Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Riggerjack shared: "I know I have lived with women I had no intention of marrying, and many of the younger men I have known have been in the same boat. I'm sure this also applies to women, but perhaps less commonly."

Nothing personal, but this is just one reason why I would strongly discourage any daughter and son of mine from living with someone before marriage. Living together is a very common practice but imo that doesn't mean it's the best way to develop a relationship, IF development is what you're after. Indeed, I'm not sure it in and of itself is a development at all: "For most groups, cohabitation is no particular indicator of higher commitment."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... sk-divorce.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... n-together
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/us/p ... ation.html

There used to be a thing called the "cohabitation effect," which meant couples who had lived together before marriage were more likely to divorce later. Whether it has disappeared or not is open to debate. Selection bias was a big part of the explanation for the cohabitation effect. This meant people who tended to cohabitate were people who also tended to have more modest financial means and to come from divorced families, as opposed to people who didn't cohabitate. Many of them also practiced serial cohabitation. (These are all, like it or not, risk factors for divorce right? Why replicate the practices of those who are more likely to end up in bad marriages?) "Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education, or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself." The power of inertia has been identified as a key reason for why cohabitating couples stay together, for example. Personally I think living together must take away some of the excitement of early marriage. The convenience factor of having the person right there is actually robbing you of the opportunity of inconveniencing yourself for them and vice versa, i.e., making the grand and small gestures (and discovering that you do want to make them). Perhaps my views are overly romantic, but the point is if a loving marriage and family is what you want, why take unnecessary risks in getting there.

There's no way I'd have gotten married without living with the other person first. I know plenty of people do this, but I find it utterly bizarre.

Thanks for the elaborations, @Riggerjack and @Peanut. Thanks everyone who gave input.

There are questions and topics in this thread that I haven't spoken to my SO about and so I'll do that.

I appreciate the encouragement to clarify with my SO what moving in together means since the resulting convo made me realizing I was making some incorrect assumptions about what they had previously said. I think discussing all other topics that came up will lead to further clarity and understanding. Thanks!

As far as the "cohabitation effect" goes, after reading the links Peanut posted and several other related links and articles to try to understand what could have been the problem in those cases and also after clarifying long term plans with my SO, I don't think that is a strong factor in my relationship. Both of us are far from the most risky demographic mentioned, cohabitation for me isn't an indicator we are "sliding not deciding" given the discussion and thought we put into the steps in our relationship, and I guess I'm willing to accept whatever unexplained, relatively small risk that appears in the studies even when you control for demographics/selection effect.

Feel free to continue sharing perspectives and thoughts.

@mathiverse: I'm just being a grumpy bitch because I think that the societal assumption that we should all end up solely cohabitating with our SOs (and our children) is a shitty one. We end up simultaneously taking up too much space per person and not having any personal space. I'm also not a giant fan of marriage or long-term monogamy.

If you've never done it before I think it's worth doing, if only because it's such a common experience. It's easy enough to get out of if things go south. There's a lot of personal growth to be had and I find that older adults who've never cohabitated usually have a certain kind of selfishness.

For the record, I cohabitate with my SO. It was a great way to take one of the greatest people I've ever met and turn them into someone who is constantly annoying to me/ annoyed by me. I'll begrudgingly admit there are some positive aspects as well. If I took for granted that I had to live with an SO, or thought this was the best way to have a romantic relationship/ living situation, I would consider myself to be winning. I don't think I'd move in with an SO again, but I'm not committed to never doing it under any circumstances.

When I got knocked up and married, I was living in an almost ideal environment for my personality type. A co-op full of a mix of around 30 students and townies, including one of my sisters and one of my best friends from high school. There was always an interesting conversation or a party going on in the living room; division of labor allowed my only chore to be cooking dinner once a week for everybody else; and I had a room to myself to which I could retreat. Then, suddenly, I ended up married, and found myself "alone" house-sitting for my affluent in-laws with my new husband and his 18 year old brother. Every night I would cook dinner, and then "the boys" would silently take their plates and some beer down to the basement rec room to watch the basketball play-offs. Sometimes I would join them. That's why I always think "I don't want to live alone with a man."