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Moving in together before wedding?

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Re: Moving in together before wedding?

  • Yeah, I mean like I have said before I'm not for or against it, it really doesn't matter to me. My fiancee thinks it's important for us to have a stable home before we get married. I have no problem with that. Just kinda wanted to see what other people think.
  • My FI and I moved in together after about 8 months of dating. I've lived with exes, lived with roommates and I don't have a strong opinion either way. I respect those who choose not to live together before marriage, for whatever reason, but myself and my relationship, it works.
  • We'll have been together for 7 years and lived together for 5 years by the time we get married. For us, it was definitely a good thing. It's taken us quite a while to iron out the money situation and we almost broke up because of money issues. We're still working that out, but now we're both on the same page, there's just not enough money. :) 

    Even having been together for two years - and spending pretty much every day together,  we learned a lot about each other (and ourselves, really) when we moved in together. When I think about it, I'm relieved that we did live together before because when things got bad, I didn't have the added stress of a possible divorce instead of just a breakup and moving out. Obviously we worked out our issues and we're excited to be getting married.

    (Totally unrelated, but I'm also relieved that we experienced a really rough patch with a series of almost deal-breakers and almost broke up before we got married. We've gotten over the bumps and are stronger because of it. I'm happy that I know we can weather those types of things and if something similar comes up in the future, we'll be okay.)
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  • MY FI and have been living together "unofficially" for a few months (getting ready to buy a house) and I couldn't imagine doing it any other way.  Even though we each have our own places, we never spend a night apart unless he is away for work.  It was not a big transition for me at all and I don't find myself annoyed when he leaves his towel on the bed or socks on the floor.

    I think PPS are so right when they say it's a matter of personal preference.  Do what makes you feel comfortable
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  • I don't think it is 'necessary' to live together in order to have a happy, healthy, and long marriage. I think you do what is best for you and your relationship. I have seen people live together, get married, and get divorced and seen people not live together, get married, and get divorced.

    I think there are a multitude of other things that make your relationship work. I do know from my friends who did not live together before marriage there was a bit of a settling period. You just have to do what is best for you.
  • Fantastic! thank you guys so much for all of your replies this is really gonna help use decide what we want to do

     

  • I think it depends on the couple. I am somewhat traditional, and I always used to think that I would not live with someone until marriage. My fiance and I have been together since college. He moved out on his own first, and a year later I moved out on my own. After 3 years, we were basically spending all our time at each others apartments [Thursday-Sunday sometimes Mondays we would rotate whose apartment we would stay in]. It just seemed like we were spending money on 2 apartments lol. One day we had the talk about moving in and I made it clear that although it kind of went against what I wanted I needed to know that it would lead to engagement/marriage. So we set the move in date [This past August], and a month and a half later on our anniversary he proposed :) So far it has been great, and it definitely takes work and compromise but I think this was the best decision for us. Plus, living together helps us cut down on expenses and thus save more money towards our wedding!
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  • I don't think there is anything wrong with living together before you get married if that's what you want to do, however I don't think it's completely fair to say that you will base the relationship on whether or not living together works out. There will be days when you two can't stand each other, but there will also be really happy days. You just have to take the good with the bad. I have lived with my fiance for over a year and we are very happy and look forward to the challenges. 
  • It was a big adjustment for my husband and I when we moved in together. I was glad we had the opportunity to work through a lot of the living together kinks prior to getting married b/c I would have felt sad and perhaps defeated if we had started off our marriage feeling bickery and incompatible over certain things. 




    What did you think would happen if you walked up to a group of internet strangers and told them to get shoehorned by their lady doc?~StageManager14
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  • Personally living together before you're married is a must. Things evolve once you live together. You have to get use to the other person's habits. Can they split bills and take care of their responsibilities or will they leave them all on you? Can you get along when you live together all the time? There are a lot of things that change when you live together, and I would rather know that we are on the same page before we're hitched. You can date someone and be engaged, and have no clue that they aren't responsible with their finances until you're married, for me that would be an issue. 

    Also, it's good to have all that stuff worked out so you don't spend the first few months of marriage arguing over the little things and getting use to the quirks you didn't expect.
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  • I moved in with my boyfriend about a year before he proposed. We were in our last year of college and both needed a roommate, but didn't have much luck. I'm certainly not recommending that a decision like that is made for the same reasons we did, but when I got into graduate school, we knew we were going together. I think it was the best decision for me, us living together because I did learn a lot about him and how we live together. I couldn't imagine getting married and never living together, but it certainly can be done!
  • Refusing to move in before marriage is how I got my ring when I did.  We keep two places, but spend 2-4 nights a week together.  We are very communicative and plan to get premarital counseling to help increase our level of intimacy and marriage skills.  Rather than look for "deal breakers" through a trial run, we are choosing to learn to care for one another when we don't agree.  

    Do what is right for you.  If your heart is telling you not to move in yet, don't. 
  • Here is my spin on this: I think it is important that you live independently from your parents, either on your own, with roommates, or with your SO, before getting married and starting a household together.  Fi and I moved in together right after college and since we had already been together so long, I don't think living together really changed our relationship a whole lot.  But living under our own roof really changed both of us for the better.  We have a better understanding of things like budgeting (so crucial), housekeeping, time management, and being an independent adult, than when either of us was going home to Mom and Dad, or even living in a college dorm where a lot of stuff was taken care of for us.  So-- I think it's great to live together before you get married, but I get that not everybody wants to.  But I do think you should live independently.


    This. I don't think you need to live with someone, and if you have boundaries/standards for things like premarital sex, your would-be spouse should respect that! But you should spend some time living as an independent adult--alone, with a partner, with roomies--because it helps you mature, develop your understanding of how you want to live, and gives you invaluable insight as to all the things you'll have to do or plan for when you get married.
  • Refusing to move in before marriage is how I got my ring when I did.  We keep two places, but spend 2-4 nights a week together.  We are very communicative and plan to get premarital counseling to help increase our level of intimacy and marriage skills.  Rather than look for "deal breakers" through a trial run, we are choosing to learn to care for one another when we don't agree.  

    Do what is right for you.  If your heart is telling you not to move in yet, don't. 
    How did that work, and do you know for sure?  He only proposed because you wouldn't move in with him?  That seems . . . troublesome.  I didn't move in with my now FI, but I know that isn't why he proposed - he proposed because he wanted to marry me.  But you are saying that your FI proposed because you refused to move in?  If that is true, that isn't good.  I think you should rethink how you view that. 

  • CrystaH11 said:
    Personally living together before you're married is a must. Things evolve once you live together. You have to get use to the other person's habits. Can they split bills and take care of their responsibilities or will they leave them all on you? Can you get along when you live together all the time? There are a lot of things that change when you live together, and I would rather know that we are on the same page before we're hitched. You can date someone and be engaged, and have no clue that they aren't responsible with their finances until you're married, for me that would be an issue. 

    Also, it's good to have all that stuff worked out so you don't spend the first few months of marriage arguing over the little things and getting use to the quirks you didn't expect.
    I disagree with the bolded.  Everyone, whether living with someone or not, should have the fiances talk before marriage.  This includes talking about how much debt someone carries and how they normally spend their money.  My FI came to that discussion with an Excel sheet with his expenses detailed over the last year (at his insistence - I just wanted to talk money and debt). 

  • christipbettschristipbetts member
    First Comment 5 Love Its
    edited December 2013

    My fiance and I will move in together a couple months before the wedding. Because we're in a long distance relationship (he's in Jersey, and I'm in CT), we already have an idea of what living together is like, as we stay the weekend (and occasional 4-day weekend) at my house. He will move into my place before we marry, but it's really for the sake of convenience and saving on rent. We're both more traditional and would have been fine if we didn't live together before we marry, but it makes more financial sense this way.image

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  • This is such an interesting thread. I love the mostly respectful perspectives on a lot of different views.

    We are really odd. We wont officially live together until 2 years AFTER our wedding and on top of that it will be long distance. We love each other, the timing is right (just getting out of the military so I get some time off), and we want to be married for at least 2 years before having kids. Our reasons are purely financial. He works a 7 day on 7 day off night shift job at a hospital, so when he works we are really only awake and not at work for about 30 minutes per day at the same time. He gets paid a premium for working in a rural area (about 20% pay cut moving to DC where I live and will be taking a civilian government job). We live together for an entire 7 days when he is not working and I go to him on his work weekends. We commute the 4 hours on the Megabus (heck yea for $1 fares). So we really only spend 5 days apart every two weeks. It's more like frequent business trips. In 2 years I take a field duty in Hawaii and we will try to start our family. At that point we will both make the move together.

    The biggest thing I think a couple needs to sort out before marriage is not the living, but the finances. The best thing is to lay it all out with a financial advisor whether or not you choose to live together. I totally think living together forces people to have the financial talk earlier, which can be a big plus. In our case, we've started a side business (investment properties) together, which really forces you to put your finance cards on the table. It's pretty much impossible to get a second or third mortgage without disclosing every asset or debt.

  • My fiancé and I started talking about spending our lives together when we had been dating only about 4 or 5 months. We are both in our early 40s and he has a 7 year old daughter from a former marriage that he has 50% custody of.

     I moved in with them after we had been dating about 10 months or so. The reasoning behind this was that we knew that we wanted to get married but I had been living alone for over a decade and have no children of my own. Living with a man AND a 7 year old (1/2 the time) was going to be a very major adjustment for me and my fiancé wanted to make sure that I was CERTAIN it was what I wanted before he proposed. 

     I was already in love with him and now I'm also in love with her so I guess I'm doubly blessed. She can't wait to scatter those flower petals down the aisle!
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  • It's to your advantage not to live together prior.  The divorce rate of those who live together prior to marriage is higher.   Also, if you haven't been abstinent, adapt that lifestyle in the months prior to your wedding.  It will make your wedding night sooooooooo much more memorable!!!
  • I say you never know someone till you live with them. I've seen more than a few marriages end because people "loved each other and could deal with their spouses little foilbles" well, when you're with them all day, every day, it might turn out to be a lot more than an annoyance.

    We all want our marriages to be "forever". Know what you are getting yourself into. I was with my man 5 yrs before we moved in together. We lived together for 3 yrs before our wedding. I do not regret it at all. He drove me kinda nuts at first, but I got over that. But they were all things I COULD get over.
  • I moved in with FI shortly after we got engaged.  And we've loved every single second of it.  I don't know that I could have made a commitment like moving in with someone without being engaged, but it will be SO NICE to not have to worry about moving right before or after the wedding.

    The only thing that's been hard for me living with FI is finding places in the house to hide his Christmas and birthday gifts, haha!
  • Personally, my FI and I are not moving in with each other until after the wedding. He is purchasing a home for us and will move in when everything is settled, but I won't be joining him despite the fact we will be in the same city.  We have quite a few reasons, he's a sociologist and I'm finishing my graduate degree in psychology and both have discovered that couples living together before marriage have a higher rate of divorce within the first 5 years of marriage (no, I'm not making that up or exaggerating anything, it's been academically proven). Also, we both chose to be abstinent before we married when we were teens, and have stuck to that through our relationship, so it means a lot to us and we would like to see it through to the end. 
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  • My fiance and I moved in together in October, and we are getting married next September.  I wouldn't have it any other way.  Even just spending weekends together, i was on my best behavior so to speak, and he didn't really get to see the "real" me.  While i was being truly myself, i was being the best part of myself.  Now, he gets to see my day to day routine and the normal me, at my best and my worst, and it's working out wonderfully.
  • Everyone and every relationship is different. For me, it was important. I don't think you can truly know someone until you are "forced" to be around that person 24/7. Everyone has their own quirks and ways of doing things and sometimes its hard to combine each person's personality together. If you live together before marriage, you can learn more about that person and the way they do things. You are able to see if you can get along with this person and have a functioning household with them. It also gives you time to work things out and figure out a way of running the house together. And if for some reason you find that you can't live with each other happily, its easier to end before getting married.

    I totally agree. I have had similar experiences with living with an ex and everything seemed great until 6 months passes and he starts getting super controlling and abusive. I truely, honestly don't think you can know/love someone well enough to the very core of their being without living with them. It's not about oh he's left a plate on the counter.

     Last year I was involved in an accident and I could not bathe myself. My fiance (was only my boyfriend at the time) lived with me and he had to literally get in the shower and bathe me, brush my teeth, put my hair in a pony tail, take care of the laundry and dishes, etc. He pulled through with flying colors and I know he will be there for me forever. But I had so many friends in serious relationships say "oh my god, I can't picture my boyfriend ever washing me, that would be so awkward". Isn't that part of a marriage commitment, being there for that person for better or worse? How can you know how they will react at the "worst" when they aren't living there through it?!

  • xmobergx said:
    Everyone and every relationship is different. For me, it was important. I don't think you can truly know someone until you are "forced" to be around that person 24/7. Everyone has their own quirks and ways of doing things and sometimes its hard to combine each person's personality together. If you live together before marriage, you can learn more about that person and the way they do things. You are able to see if you can get along with this person and have a functioning household with them. It also gives you time to work things out and figure out a way of running the house together. And if for some reason you find that you can't live with each other happily, its easier to end before getting married.

    I totally agree. I have had similar experiences with living with an ex and everything seemed great until 6 months passes and he starts getting super controlling and abusive. I truely, honestly don't think you can know/love someone well enough to the very core of their being without living with them. It's not about oh he's left a plate on the counter.

     Last year I was involved in an accident and I could not bathe myself. My fiance (was only my boyfriend at the time) lived with me and he had to literally get in the shower and bathe me, brush my teeth, put my hair in a pony tail, take care of the laundry and dishes, etc. He pulled through with flying colors and I know he will be there for me forever. But I had so many friends in serious relationships say "oh my god, I can't picture my boyfriend ever washing me, that would be so awkward". Isn't that part of a marriage commitment, being there for that person for better or worse? How can you know how they will react at the "worst" when they aren't living there through it?! 

    See, I just don't think this is true for everyone.  I just don't think you need to physically be living at the same address to know these things about someone.

    My H were together for many years before we married, as I said, and there were plenty of moments in my life where he proved he would always be there for me.  When I had my kidney stone, he drove from his house an hour away at 2 AM to come get me and take me to the ER.  He held me while I vomited like crazy in the hospital from the pain, and he stayed there all night with me and watched me sleep.  That's just one example out of many, but my point is, if you date someone for a while and go through many life-events with someone (I think that's important--to experience good times and bad times with someone before marrying them), then you can see their true colors and how they will really support you.

    We've only been married 6 months now, but I got pregnant pretty quickly and he's been amazing this whole time.  Doing all the cooking and cleaning, staying up with me when I'm sick all night (I've had a TON of sickness with this pregnancy), listening to me piss and moan, and ALWAYS cheering me up.  Our marriage has been a rollercoaster these past 6 months because right after the wedding it turned out we had to find a new place to live, I start my first year teaching (which has been hell), and then I got pregnant.  But WE have been great.  Our relationship gets stronger with every trial.  We really haven't had any problems arise from learning to live together.

    Again, I'm not saying anything against living together.  I'm sure people who live together still have happy, healthy marriages, I just really disagree that you HAVE to live together to really know someone.

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  • Rebl90 said:
    Personally, my FI and I are not moving in with each other until after the wedding. He is purchasing a home for us and will move in when everything is settled, but I won't be joining him despite the fact we will be in the same city.  We have quite a few reasons, he's a sociologist and I'm finishing my graduate degree in psychology and both have discovered that couples living together before marriage have a higher rate of divorce within the first 5 years of marriage (no, I'm not making that up or exaggerating anything, it's been academically proven). Also, we both chose to be abstinent before we married when we were teens, and have stuck to that through our relationship, so it means a lot to us and we would like to see it through to the end. 
    There's nothing wrong with choosing to not live together before marriage, but as a person with a graduate degree in psychology I'm rather shocked at your statement.  Yes, some studies show higher rates of divorce.  Others show this to be false.  Many of these studies fail to take into account a whole lot of mitigating variables.  
    Don't worry guys, I have the Wedding Police AND the Whambulance on speed dial!
  • mcross10 said:
    I hope you are not posting this like its supposed to mean something. That's just an organization (and a biased one) saying things like they are facts. They don't back that up at all.

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  • NYCBruin said:
    Rebl90 said:
    Personally, my FI and I are not moving in with each other until after the wedding. He is purchasing a home for us and will move in when everything is settled, but I won't be joining him despite the fact we will be in the same city.  We have quite a few reasons, he's a sociologist and I'm finishing my graduate degree in psychology and both have discovered that couples living together before marriage have a higher rate of divorce within the first 5 years of marriage (no, I'm not making that up or exaggerating anything, it's been academically proven). Also, we both chose to be abstinent before we married when we were teens, and have stuck to that through our relationship, so it means a lot to us and we would like to see it through to the end. 
    There's nothing wrong with choosing to not live together before marriage, but as a person with a graduate degree in psychology I'm rather shocked at your statement.  Yes, some studies show higher rates of divorce.  Others show this to be false.  Many of these studies fail to take into account a whole lot of mitigating variables.  
    Well this thread is asking for our personal reasons, I have seen research and we have both chosen to include it as one of the factors in our decision, I'm not sitting here responding to everyone else's decision, merely giving the reason for mine. As I also mentioned it's not the only reason.
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