Living Together Before Marriage
You and your partner are feeling really great about your relationship. You’re ready to take it to the next level. You’re ready to move in together!
But wait…
Wasn’t there something making the rounds a few years ago about living together before marriage being a problem?
What was that about again?
Let me clear up some misconceptions that people have about living together before marriage.
Living together before marriage can be awesome! There are so many different types of couples these days and so many choices for how to navigate your relationship that marriage is no longer a foregone conclusion for serious relationships. While many people do still decide to get married, you no longer have to.
Living together can provide a great opportunity to continue building intimacy in your relationship. It can allow you to navigate conflict resolution and better understand your partner’s way of thinking, living, and problem solving.
For those couples who DO prioritize marriage, it can allow for a better understanding and a path to more informed decision making when deciding if you do want to pick this person to marry.
Now, several years ago, a popular study found that couples who lived together before marriage were significantly more likely to divorce later on in life than couples who did not live together before marriage.
This frightened a number of people and made couples question whether living together might doom them for their future plans.
And understandably so! There wasn’t enough information to see what might be at work in that phenomenon. This was a preliminary study!
Several years later, a follow up study dug into what some of those contributing variables could be. One of the primary variables they found that separated those who divorced from those that did not was the idea that the relationship would change drastically after marriage. Those that expected a drastic change were more likely to be disappointed and later divorce than those who did not expect a drastic change.
The major takeaway is that your relationship is your relationship- you and your partner are who you are together. The work at every stage of your relationship is to be realistic about your expectations of your relationship and do your best to build a solid relationship foundation. (You can harken back to the previous series on the sound relationship house to get an idea of what that might look like!).
**there are also plenty of people who, due to cultural norms, religious beliefs, or personal choice, do NOT live together before marriage. And that’s not indicative of anything either. Your adjustment to sharing your space will just be side by side with your burgeoning marriage, but the same takeaways still apply. Your job is to have realistic expectations of your partner and work to build solid relationship skills**
If this is a decision and situation that you and your partner are having a hard time with, click the button below and let’s talk about it together.