Adrienne Writes

A friend asked me whether I thought it was a good idea to live together before marriage… Here’s my take:

I know some folks who believe that it’s necessary to live together before marriage to “test out” what happens when the relationship gets real close. It’s a practice for marriage, they say. You live together, pay bills together, perhaps have some kids, make love every night and maybe, one day, actually walk down that aisle. And if it doesn’t work out, after six years of living together, you can break up! No strings attached.

Isn’t that lovely?

Actually no. You just wasted six years of good dating life on some fool who was not the “one.” Why on earth would you do that?

You shortchange yourself by living together before marriage. If you are good enough to be a sexually-close roommate, or to carry someone’s child, you are good enough to be yoked. And if you don’t want to be yoked, why are you “testing” marriage anyway? If you don’t want to have that person in your life permanently then why are you having – or fathering – their child?

Of course, this post only makes sense if you have a desire to be wed. If you have no desire to be wed, then none of this matters anyway.

However, real talk: people who live together before marriage with no clear wedding date already set are three times as likely to never marry at all. People who live together with a wedding date set for the very near future (three to four months) have a better shot at staying married. People who don’t live together until marriage have the best shot at staying together.

Let’s repeat with statistics. People who cohabitate have only a 45% chance of ever getting married. More than eight out of 10 couples who live together before marriage will break up before the wedding. Only 12% of couples who start off shacking up have a marriage that lasts longer than 10 years.

It seems easy to shack up and it’s a very non-committal way to express a commitment, but it is really good for you in the long run? Statistics would seem to point to an answer of no.

And from a personal standpoint, I believe that when you shack up you take away the magic of the first year of marriage. That first year of marriage should be getting to know each other better and intimately; learning how to split up household chores; setting up life insurance policies and wills; opening up wedding presents every weekend for the first month; picking out photos for your wedding album; arguing over who gets to write the thank you note to Aunt Francine; figuring out schedules and anniversary trips; getting excited about dressing together and showering together and cooking together and living together… But if you spend all that time on some random dude or gal that you just “test out,” what do you do when you get married?

I suppose you just skip all the stuff that’s exciting for a newlywed couple and in so doing, it’s possible that you might erase some of the “magic” of the first few years.

This is not to say that all couples who shack up have an untimely demise. I know a few folks – and have read about a lot more – who have figured out how to make cohabitation work for them. For these folks, cohabitation only works because both people are truly ok with that status. But if one person in the relationship changes their mind and wants marriage, then shacking up doesn’t work. And if that’s the case, why even put yourself into that situation?

If you want to be wed, try to avoid the shack. It’s one thing to shack because your lease ran out and your wedding is in one month. It’s a whole other thing to shack up for three years in the hopes that, one day, you’ll be married. If you want to pretend to be married, why not take the plunge and go all the way there? And if you’re not ready to go all the way there, why pretend? That’s why they call it DATING.