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My fiance and I plan on moving into my parents' house after we get married. We plan on just staying there for a year or two. Reason being, we want to save up enough down payment for a house. Currently, we are living together in a very expensive neighborhood and if we continue to live here it would take us a long time to save up for a house. It took us four years to save up for our wedding alone, and our wedding is not even as expensive as a down payment for a house.

My question is for newlyweds who are living with their parents or in-laws: Did your living arrangements put a strain on your relationship?

Thanks everyone! I have a great relationship with my parents so I know they won't get on my nerves. They are thrilled about the idea of us moving in because their house is immensly huge and it is always empty. Since their house is huge (6 bedrooms -- and 5 are all empty) I won't always run into them. My dad is usually busy at the garage or yard, and my mom is also always busy with her volunteer work. My fiance and I are also workaholics so we are never home, even now. My only concern was that the concept of living with others may put a strain on the relationship.

Thank you Jocelyn and EJS for your advice. I talked to my fiance about this and told him that we're not going to do this unless he is 110% OK with it. I will also have a talk with him and my parents about boundaries before we go ahead with the move.

My fiance said he likes the idea as long as we give ourselves a time limit, and we agreed that during this time limit we would work hard to achieve our goal which is to save up enough deposit for a comfortable-sized home ( and not just buy shoe-box sized house.) Moving in with my parents will also give us a chance to travel before we decide to have kids. We've been wanting to go to Bali, Tokyo and Rome.

I had to do that. Pre-wedding, with our son! It was nice being around family, but things came up that I never expected...like food. My folks didn't charge us rent, so I felt obligated to buy the fixings for dinner, every night, for 6 people (my bro was still living with them) for a little over a year. And I also felt obligated to help with heating and electricity...but my folks have a big house and it costs more to heat than our old apartment. And leaving our home in town and bunking with my folks in the boonies really took a toll on our gas budget, as it almost doubled. I guess what i'm trying to say is that we actually ended up spending MORE money than if we would have just stayed in our old place. But money aside, the only thing that really suffered was our sex life...or lack of!

Good luck!

My husband and I currently live with his parents. It can definitely be a strain at times, but we had decided to move into his area instead of staying down south and it was the best option while we're looking for jobs and then our own place. His parents rarely ask where we're going and there is no curfew in place or anything, so that is always nice.

The main issue is that his family is super extroverted and I'm an introvert. It does cause problems because it takes me a while to get used to people, and I consider myself horrible with people skills. I love his family but find them a bit intimidating still.

Otherwise, having your own space is a huge factor too. It's easy to feel restricted to one room or that you don't have any privacy.

i don't think we would go crazy living with either one of our families if we knew it was for a certain amount of time. that being said, i would do everything i could not to. but it seems like you've considered all the options and this is the best for you and your FH. Just make sure to have boundaries and be on the same team when it comes to dealing with your parents.

@BAbride: I think that a lot of stuff happens in life that we don't plan for and as long as you and your spouse are on the same side and open with where each person is at, you can make it through a lot of things. you never know when someone is going to lose their job, get injured, etc. so just because you're not in the "perfect" place when you're starting your marriage doesn't mean you're irresponsible. it may be tougher starting out but i think that can really bring some people together.

good luck @AmberEyes!

Oh boy... I was excited to comment with my experiences living with my in-laws, and then I read the last few posts.

My husband and I are not bums.

We moved from one of the cheapest areas of the country to live with his parents. We didn't do this because we were struggling financially. We both had adequate jobs, and although I knew I had maternity leave coming up soon, we could have downsized into an apartment and kept working opposite shifts to avoid daycare costs, etc, and we would have made it.

Except we were dead-ended, career-wise. I had NO desire to leave my baby at home for a mindless paper-pushing cube job, and my husband was killing himself working nights as a low-level security guard in a city with one of the highest murder rates in the country.

When I got pregnant, my husband's parents offered immediately for us to move in with them. Initially, we refused. Then we got a rejection letter from the graduate school my husband had applied to, and our filler jobs suddenly were our only long-term plan. Then my mother-in-law got diagnosed with cancer. Thank God, she seems to be doing really well now (we get the PET scan results tomorrow on whether the chemo is working), but at the time of her diagnosis, her disease was so advanced and so aggressive that she was told that if the treatment failed, she would die shortly after my baby, her first grandchild, was born.

Yes, right now we are living essentially rent-free with my in-laws. I pay the water bill, and once my husband has a job, we'll start paying rent. He had kept his residence in this state, so he's eligible to get his master's and PhD at a very good state university down here for less than I paid for my undergrad degree at a private school, which was our plan all along. And if, God forbid, we lose my MIL, she'll meet our baby, and we'll be here to help my FIL pick up the pieces afterward.

So back to the main thread topic, how has it affected our marriage?

I try to be very careful that we fight only in our bedroom, but that sometimes means that I end up running off to the bedroom crying or stomping off, pissed. I hate having my ILs see that.

Another thing that is weird is watching my husband work to maintain the new family dynamic he created with me in the midst of his old family dynamic. His family is very oriented on his father, and sometimes I have felt like I am just another planet orbiting the sun of my FIL, if you will. rather than my husband and I being our own Pluto and Charon (I'm sorry for the geeky astronomy stuff.. couldn't figure out a good way to put it). Also, my MIL sometimes reverts to "mom-mode" with us, as my little SIL is still at home, so she'll make general commands about housework that would be appropriate for kids, but not for us as adults. I don't want my daughter to grow up believing that grandma and grandpa are in charge of mom and dad. But she's working on it.

It's hard, sometimes, to be the only non-blood member of the family, the only one who doesn't remember all the stories from growing up, the one who loads the dishwasher or sorts the laundry "weird". I get paranoid sometimes and think that they don't really like me, or that they only accept me because my husband married me, but then there are times like today when I overheard my other SIL on the phone making an appointment and said "I'll be bringing my two sisters". That was nice. Sorry for the book, everybody.

@ babyboo - Thank you for being broad minded about this matter. You made some very good points.

@ BABride - There's no need to be disrespectful and say things like "You need to grow up, get up off your a$$ and not depend on mommy and daddy" or "You shouldn't get married at all." You don't know me, and you don't know our situation. You cant deduct information from an electronic post and judge me as irresponsible and "not ready to get married." All of us here on Weddingbee come from all walks of life and none of us deserve to be judged. But if you must know, I am not planning on "depending on mommy and daddy" I grew up and never asked a cent from them to finance my education, I've also been living on my own since I was eighteen years old, carrying my own weight and never once asking them to support me financially. As I said, we all come from different walks of life, we all have different experiences, values and upbringings. It's my personal belief that if you want to get anywhere in life you have to set goals for yourself, and sometimes achieving those goals means you have to make sacrifices. Obviously, moving into my parents house after getting married isn't the most comfortable or luxurious situation. Yes, we'll have to sacrifice privacy. Yes, we'll have to give up on hosting gatherings at our place. And yes, we'll have to sacrifice space. But we're willing to make these sacrifices for only one year (not our entire lifetime) so that we can save up enough money. I do not plan on us living with my parents just sitting on our a$$es and expecting to be spoon fed and pampered. Whatever your opinion may be, you are most entitled to it, however there is no need to be disrespectful. It only makes you sound like you have no class.

It seems like there is a bit of a heated discussion going on here, but I'm just going to comment with my experience. My husband and I were married in September after having lived together in our own home for a year. We are both in our 30's and were out of our parents' homes at 18.

Immediately after our wedding my husband was relocated for work and we moved across country. We knew the move was coming and had been looking at homes to buy for nearly 9 months before the move. We found nothing. His parents graciously offered us their weekend home. We accepted, expecting to find a home to buy within a month or so.

Now, three months later we finally have a home that we're buying (in another month) and I cannot wait to let his parents have their home back. They're rarely here and it has caused huge amounts of angst for us. We started off our marriage fighting nonstop about our living situation and it did not let up until we went under contract on our house.

Despite the fact that his parents have been nothing but absolutely generous, consciencious, and for the most part, absent, I have felt like a child intruding on their space. Perhaps it is because I have always been very independent, but emotionally, this has been a very unpleasant experience. The situation put a huge strain on our relationship.

I cannot stress how emotionally taxing this has been for me, and polarizing for us as a couple. I know that every situation is different, but just based on the facts that you presented I would urge you to get a small home as a couple and cut back in other areas to save for a home. Your home is yours, whether you own it or not. You should not feel like its any less of a home because you rent or lease. I feel like over the past few months our newlywed life has been on hold. I urge you to start your lives together in your own home.

That's just my bit of advice. I'd be happy to chat with you more over PM, if you'd like. I hope this help.

December and runningbee - I thank you both for your very detailed and honest posts about your experiences. They each have made me greatly reconsider this plan of moving in with my parents.

December - although in this situation it will be my family's home and I'm sure I'll feel more than comfortable to be around my parents again, I do not want my (future) husband to feel left out or have to mold himself to my parents' ways. I anticipated that it would be difficult, but just hearing real life experiences helped put things into perspective even more.