[ryeb]

Did any of you live with your SO before marriage?

If so, how long did you wait to move in with eachother?

What do you think is an appropriate "time frame" to move in with some?

[ryeb]

I agree about living with every person you date. It is weird, the man I am with now, we are moving what would be considered fast, but it is like everything is just falling into place. Maybe it is because we are a little older? Not old, but he is 29; me, 27.

*Let it be known I am just curious of opinions, not looking for advice lol

[ButterCup85]

I say do whatever feels right! I lived with my ex husband about a year before marriage. And the other guy kinda lived with me fairly soon- he was my rebound so we didn't stay together haha.

I don't always listen to the too fast stuff. Life is too short. Not that I promote an extreme promiscuous life style or not being safe etc. But, you're adults! Soo, whatever floats your boat!

Oh I don't have a time frame really. It depends on the person and how we are and whatnot. I don't really have many rules when it comes to relationships.

[Ferumbras]

With my husband, we lived together for about a year and a half before getting married, moving in together after about a year of dating (and I was over at his place a good 4 or 5 nights out of the week by two or three months into the relationship). We also shared a teeny tiny Paris apartment for a month before officially moving in together -- that really lets you know if you can live with someone!

With my previous fiance, we moved in together after four years, but it had been an online, long-distance relationship until that point. For the first two years, I was still in college and so had my dorm room I could always go to if needed. After that, we were well and truly living together for two more years.

I'm with what others have said: do what feels right for you. But I'm a huge advocate of living with someone before marriage or matching tattoos.

[kaplods]

I'm super traditional, and have always believed in slow-progressing relationships, long engagements and not living together before marriage (especially when in college I learned that the divorce rate for couples hwo live together first is actually higher than for couples who don't), so I always said I would never live with someone before marriage, and then I met my husband and I threw all that out the window.

We met in mid-October of 2001, and I moved in with him Feb 1, 2002 and we were married November 2002.

I was ready to get married before I moved in with him, but he'd had a really bad live-in relationshop before me (the ex-fiance dumped him while he was visiting his great-grandmother after she broke a hip. When he called to tell his then-hunny he was on his way home, she told him he didn't live there anymore and she had moved a new boyfriend in).

We would have gotten married sooner, but my youngest sister already had her wedding date set for June, and we didn't want to upstage her wedding with our own, or set it too close to hers so that relatives wouldn't be overburdened with the whole gift-giving and traveling for the weddings, so we set ours for November.

It really was a whirl-wind courtship, and I would have never thought myself capable of letting my heart rule my head. In every other relationship I ever had, I was always very practical and level-headed. Something about hubby just felt right, almost from the beginning. I trusted my gut, and it worked out.

I still feel though that we "beat the odds." That we did everything "wrong" and it still ended up working out, because we were right for each other. Then again, we've also worked very hard at it, and I think it's why I did trust my instincts with him, because I learned early on with him that he believed just as I did, that good relationships don't just happen, they require a lot of work. We were both willing to put in the work, so it turned out ok.

We also had a "crash course" approach to our relationship. From the day we met, we spent nearly every free moment together. We talked about our dates being measured in dog-years, because we estimated that we spent 7 times the time together than other new couples we knew. We spent almost every free minute together (and even quite a few not-entirely-free minutes, emailing from work).

I still can't say I recommend whirlwind courtships, but I can't really criticise them anymore either.

[krampus]

I think it's the logical option to try before you buy too. That said I don't have any intent to get married or move in with my dude now, soon or maybe ever.

[mandalinn82]

DW and I met in our college dorm - she spent a LOT of nights in my dorm room, and that was after we'd been together a month! But we got our own place after a year together.

I'm fairly certain we would have gotten married earlier if it was an option for us. As it was, we had what most would consider to be a long, drawn out engagement, but that was mostly for legal reasons.

[Skittlez]

I was staying with my mother when I met my now husband. We met online so I was lucky enough to have a mother who let him come stay with us for a bit until we found our own place. He moved in with me within 4 or 5 months of us meeting. We bought a house and moved out, then 2 years later we married. In my opinion, if it feels right, do it. You'll know if it feels too fast :-P

[indiblue]

I had been dating my boyfriend for 2 years before we moved in together; we've now lived together happily for the last year.

Even though my bf comes from a Catholic family, we really felt it was important to strip away all the 'fantasies' we had about marriage and see it for what it was- daily tedious decisions about money, jobs, future, etc, and make sure if we decided to get married it would be based on a realistic understanding of what marriage entails.

Though we live together, we are still quite conservative in many respects- neither of us have lived with anyone before, and by far the most conservative among among our peers when it comes to sex, dating, prior sexual partners, etc.

There are a lot of studies indicated a relationship between people who move in together and high divorce rates. REMEMBER that these are all correlations not causations. It is pretty impossible to tell if the reason for the divorce was that they moved in together. In other words, if those same people did not move in together, would they have gotten divorced? There's no way to tell. There are a lot of reasons for the findings of these surveys- one major explanation is people who move in together are more likely to be liberal, progressive, and less religious. They therefore are more likely to get divorced if they are unhappy, whereas people who are more religious or conservative are more likely to eschew divorce as even an option, even if they are unhappy with the marriage, someone cheats, etc. (please note I am NOT making judgment statements on divorce, living together, etc. Just looking at these studies/findings on correlation from a proper statistical research vantage point).

That said, I recently read a GREAT book I'd highly recommend called The Marriage-Go-Round. The author, an anthropologist, cites one of the reasons that people who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce is that they got married because they had sort of a 'why not' mentality. They moved in together, started living like they were married, and then got married as a natural next step, without talking about it or examining their relationship rigorously. I see this is a useful cautionary example for people who do live together (like myself) to continue to examine the relationship and decide if breaking up or getting married makes the most sense, not just getting married because you're "basically" married already.

Just some rambling thoughts. Whether you live together before marriage or not is completely up to your own situation and what works best for you

[nelie]

I had dated a few guys before my husband, for a year or more, with no inclinations of moving in or marriage. I had known my husband for years but we were casual friends. We became close friends and then we started dating. 3 months after we started dating, we started plans to move to be closer to eachother. 2 months after that, I moved from Colorado to the east coast and we moved in together.

I will say that the need for both of us to move was a pretty big factor in us living together. He had just moved back to the east coast and was temporarily living with his parents. So the option was for him to extend his stay at his parents and I move into a tiny apartment and see how he relationship progressed and then move into a larger apartment or start with he larger apartment and live together. We decided to have both of us move into a larger apartment.

[fatferretfanatic]

Hubby and I were in a college that doesn't allow traditional students to live off campus, so we didn't live together before marriage though we really would have loved to. We were already engaged by the time we entered college (we were 18), and so we had been together three years before we got married, when we were 20. I think you should do what you feel is right. If you feel like it's a good idea, have weighed the pros and cons, and still feel you should move in, then maybe you should!

[junebug41]

DH and I met when I was 22 and he was 25. We maintained our own apartments for 6 or 7 months until we got our first place together, but spent every night together long before that so yes, I think things moved pretty fast. It just felt right and was comfortable for us. I don't think there is a set time frame that's approprtiate. My parents are pretty progressive and didn't have any big issue with it. His parents are very traditional and it did not sit well with his mother, but she got over it.

ETA: We met in 2004, moved in together in 2005, engaged in 2007, married 2008, house 2009, child on the way 2011.

[sacha]

We met & I moved in within 3 weeks. That was quite a few years ago and we have a 1 year old son now, a house, and are still not legally married We will get around to it one day, but living together/children before marriage is actually quite common here and we feel no urge or pressure to do so.

[4star]

Yep. We were broken up but still friends, and just intending to be roommates. Things just turned into better circumstances along the way though and we've been together over a decade and married for several years now. What can ya say? Life is crazy but cool.

[MaryB75]

I think you will know what is the right thing for you to do. I moved in with my husband after we had only been dating for 1.5 months and we were married 1.5 years after that. I don't regret it and it just felt like the right hing to do. We just had our 4 year anniversry in April.