I'm actually a squirrel:
Good advice - or else she'd be hogging the bathroom mirror everyday depriving you of your selfies.

I have 2ba so no problem there. Thanks for thinking of me though, brosef.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Most Helpful

Terrible advice - I can't tell you how many LT relationships I've seen hit the bricks because they couldn't stand living together. You want to wait until AFTER you've been legally married to find that out??

Pro tip - 1 awkward day of moving is infinitely better than the cost of a divorce attorney

You young guns are spending too much time on redpill reddit and following Dan Bilzerian.

Array
 
Controversial

And “I can’t tell you how many” arranged marriages - and others who for religious reasons couldn’t live together prior to marriage - have been incredibly successful.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here. It depends on who the person is. You can learn a lot about someone without living together. Additionally, living together only after marriage gives you more of a reason to accept and adjust to certain habits/ behaviors you otherwise wouldn’t think twice about. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

 

People always point out how countries where arranged marriages are the default have incredibly low divorce rates. But no one ever points out how bad the social stigma against divorce is in those places, let alone whether or not women have the ability to divorce without their husbands permission

 
Intern in Other:

And “I can’t tell you how many” arranged marriages - and others who for religious reasons couldn’t live together prior to marriage - have been incredibly successful.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here. It depends on who the person is. You can learn a lot about someone without living together. Additionally, living together only after marriage gives you more of a reason to accept and adjust to certain habits/ behaviors you otherwise wouldn’t think twice about. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

So your argument is "if you're forced to deal with other people's bad habits because you didn't know about them before marriage, and you have no way out of the marriage, eventually you'll settle for someone you dislike out of inertia?"

If you are being forced into accepting habits and behaviors that you cannot stand, that is never a good thing. Marriage is a partnership. Knowing those things is always better. There is no logical argument to be made that knowing what you're getting into is worse than being forced into a partnership you cannot stand.

Arranged marriages are "successful" because the cultures in which they're practiced also don't easily tolerate divorce.

 

Also, living together as unmarried couple does not mean that finances have to be combined. You could are essentially flatmates that fuck and split joint costs on groceries and utilities. Freedom is living together early on in relationships is key. Both my SO and I are still at the point where I want to go on a lads weekend or she wants to spend thousands on a bag, neither of us is in a position to judge. Individual money, individual choices.

 

That is only if you are with someone who is on the same level as you.

I lived with my ex and not only 1) had to concede on certain standards of living so that it’d be a somewhat fair split (due to her lies of being an independent, egalitarian human) but eventually 2) ended up paying for legit everything because she ultimately ended up assuming the role of a disadvantaged orphan about making less

Everyone should most definitely live with someone with whom they are planning to spend the next half decade. People can’t brush things under the rug so easily when you share that same rug so make sure you shake all of the fucking rugs and check behind every piece of furniture to make sure that you’re not signing up for a terrible deal

Marriage is not only about love, and this person will essentially be your forever roommate. You need to pressure test the partnership to see if they have any mental illness hiding in the corner or any lies waiting to be unraveled. From my personal experience, a nasty personality disorder and $100k in credit card debt (spent on fucking bags and “wanderlust” and shitty champagne) that were kept under wraps for two years came to light after only like 6 months of playing house.

Shit has scarred me but trust that I will def be doing all of the DD in the future, and that includes living with someone before signing myself away

 

OP's advice is some of the worst I've ever heard. Some of the dating/relationship advice on this forum honestly makes me sad. This is why if you look at MDs in your group, half of them are divorced. There's this bloated sense of self that carries into relationships and makes them fail. BE A FUCKING GOOD DUDE TO YOUR WIFE. Talk to her about what makes sense for BOTH OF YOU. Not just one of you, dumbass. OP, you're pathetic.

 

Chill with the calling people pathetic on an internet forum guy.

I agree that it’s probably important to experience living with your SO before making the long-term commitment, but there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. I would encourage people here who are clearly upset by OPs take to read a book called “The Defining Decade” by Meg Jay PhD. It touches on this topic, and she sites both quantitative and anecdotal evidence (from experience as a clinical psychologist) in making the point that moving in with your partner before making a significant commitment to one another can be detrimental to the relationship. It’s been some years since I read the book but the thesis is that when you are married you have a higher incentive to solve issues together, i.e. that if you are married and move in together, your legal or symbolic commitment to one another drives/forces you to find a positive solution with your partner which can be great for a relationship. When you aren’t married or engaged but are living together its easier to not put the effort in and let a difference in living preferences drive a wedge between you and your partner. I’m pretty sure part of the thesis was also that if you are living together prior to marriage, nothing really changes when you do get married since you just go back to living together as you were before, minimizing the commitment thats supposed to come with getting married.

Personally I’d probably want to live with my gf before proposing, but i definitely find legs in the idea that the value of living together, and what it means to move in with an SO, can be diminished by moving in together without an accompanying event that symbolizes an increased commitment to one another.

 

Truly pathetic. Unfortunately there are so many sad people in finance like OP who grow up to be miserable human beings that give you comments at 11pm on a Friday. Sucks we have to work with people like OP. OP, do us a favor and leave the industry.

 
Jackstack:
Terrible advice - I can't tell you how many LT relationships I've seen hit the bricks because they couldn't stand living together. You want to wait until AFTER you've been legally married to find that out??

Pro tip - 1 awkward day of moving is infinitely better than the cost of a divorce attorney

You young guns are spending too much time on redpill reddit and following Dan Bilzerian.

The evidence is clear - divorce rate among Catholics waiting to live together after marriage is significantly lower than those who do not do prep and counseling before tying the knot.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

That's because people who wait until after marriage before moving in together (for religious reasons) are also the people whose religion frowns upon divorce, and so they stick together.

Correlation is not causation, this shouldn't be difficult to understand. Would be more interesting to understand how many of those relationships are healthy and happy, rather than whether they've ended up in divorce or not.

 
Jackstack:
Terrible advice - I can't tell you how many LT relationships I've seen hit the bricks because they couldn't stand living together. You want to wait until AFTER you've been legally married to find that out??

Pro tip - 1 awkward day of moving is infinitely better than the cost of a divorce attorney

You young guns are spending too much time on redpill reddit and following Dan Bilzerian.

Classic example of how reality is counter-intuitive. What you say seems to make sense, but there is no hard evidence that cohabitation prior to marriage leads to better outcomes. It used to be that cohabitation prior to marriage led to a higher divorce rate, but since so many people now cohabitate prior to marriage the link has mostly gone away. In other words, pre-marital cohabitation is not likely to improve or harm your marriage's success.

Array
 

You shouldn’t need to sign a lease with someone to find out if you can live with them long-term. If you can’t judge to a somewhat reasonable extent how well you’d be able to live with someone within hours of meeting them, quite frankly, you need to work on your ability to judge and discern people’s habits and personality traits. These same relationships you mention “crashing and burning” because suddenly they found out that it was perfect before they moved in together and pure hell after are just examples of two people who were too weak to break it off after it was serious.

You cannot tell me with a straight face that after a year of dating someone, having them stay over maybe even for a week at a time, going on vacation occasionally, whatever the case may be...you are still totally incapable of judging how they are to live with unless you move in and live a lease term with them. I don’t buy that at all.

"When you stop striving for perfection, you might as well be dead."
 

It’s absolutely idiotic to even think about getting engaged to someone you haven’t lived with before. Anyone even thinking about marriage should move in together for at least a few months. I know someone who got divorced in ~6 months after marriage because he couldn’t deal with living with her, and he spent a fortune on divorce attorneys in the process. Try before you buy!

 

In a relationship aren’t people basically living together anyway? She’s over basically every night.

You can see her living habits by spending a lot of time with her. I am condoning for at least a place she can go back to at times.

And a way to cut it off immediately if needed. I place a high value in this.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Jdogg89:
It’s absolutely idiotic to even think about getting engaged to someone you haven’t lived with before.

This is the secular view.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Sounds like he did a shit job of actually figuring out who she was and just pulled the trigger. This is entirely avoidable and does not require blowing up your life (by way of living together) in order to find out.

"When you stop striving for perfection, you might as well be dead."
 

Did you just have a post about how you’re a single 30 something year old? Wouldn’t someone who’s married have a better perspective here? Not even disagreeing with you but just saying

 
Analyst 1 in Other:
Did you just have a post about how you’re a single 30 something year old? Wouldn’t someone who’s married have a better perspective here? Not even disagreeing with you but just saying

I think the benefit you are missing here is that I'm not 37 divorced like many of my friends/people I have met.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Devils Advocate:
Why would you expose yourself to the financial ramifications of divorce / marriage without first knowing how your significant other is as a living partner?

For a healthy marriage and low probability of divorce.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
TheExPresidents:
Damn this man really went there.

But tbh I agree bruh. OP I feel like you need to grow up a bit based on your comments/posts on this site. This post is retarded as well, you should consider deleting.

Agree to disagree. Not sure how growing up means living with a potential wife - seems more of a difference of opinion whereby I’m the minority on here.

But as others have said most on here are in their 20s and have not experienced female legal adversity.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
TheExPresidents:
OP I feel like you need to grow up a bit

So growing up is bypassing my spiritual beliefs?

I think you need to man up and search your soul. Don’t ask God what he can do for you, but what you can do for God.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

OP this is a terrible take. You're telling me to wait until I marry a girl to see what her potential nasty living habits are like?

Also, what people who are living with their SO but not married, are having joint bank accounts?? OP I'm convinced you have been in this situation before and are thereby trying to tell everyone to follow your path, which idk if it's even working.

 
Associate 2 in PE - Other:
tell everyone to follow your path, which idk if it's even working.

Well my current path is having a bachelor pad until married - not sure how it’s not working.

I need my space and separation - maybe when you get older you’ll want this a bit more as well.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Associate 2 in PE - Other:

Also, what people who are living with their SO but not married, are having joint bank accounts??

No one and certainly not me.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Developer in RE - Comm:
I'm guessing this is a religious-inspired take?

Yeah partly religious.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Isaiah_53_5:
Separate yourself financially and physically. Maybe they visit everyday - but be able to cut it off cleanly at any time. Living together only complicates things.

I have to disagree with this one. As others have already said, why would you wait till AFTER being legally bound which is expensive in itself, to then find out you hate living together which is also very expensive? If you like space that's fine but if you're relationship is serious then arranging your own time to do you shouldn't be an issue. If you're pushing away the opportunity to live with your significant other maybe its not the one?

 
Intern in AM - Other:
If you're pushing away the opportunity to live with your significant other maybe its not the one?

I’m Catholic so you’re actually not allowed to live together and usually required to do 6 months of counseling with a priest before the marriage date.

So my spiritual beliefs disagree with your presumption.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I'm not sure if you were being ironic in your earlier comments, but I was under the impression that you weren't a virgin, and you've also taken drugs like psychedelics from time to time. If you went against Catholic teachings then, why are you so adamant about this specific Catholic procedure?

I’m a fun guy. Obviously I love the game of basketball. I mean there’s more questions you have to ask me in order for me to tell you about myself. I'm not just gonna give you a whole spill... I mean, I don't even know where you're sitting at
 

Unpopular opinion - I somewhat agree.

You can go on holidays, visit each other often/spend weekends at each other's place etc to understand what they are like to live with.

Now while I may not wait until I am married to move in together, I definitely consider it a decision that goes hand-in-hand with getting engaged and beginning to combine finances and planning a life together.

 
petight:
Unpopular opinion - I somewhat agree.

You can go on holidays, visit each other often/spend weekends at each other's place etc to understand what they are like to live with.

This is a shit take.

First off, you aren't "living" with someone if you know you or they will be leaving in a day or a week or a month. You can put up with habits you don't like when you know there is an expiration date. Spending weekends with a significant other is awesome - you visit, you do a ton of fun things, you have sex, you live your best life. That part is easy. What's tough is when it comes time to split bill paying. When you have to deal with the fact that one of you leaves their dirty dishes out. That one of you takes 45 minutes in the morning to get ready. You never have to address those conflict areas when you know you have a refuge in your own place, just waiting. Even if you live across the hall, the fact that you or your SO can retreat to their own space at will makes it easy to not deal with arguments and conflicts. Once you HAVE to deal with that shit, when there is no choice but to have it out and fight and compromise, that's when you realize whether you're capable of doing that for your whole life or not.

 

Or if you are two mature, responsible individuals, you can get past minor issues like someone didn't do the dishes like they were supposed to. Living with someone before marriage to test it out is way different than being married to them, since one requires total commitment and selflessness (at least to make it work) and one requires zero and allows you to remain totally selfish. You have plenty of options to confront conflicts together without living with a significant other.

If one or both people are selfish and not committed, it will go south regardless. If the opposite, it'll work out well regardless.

 

I actually had to write an analytical paper about this in college lol and I think that this is a personal issue and there are merits to both arguments. It logically makes sense to "try before you buy" and that works out for many couples but, as other users have pointed out and some research has shown, it can be harmful for relationships in the long run and can be correlated with higher rates of divorce*. While I am sure a portion of this can be attributed to the fact that couples who cite tradition as being the reason they don't want to live together are also less likely to get divorced for those same cultural reasons, the analyses that I have seen account for these cultural differences and found that the same trend is true for the typical, "non-traditional" couple (in America). The reasoning is that

  1. The inertia effect: A surprising amount of couples live together because it feels like the "next step" or to save money, and not necessarily because of an increase in commitment to one another. Then, since their lives are already so integrated and it seems like the next logical step, they get married even if emotionally they are not there yet/truly compatible...which doesnt end well. Of course this does not apply to couples who are already engaged or have seriously plotted out a path to marriage.

  2. Especially for younger couples, it makes it harder to get a realistic read on how they feel in the relationship. Since the other person is convenient, always around, and (again) so integrated in your life, you aren’t questioning whether this relationship is a good fit as you and your goals develop in the same way you would if you were living apart. Even if you do realize you are growing out of the other person and there are some dealbreakers, the sheer headache of having to separate now that you live together subconsciously gives you a lot of incentive to stick it out. Obviously not great in the long-run.

  3. As another user alluded to, it downplays the commitment that comes with marriage. A surprising number of couples felt like living together marriage would be very similar scenarios, only to then be caught by surprise and file for divorce because they weren’t actually ready. In cohabitation, there is always the option to leave which is in the back of each partner’s mind. However in marriage, you have to learn to work through things and make some compromises if you want it to work in the long-run.

  4. In many instances, things that wouldn’t be an issue in marriage are an issue in cohabitation. There are some compromises (location, chore distribution, financials, etc.) that people would be willing to make for their spouse but not their girlfriend/boyfriend. Basically, no one wants to do husband shit for someone who isnt their wife, or wife shit for someone who isnt their husband. Personally, I would be a lot more willing to have a longer commute or cover more of the expenses for my wife who I will be with for the long-haul than my gf who could theoretically leave any minute without any deterrents (i.e. divorce). This means that cohabitation isnt always an accurate proxy in those situations.

*All this being said, if you and your SO are in a place where these things won’t be an issue I can definitely see some benefits to living together and don’t think either option is “pathetic” or “stupid”. My impression of the whole "higher rate of divorce" thing is that if people don't address the above mentioned issues or just live together bc they feel pressure by their SO then it will increase the odds of divorce, but if you are already on the road to marriage and see this as a mutually beneficial step that you have both thought through together then I am sure it'll be just fine. Similarly, not living with someone doesnt mean that you are doomed to find some hidden side of your SO that you just can't stand. Hopefully you have spent enough prolonged periods of time together (vacations, multiple nights in a row, etc.) that there shouldn’t be too many surprises. There are successful and failed marriages in both camps and only you can know what makes sense for you at that given time. Personally, I wouldn't move in with my gf until we are married but wouldn't judge someone for doing so.

Array
 

Something doesn’t add up. Most people in the U.S. live with their SO before tying the knot. Yet the U.S. has one the highest divorce rates in the world. Also, I read an article years ago that people who move in after marriage (not necessarily due to religious beliefs) don’t divorce, or don’t divorce as quickly. Too lazy to find the article myself, but feel free to share if someone finds it.

From personal experience, people will NEVER act like their 100% true selves until the “deal has been sealed” aka marriage. When my ex lived with me (she was hot AF btw), we both tried hard to accommodate (more like impress) each other. We wanted our relationship to work and thought we could get married one day. Neither one us wanted to be the one that wasn’t pulling their fair share or not putting in the effort.

As others have mentioned, you potentially have more to lose after getting married if things don’t work out, but getting married also means people stop giving a shit. Salespeople are nice until they close the sale. Good luck hearing from them or getting help afterwards. That’s usually when shit starts hitting the fan.

Personally, waiting after getting married to move in is something exciting to look forward. If both sides are truly in love, then minor inconveniences of living together can be overcome easily.

 

Coming in late here, but it feels like everyone is talking across each other and not realizing that you're basically comparing different investment products here.

OP's motivations seem to tilt pretty heavily religious/trad relationship-to-marriage track - and presumably that works well for him.

Most of the responses here are the modern yuppie cosmopolitan relationships that a lot of major city finance types are more likely to find themselves in if they are not particularly religious. (I certainly fall into this latter category.)

The former and the latter are just not the same thing, so you can't take the expectations of one and put it onto the other.

Sure, OP probably shouldn't have made a blanket declaration on the topic, but whatever it's the internet.

Once you realize that the arguments are comparing just structurally different setups, it's easy to see if the original advice is or is not right for you - and ignore it if you need to.

“Millionaires don't use astrology, billionaires do”
 

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"Son, life is hard. But it's harder if you're stupid." - my dad
 

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heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

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