals for the future. Unless your family is super conservative/has religions reasons, they should be relieved that you have practical expectations about your future with your BF.
Personally, I was doing the same thing you are, spending nearly every night with my BF but “technically” keeping my room at my mom’s house. However, we were sort of purposefully delaying the relationship because we both wanted to be finished with school before we committed to anything further. At our 1 year anniversary, we bought a timeshare together. Just after the two year anniversary, we were both finished with school and decided to start saving for a house which we finally bought just after our three year anniversary. And this year he proposed on our four year anniversary.
So even though I was practically living with him since our 1 year anniversary, we didn’t make it official until we bought our house. But for us owning property and establishing ourselves was more important than marriage since neither of us is particularly conservative or religious. In the end that was what worked best for us, primarily because we are both brutally honest in discussing what we expect from each other and from our future. You need to follow what works best for you.
Good luck!
Honestly, I really don't see what the difference is between living togther after and before getting engaged, especially if you are planning on getting married. It sounds like your rented room is only a formality and you're wasting money. I'd say move in with him if you feel ready to take the next step in your relationship. If you have doubts about where the relationship is going, then don't do it.
I moved in with my FI while we were both in college and neither of us were thinking about getting married. Fast forward 2 years...I'm ready to be engaged, and he is feeling fairly comfortable. At that point I was wishing we hadn't lived together before we got engaged. We can probably count on one hand the number of nights we have spend apart since we began dating. We hate being apart. But, I think that the proposal would have come faster if we had not been living together. It really is a personal decision. It really depends on the couple. Maybe you could just tell him how conflicted you are. That you really want to just live with him (since you pretty much are anyways) but that you also want the commitment of being engaged before you give up your own space. Tell him how that space is your safety net right now, and how you are hesitant to give it up. Maybe the lightbulb will go off.
my SO and i moved in together several months ago and we weren't engaged!Still aren't-- but i'm sure we will be by the years end!
Aren't you already living together, if you've never actually spent the night in your apartment? How often do you go back to "your" place right now? I don't know if that's what your grandma had in mind! :) haha just teasing!
My husband moved into my place right away-- we both just knew that "this is it" and we didn't see the point in wasting any time. I think part of our quickness came from the fact that we were older-- 30 and 38-- and pretty settled, so we didn't have a lot of doubt and indecision that we maybe would've had in our younger days. We never had a conversation about marriage, but he proposed within nine months of our meeting.
I say trust your instincts and your gut feelings-- are you ready to make it official??
Trust your gut!
I needed an extra commitment before I would move in with my boyfriend, now fiance. I told him that living together with someone is hard and it would be so easy just to walk out. I wanted to be assured that I would not be heartbroken and homeless. He proposed and we moved in together 2 months later and things are amazing right now. I do not regret that decision.
My bit is that if you live together, you have to have some kind of understanding that this isn't a "get the milk for free" thing forever. If you are already talking about marriage, I'd share your fears with your BF and then set some kind of time line to discuss marriage/co-habitation again if nothing changes by that time.
Otherwise, you have to treat co-habitation like it were marriage. You have to compromise and treat each other more than just roommates. If you treat the living arrangement as roommates, then that's what it is.
You've got a lot of good information here, I trust you'll make the right decision. You've already had the bad experiences, just share your fears with your BF. If you are right for each other, you'll be able to talk about it openly.
I moved in with my BF this summer after spending a year at his house all the time, going home only to grab a change of clothes. Living with him is great in terms of time with him and finances, but at the same time it's made me increasingly bitter about not being engaged yet. We talk about getting married and having kids all the time, so I wasn't really worried about it when I moved in, but it's become a bigger deal to me than I ever thought it would be.
I'm not saying you shouldn't move in. I really do enjoy living with the BF. But a timeline discussion before you make your decision might be helpful.
i have lived with BFs before my FI, and when it wasn't working anymore, we both knew, and i left. the comfort thing was hard, but you know when its not working and then its just not worth it! My FI and i moved in together after like a month of dating, and we are planning our wedding now, and have only been toghether for 5 months!
I did not move in with my husband until after we got married, and I am very glad we waited. I am not particularly religious (and my parents are uber-liberal and woul not have cared), and it wasn't about trying to avoid the free-cow situation, but just something I've always wanted to wait to share with only my husband. We did spend plenty of nights at eachothers' apartments (trading off--neither apartment was exclusively "storage") and there were absolutely no surprises after the wedding--and I wasn't expecting any. I think it is definitely possible to determine household compatibility without moving in together. However, I don't care if other people DO live together first, it just wasn't for me. But it is a decision you have to make for yourself only, not your grandmother and not your boyfriend.
On a related note, did anyone else think that when he said "why don't you just move in and we'll make it official," that he WAS referring to marriage, or at least an engagement, rather than just housing? Considering he's been talking about marriage already, that was the first thing *I* thought of.
I lived with FI before we got engaged. I also knew it was coming and had never lived with a guy alone before. IF you're up for it, and want to, go ahead!
He has been talking about engagement a lot but I've gotten some extreme mixed signals. He has indicated a few times he won't be ready to get married for anywhere from 1-2 years... but then has said something coyly about me getting a ring when we joke about it. I just have no idea, but I'm going to err on the side of caution and pretend it hasn't crossed his mind until he's down on one knee (well, he has bad knees. I could see him making a joke about not getting on bended knee).
BF and I made the decision to move in together approximately 2 weeks after we started dating... We had known each other for about a month and a half at the point.. His father was asking him to leave the house and I share an apartment with a friend who basically never stays here bc he's practically living with his girlfriend... The first few weeks were hard but ultimately I believe living together so soon is what has forced us to build our relationship so quick and so strong. Ultimately you have to do whats best for you but as for me I wouldn't have done it any way.
It's hard to give advice on this topic due to the wade gamit of opinions and situations on living together.
I wouldn't do it, but I wouldn't have moved in until after the wedding. I just think it's best to wait until all is said and done for practical and moral reasons.
It's always better in the long run to err on the side of caution. If you're concerned about it, i would say just wait! If he can't wait, that would signal a red flag to me, and if he will wait, than why not do so until it's official or you're sure it's the right thing to do?
I fully support moving in with significant others. However, just make damn sure you're on the same page (whether that page is eventual marriage, or never marriage, or members of the same cult, etc.) before making that commitment.
I agreed to move in with my bf (now fiance) because we both knew we wanted to end up married to each other within X time period. I wouldn't have agreed if he would not have been willing to nail down what I wanted.
We dated for almost exactly a year before we moved in together. basically we were paying two rents and spent the majority of our time with each other so when the lease was up, he moved in with me since i had the better apt of the two. about a year and a half after that, he proposed.
mind you i didnt tell my parents we had moved in together until.... well about a month before he proposed - my father is a baptist minister and police officer and i didnt want my dad to shoot him! lol
but each to their own. for me we moved in together because it felt right, we saved money, and i really wasnt in a mindset that i HAD to get married (up until he proposed i had given up on marriage completely which leads some of my family to think its WHY he proposed - since i was so non-chalant about it).
be honest with yourself on the reasons why or why not and do what is best for you.
To be frank, I wouldn't want to move in together just for financial reasons OR get engaged just to move in together.
You made a promise to yourself and your fam that obviously matters very deeply to you. If you're serious enough to want to marry this man, you should be able to tell him about it and your feelings surrounding it. You have reasons to be hesitant of living together if youve done it before and it's ended badly. I don't think that sort of thing should be a secret in a grown-up, marriage-bound relationship. Communication is key.
It was important to me to be engaged first. I wanted the two to be seperate - he wanted to propose bc he wanted to marry me, not bc he wanted a roommate. We ended up buying a house not long after, and it's been the best thing, but I am so glad I stuck to that timeline.
You should really talk with him about what his expectations are for your relationship. My guess is he knows you are itching for an engagement. It sort of bothers me that you aren't sure if he's ready or not. If he is telling you 1-2 years before he wants to marry you, does that mean he's thinking it may be another year before he proposes?
I'm contemplating this one as well, so I'm glad there's a post up about it!
At first, I wanted to be engaged before I moved in with a man. I'm religious but very liberal (which is a great combination!), and I wasn't opposed to living together before marriage on that score. Just all my friends got engaged before they moved in with their fiances, and I was worried that if I moved in with a man before the engagement, I'd be that one couple who's been together for seven years and not getting married (I have that couple among my friends!). And I want to get married someday. Not tomorrow, not next year, but sooner rather than later, you know?
(Of course you do, you're waiting bees too!)
I've been dating mnbf for a year and a half, and we've been talking about moving in together. I know he's the man I want to be with for the rest of my life. And I know I'm the woman he wants to be with for the rest of his. And I know that he's the slowest damn mover on the face of this earth and that moving in together or not will not make one bit of friggin' difference as to the speed of the man's proposal. (...but I love him!)
So then I thought about moving in together just to "test-drive". Because the first six months of living together are gonna be a zoo, married/engaged or not. Stuff will crop up that I can't even imagine right now. And wouldn't it be nice to deal with that stuff, know that we CAN deal with that stuff, before we build a marriage together?
And then I even stopped thinking about that, and realized I just want to be with him. I want that companionship. I want to wake up with him every morning and come home every day and see him there. I want to share all the ordinary moments of life with him.
That's when I knew I was really ready.
Now I'm just waiting for my lease to end.
P.S. Moving in for financial reasons seems too risky to me. I mean, yeah, you save a couple hundred bucks a month, but if things go south, you're stuck sharing a bed and the bills with someone might not be ready to be with all the time.
P.P.S. Talk to grandma. Tell her what you really feel and where you're really at. My grandmas are really mean and unreasonable, but I bet yours isn't.
FI and I dated for 4 years, moved in together, and got engaged 4 years later. That was the right decision for us. I think it bothered my mother, but oh well. I think the other bees have given GREAT advice in a situation where it's difficult to advise you on what to do.
we moved in together when we began looking at rings, but then the economy, and deciding to go to grad school, left us unmarried for the forseeable future, and still living together. I love living with him, but I get very frustrated that we're living together for so long without being married. He is very practical, but we were both raised fairly traditionally/conservatively and it makes our families uncomfortable, and to a lesser degree, makes me uncomfortable. As I said, I love our living situation, and don't have the finances to move out until we are engaged/married, but it still bothers me considerably.
We moved in together after 6 months - it just felt right to us. We knew we were going to get married one day, and he was still living at home but staying at my house all the time, so it just kind of made sense. We just bought our first home, and have a "game" plan in place for the future... it goes - live together, buy house together, when financially settled into the mortgage repayments and life, get engaged and then married!
Just have to do what feels right, if there is even a hint of doubt, dont do it!
Honestly speaking, I think it is wiser to hold off on the living together thing. I say this because I have seen people around me that have been engaged for 3+ years and they have not yet moved onto the Marriage stage. Although the girl has the ring on her finger, I've seen many guys reluctant to actually take the next step into a full-on commitment and get married.
I have a friend who has been dating a guy for about 7+ years and they have been engaged for 4 years or so. They have been living together for about 4-5 years and they still have not been married! Also, I have another friend who lived with her boyfriend for a long time and they got married after like 5-6 years of dating. However, after 6 months they got divorced.
I'm sure there are couples that lived together and had successful marriages. I certainly don't want to say that living with the significant other is the only reason to stagnant couples or divorce...however, even statistics show that co-habitation is not ideal for a successful marriage.
I'm not trying to scare you or anything but...when you hold off on special things such as living together and etc...later on it pays off. My fiance and I have been dating for the last 3 years and yes, I wish we can live together but I am glad that I can hold on to that excitement til we get married. Among many other things, that is one thing that I look forward to!
So yeah, I am not sure if this has helped but I hope you make the right decision! :)
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