We met 5 Apr02, we have been together since 9 Apr 02.
You know you were ment to be, when you go to take a shower together and one of you takes a big dump, and you both comment.

We have been blissfully happy for, 4 years. Just like Shrek, and Fiona.:lovers:

Indeed! and a shot of tequilla helps.

Hello all! Figured I'd throw in my two cents.

I think the wait period before getting married deffinitely varies from situation to situation. I dated my SO for only 3 monhts before we decided to move in together. We have been living together now for a year and its deffinitely working out. Right now we are not technically engaged but plan on getting married next summer. But I'm 25 and he has 36! We have had plenty of time to figure out what we want. Hell, I'm still a little iffy...

You are young enough to be able to give it plenty of time. I have to suggest living together for at least a year before deciding on marriage...it is a real eye opener, and if it works out it would remove a huge stresser that often happens right after marriage...

Good luck though! :)

I've heard that statistically speaking, people who live together before getting married have a greater likelyhood than the general population of getting divorced. I believe it.

I thinks it's because the kinds of people who would live together are also more often the kinds of people who might not be as serious about a vow of "'til death do us part." I think it's also that if you have to test the waters in order to be convinced that you should marry someone, then you probably shouldn't be marrying them.

Having said that, I lived with my wife for about 9 months before we got married. For me, it was that I wanted to be with her right away. In my mind, we were already married. We had to go through the planning, etc. of a real wedding to make it official, but my lifelong commitment to her had already been made. Kind of like a secret marriage.

It's all about the attitude when entering into the relationship.

I don't know if I believe that. Not trying to call you a liar. I just don't really understand why that would be the case. I mean, I would think that living with someone, you get to know so much more about them, and you would have a better idea of whether or not it woudl wourk out.

Why is that?

It's hard for me to explain. Basically it has to do with intent. If a couple moves in together to test the waters, they know that they can always bail out if they don't like it. They are not promising to be together for the rest of their lives. They aren't being serious about it. If they start off with a casual attitude toward the relationship, they are likely to keep that attitude after they get married. A casual attitude toward marriage is not ideal if you want the marriage to last forever.

There are many people who live together and then go on to have great marriages. My wife and I are one such couple. But statistics say it's rare. A quick Google search turned up this marriage counselor's site, which says that 85% of all couples that lived together before marriage ended in divorce. That statistic may no longer be true, but I bet the number is still high. Do a Google search on it. There are a lot of religious sites you have to wade through, but there's some info out there.

We lived together for three years, then lived apart for a year to be sure, before we got married.
That's me and the ex I'm speaking of. :D

glatt: Ill deffinitely do some research. I can understand your point of view, and Im sure there are plenty of people who move in together aren't serious about it. I just also believe that there are plenty, like yourself, who move in together to make sure their life styles are compatable. I know I love my boyfriend, but wouldn't want to marry him and THEN find out all the crap about him that I found out when we first moved in together. I found that I could deal with those quirks and changes but some people may not have...and I think its better to "test the waters" before taking the plunge.

Hopefully I can find some statistics that break it down beyond just moving in together before marriage. Im sure there are a lot of other factors... like age, and how long they lived together, financial situation, whether or not the couple had children, etc.

******************************edit

Okay, so Im looking around. I deffinitely see the research you are referring to.

"Ironically, the divorce rate among those who once lived together is higher than among those who have not. Experts say that is often because those who choose to cohabit are not great believers in marriage in the first place"

So, you are deffinitely right on the statistics. But that doesn't mean it cant work if both people are actually commited to the relationship. :D

Can you imagine if all those people who lived together rather than getting married actually just got married? Eeek... That would mean even more divorces. I highly doubt that those who lived together then got married and then got divorced, wouldn't have gotten divorced if they had gotten married without living together first. So... the cohabitation before marriage is not a deciding factor, maybe just an indicator. IMO.

One peice of research from Rutgers states that not only does living together before marriage increas the risk of breaking up after marriage, but it increases the risk of domestic violence, and physical and sexual abuse for children... I just don't see how living together before marriage and domestic violence and child abuse are linked...makes no sense to me...

I really don't know. Damn statistics foiled me.

I've read a couple articles on this and was surprised to find that no one considered that religion/social background plays a major role in this and that it really might not be the "living together" aspect that determines the divorce rate. Remove the "living together before marriage" factor and take two couples who are in a marriage that has turned unhappy. Who is more likely to get divorced? Which couple do you think is more likely to feel pressured to stay together? Did they even factor in what couples had children and which didn't?

I think that living together before marriage does not create more unhappy marriages that end in divorce, but rather that getting married quickly under religious terms has a higher tendancy to keep couples, even the unhappy ones, together, either through social/family/religious pressure or that they might be more likely to have children in the early stages of marriage that would encourage the couple to stay together.

Statistics are always fun to play with. In this case, I'd say someone really enjoyed themselves.

Studies show that, of divorced people, 100% of them were married. It is an absolute predictor. If you don't want to get divorced, don't get married.

I've had very similar thoughts. But the 85% number is such a high number, I don't think it can all be explained by the points you made. There has to be some sort of mixture of the two possibilities. But I agree with many of your points.

Even though the numbers can be questioned, I think throwing the warning out there is helpful, because I think marriage is important, and anyone entering in to marriage should be thinking about things like this. I always encourage anyone getting married to enter into premarital counseling. The counseling can do much more than living together can to reveal potential areas of incompatibility. It can also give the couple tools they can use to help work though conflicts that come up during the marriage.

I think it could. Very easily, in fact. Harley even states this in his reply letter about living together:

I agree there are some good points in the article and I do think there is a big difference in how a relationship grows in living together, but I would not weigh heavily on these statistics. Hey, the divorce rate in 1950 was 2.6 for every 1,000 couples, much lower than today's rates. People were also getting married at a very young age on average. So, should we encourage people to get married in their teens, again?

There is a correlation between cohabitation and religious view, so I don't doubt that the statistics play the way they do because of it.

Ah, I see where all of this comes from. Someone is abusing a CDC study.

9%, in this case, would not be significant, not to mention that the interpretation of the CDC study was flawed.

Hey, that's a good site. I'm glad you found it. All I could find in my quick search were a bunch of religious sites and the one I linked to. This is the actual CDC study. Sweet.

Even if there is no causal relationship between living together and the higher rate of divorce, shouldn't someone who is living together take that statisitic as a wake-up call? There is a correlation, even if it isn't causal. Even this site states clearly that if you are living with someone before marriage, you have a 9% greater chance of getting a divorce than if you aren't. (So what does that correspond to, a 60% divorce rate instead of a 50% one for the general public? I don't know those numbers) Regardless of the reasons, that should be a warning to anyone cohabitating before marriage.

I would suggest that anyone in that position take a hard look at their relationship and motivations before getting married.

The website you link to has some pretty good advice for cohabitators who plan to get married.

Sure -- it means that before you get married, you should be: over the age of 25, religious, have a college education, and have an income of more than $50k/year. Lastly and least significant, you shouldn't cohabitate. If you have all of that, you're set based on the statistics. ;)

Once school is out of the way, I'll be staring down the barrel of that gun. I'm really looking forward to it!