Is it not okay to talk about our possible future together? Long post!

[Twik]

I'm just going to park a very firm POD behind everything that HatStrap has said.

Living together can be as much of a commitment as marriage. I refuse to find my relationship less valid than Britney Spears's 55 hour marriage because she had a paper and I don't. I share a bed, a dog and a set of really ugly glasses with BF. Neither one of us is going to leave because of a "down" time.

It can be - but I suspect (from a very unscientific poll of a group called "people I know", that far more people have cohabited multiple times, than have been married multiple times.

[katycoo]

So, I read that article.

"Marriage Changed Everything".  Umm, no.  Not for me and DH anyway. 

People kept telling us it would be different.  It wasn't, which I see as a good thing - we were happy.  We didn't want things to be different.  And 4 and a half years on, we are still very happy.

[Larrabee]

I'm just going to park a very firm POD behind everything that HatStrap has said.

Living together can be as much of a commitment as marriage. I refuse to find my relationship less valid than Britney Spears's 55 hour marriage because she had a paper and I don't. I share a bed, a dog and a set of really ugly glasses with BF. Neither one of us is going to leave because of a "down" time.

It can be - but I suspect (from a very unscientific poll of a group called "people I know", that far more people have cohabited multiple times, than have been married multiple times.

Well, so?  Surely its better to end multiple cohabitations that are not right than to stick with one unhappy marriage?

Where I live, living together is generally seen as a very sensible step towards marriage, not an opposing viewpoint.  It makes a lot of sense to make sure you actually can live together and get along when the realities of bills, chores, sharing a bathroom and meshing your lives come into play.

Some couples realise that they can't live together, so separate.  Some realise that they can and then either decide to marry and make things legally recognised, or to carry on as they are knowing that it works for them.

A marriage certificate is not a magic piece of paper, its the people who matter not their legal status.

[Elfmama]

In my own group of people I know, the same people that think living together before marriage is wrong (conservative Christians, generally) are also the same people that would never ever get a divorce, not even consider it an option even if they had been unhappy for awhile or it was obviously not working.  Now I'm not saying other people would just figure "hey if it doesn't work out we can get a divorce", as i know it's not that easy.  Divorcing should be a last resort, IMO and I'm sure usually it is.  But for the people I know, it's never actually an option because it goes against their religious beliefs.  Which is fine, but it also might help to explain why people who do not live together for marriage are less likely to divorce, at least in the demographic that a website such as marriagebuilders targets.  They are less likely to divorce for the same reason they won't live together prior to marriage.  It doesn't mean their marriages are more successful than those who do live together before marriage and divorce later down the line for whatever reason.

Indeed.  I had an online friend whose parents were of that exceedingly conservative bent.  No divorce, female submission, husband lord and master, etc.  Friend's mother could not divorce her abusive husband, and suicide was a sin.  So when she developed breast cancer, she waited until the lump was the size of an orange and untreatable. That way her death was "Deity's will."    It was literally her only way out of a horrendous situation.  Was her marriage "more successful" than someone who divorces under those circumstances? 

[blarg314]

I think there's definitely a sample bias in studies of cohabitation and divorce.  People won't live together before marriage for moral reasons are more likely to believe that divorce is wrong, and a couple should stay together no matter what.  So it's not an issue of causality - cohabiting doesn't cause divorce - but rather that people who are more likely to choose divorce are more likely to cohabit, and the other way around. 

However, the trap of cohabitation is when the couple doesn't agree on what it means. If you have one person who thinks moving in together is the next step on the way to marriage and kids, and the other thinks that it's mainly a way to save on rent, then at some point a few years down the line, the marriage minded partner is going to realize that they aren't going to get what they want. But by this time, they've been living together for a few years and breaking up is going to be a huge hassle. Ultimately, they can end up with all the heartbreak and difficulty of divorcing and separating their lives, without ever having actually gotten married.

[Elfqueen13]

If I had lived with my first husband for a year before marriage, I would not have married him.  Plain and simple, it would not have happened.  Because we moved in together about 6 weeks before getting married, I stayed with him for 8 years before finding it in myself to leave.

My current husband I lived with for 2 years before marriage. We moved in together with the idea that it was permanent.  Marriage was on the table as an option but not a requirement for either of us.

I see a lot of couples who live together and set up a structure and then when they get married they revert to the gender roles they grew up with.  This can lead to all sorts of issues.  When I got married the 2nd time we made a conscious effort to ensure that the only real "change" was my last name.  Everything else pretty much continued as before.