Living Together vs. Marriage

[Iceweasel]

Think the idea from the "Earth 2" series has a lot of emrit: marriage contracts for a fixed length of time with option to renew. Get married for 5 years, if things are still amicable after 5 years can renew for another 5.

Never heard of the show, I kinda like it. What about rentals? I could go for that, a rental bride. Maybe a short term lease with the option to own?

Just be a slut - it's best to be honest....

It's too much work to be a boy slut. I'm liking the lease option, maybe with upgrade potentials, credit for not abusing the equipment.

 

[Cecilie1200]

What are your thoughts?

Do you think it's best to live with someone before getting married?
Aside from religious reasons, can you see any reason to NOT live with someone before marriage?

Yes. Lots of them.

It makes it entirely too easy to simply "drift" into marriage, rather than making a definite, affirmative decision that THIS is the right person to spend the rest of your life with. I cannot count the number of friends I've personally seen start dating someone, move in together after a couple of months because "it's what you do", and then just kinda succumb to inertia. It's not fantastic, but it's not horrific, so they just go along, not especially happy but not really thinking about it, and the expectation and pressure to get married subtly builds up, and one day they do it, probably for boring, prosaic reasons. And almost inevitably, the marriage collapses within five years because they never really, affirmatively wanted to get married in the first place. It just happened by default.

Hand in hand with that, cohabitation makes it a lot harder to extricate yourself from a lukewarm, less-than-marriage-quality relationship, and commits you far more than the relationship might warrant before you're ready to REALLY commit.

In a weird way, I think it also has the psychological effect of subtly conveying to both your partner and yourself that the relationship isn't really important to you. I realize that's the exact opposite of what's intended, and maybe even what you consciously believe happened. But dramatic scenes in TV and movies notwithstanding, there's an excellent chance that the decision to cohabitate probably was not a huge, romantic scene almost identical to a marriage proposal (see above re: "drifting into commitment"). Even if it was, by making a halfway commitment instead of essentially pissing or getting off the pot, you have on some level signaled yourself and your partner that you view the relationship not as "'til death do us part", but as "as long as I am happy and comfy".

To some extent, this is just my perception, but it's borne out by statistics. A Columbia University study found that only 26% of women surveyed and 19% of the men married the person with whom they were cohabiting. A National Survey of Families and Households, based on interviews with 13,000 people, concluded, "About 40% of cohabiting unions in the U.S. break up without the couple getting married." The National Survey of Families and Households also indicates that "unions begun by cohabitation are almost twice as likely to dissolve within 10 years compared to all first marriages: 57% to 30%." Psychology Today reported the findings of Yale University sociologist Neil Bennett that cohabiting women were 80% more likely to separate or divorce than were women who had not lived with their spouses before marriage. Etc, etc.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Poor way of phrasing it, but why buy the cow if it dont' give milk.

Nothing like living together to find out if you're compatible

Except it turns out that THAT appears to be at the heart of why it doesn't work like it's believed to.

 

[Iceweasel]

What are your thoughts?

Do you think it's best to live with someone before getting married?
Aside from religious reasons, can you see any reason to NOT live with someone before marriage?

Yes. Lots of them.

It makes it entirely too easy to simply "drift" into marriage, rather than making a definite, affirmative decision that THIS is the right person to spend the rest of your life with. I cannot count the number of friends I've personally seen start dating someone, move in together after a couple of months because "it's what you do", and then just kinda succumb to inertia. It's not fantastic, but it's not horrific, so they just go along, not especially happy but not really thinking about it, and the expectation and pressure to get married subtly builds up, and one day they do it, probably for boring, prosaic reasons. And almost inevitably, the marriage collapses within five years because they never really, affirmatively wanted to get married in the first place. It just happened by default.

Hand in hand with that, cohabitation makes it a lot harder to extricate yourself from a lukewarm, less-than-marriage-quality relationship, and commits you far more than the relationship might warrant before you're ready to REALLY commit.

In a weird way, I think it also has the psychological effect of subtly conveying to both your partner and yourself that the relationship isn't really important to you. I realize that's the exact opposite of what's intended, and maybe even what you consciously believe happened. But dramatic scenes in TV and movies notwithstanding, there's an excellent chance that the decision to cohabitate probably was not a huge, romantic scene almost identical to a marriage proposal (see above re: "drifting into commitment"). Even if it was, by making a halfway commitment instead of essentially pissing or getting off the pot, you have on some level signaled yourself and your partner that you view the relationship not as "'til death do us part", but as "as long as I am happy and comfy".

To some extent, this is just my perception, but it's borne out by statistics. A Columbia University study found that only 26% of women surveyed and 19% of the men married the person with whom they were cohabiting. A National Survey of Families and Households, based on interviews with 13,000 people, concluded, "About 40% of cohabiting unions in the U.S. break up without the couple getting married." The National Survey of Families and Households also indicates that "unions begun by cohabitation are almost twice as likely to dissolve within 10 years compared to all first marriages: 57% to 30%." Psychology Today reported the findings of Yale University sociologist Neil Bennett that cohabiting women were 80% more likely to separate or divorce than were women who had not lived with their spouses before marriage. Etc, etc.

Is it OK if I rest my eyelids?

 

[Cecilie1200]

seems everyone is doing it...including my grown ass son.....i dont approve....yes i am a total hypocrite..thank you

How are you a hypocrite?

 

[Bonzi]

Think the idea from the "Earth 2" series has a lot of emrit: marriage contracts for a fixed length of time with option to renew. Get married for 5 years, if things are still amicable after 5 years can renew for another 5.

Never heard of the show, I kinda like it. What about rentals? I could go for that, a rental bride. Maybe a short term lease with the option to own?

Just be a slut - it's best to be honest....

It's too much work to be a boy slut. I'm liking the lease option, maybe with upgrade potentials, credit for not abusing the equipment.

You just need to toughen up - love 'em and leave 'em. Some girls like that....
Rent to own not a bad option... relationships are just so fascinating!

 

[Cecilie1200]

I'm not a fan of marriage. Seems to change people when you are tethered financially and morally like it was a corporate merger. You should be with someone because you want to, not because you have to. I can see why women would prefer it though.

Well, yeah, that's sort of the whole point. It's a major life decision, so it's kinda supposed to change you.

That whole "as long as I'm comfy, I shouldn't feel obligated or committed" is exactly why most marriages today fail.

And no, having a partner who's actually committed to you and the relationship is not just appealing to women. In many ways, it actually benefits men even more.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Nothing says "I really and truly love you, BUT" like "let's just live together."

Yeah, my ex-husband briefly tried that.

We got engaged, and when he told his friends, they all came up with this, "Oh, no, you should try it out first and make sure you're compatible, blah blah blah" crap and gave him a serious case of cold feet. So he came to me and said, "I think we should just live together first, and THEN decide if marriage is right for us." I responded, "I'm not a car, and I don't need to be test-driven. You either want to be with me, or you don't. In or out, piss or get off the pot, if you're not sure I'm definitely what you want, then go."

We got married the next day, remained married for twenty years, and continue to be very close and a team in many regards.

Working marriages aren't about "compatibility" so much as they are about commitment, and the main problem with marriages today is precisely that people want it to work in a way to allow them to avoid feeling or being committed at all.

 

[Cecilie1200]

What are your thoughts?

Do you think it's best to live with someone before getting married?
Aside from religious reasons, can you see any reason to NOT live with someone before marriage?

Common practice in some cultures to live togetehr at least a year first. See each other during all the stressful holidays and whatnot. How anal people are about cleaning. How they react when you eat their slice of pizza from the fridge.

Marriage is easy enough to do, but considerably more involved to undo. Not called wed-lock for nothing. And in a consumer society like the US, people are more inclined to abandon a failing relationship than work to fix it. This makes the permanance of marriage less likely to work longterm. And if you're not going in where counselling when a problem gets serious is your solution, but divorce is, there's little point to ever get married.

Think the idea from the "Earth 2" series has a lot of emrit: marriage contracts for a fixed length of time with option to renew. Get married for 5 years, if things are still amicable after 5 years can renew for another 5.

When your entire society is built around leases, a lifelong commitment as with marriage just isn't consistent. We lease homes, cars, computers, pretty much everything. Spouses too seem to be on a lease nowadays.

Frankly, crap like that is only a dealbreaker if you decide you want it to be. Joe had and has any number of annoying traits like that, and I adjusted to live with them. The reverse was also true.

The real dealbreaker ended up being that he stopped being committed to making the relationship work. Short of an actual criminal act, that's the only non-negotiable thing I can think of.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Think the idea from the "Earth 2" series has a lot of emrit: marriage contracts for a fixed length of time with option to renew. Get married for 5 years, if things are still amicable after 5 years can renew for another 5.

Never heard of the show, I kinda like it. What about rentals? I could go for that, a rental bride. Maybe a short term lease with the option to own?

And why should she put her life on hold to accept that arrangement?

 

[Cecilie1200]

What are your thoughts?

Do you think it's best to live with someone before getting married?
Aside from religious reasons, can you see any reason to NOT live with someone before marriage?

Yes. Lots of them.

It makes it entirely too easy to simply "drift" into marriage, rather than making a definite, affirmative decision that THIS is the right person to spend the rest of your life with. I cannot count the number of friends I've personally seen start dating someone, move in together after a couple of months because "it's what you do", and then just kinda succumb to inertia. It's not fantastic, but it's not horrific, so they just go along, not especially happy but not really thinking about it, and the expectation and pressure to get married subtly builds up, and one day they do it, probably for boring, prosaic reasons. And almost inevitably, the marriage collapses within five years because they never really, affirmatively wanted to get married in the first place. It just happened by default.

Hand in hand with that, cohabitation makes it a lot harder to extricate yourself from a lukewarm, less-than-marriage-quality relationship, and commits you far more than the relationship might warrant before you're ready to REALLY commit.

In a weird way, I think it also has the psychological effect of subtly conveying to both your partner and yourself that the relationship isn't really important to you. I realize that's the exact opposite of what's intended, and maybe even what you consciously believe happened. But dramatic scenes in TV and movies notwithstanding, there's an excellent chance that the decision to cohabitate probably was not a huge, romantic scene almost identical to a marriage proposal (see above re: "drifting into commitment"). Even if it was, by making a halfway commitment instead of essentially pissing or getting off the pot, you have on some level signaled yourself and your partner that you view the relationship not as "'til death do us part", but as "as long as I am happy and comfy".

To some extent, this is just my perception, but it's borne out by statistics. A Columbia University study found that only 26% of women surveyed and 19% of the men married the person with whom they were cohabiting. A National Survey of Families and Households, based on interviews with 13,000 people, concluded, "About 40% of cohabiting unions in the U.S. break up without the couple getting married." The National Survey of Families and Households also indicates that "unions begun by cohabitation are almost twice as likely to dissolve within 10 years compared to all first marriages: 57% to 30%." Psychology Today reported the findings of Yale University sociologist Neil Bennett that cohabiting women were 80% more likely to separate or divorce than were women who had not lived with their spouses before marriage. Etc, etc.

Is it OK if I rest my eyelids?

Makes no difference to me if you want to know the facts or simply believe what you want to be true. I'm pretty accustomed to the latter.

 

[Bonzi]

If you want a man to marry you don't live with him.
That's all I have to say

 

[jon_berzerk]

_X_ depends

only if you want to

it is a free country

there are benefits in both situations

 

[Cecilie1200]

If you want a man to marry you don't live with him.
That's all I have to say

Basically.

My husband's brother had been living with his girlfriend and "engaged" to her for several years when I met and married Joe in a space of two months. He always had lots of reasons why "not now". When Joe and I met and married with absolutely none of those hesitations or bet-hedgings, she was like, "Excuse me, what?" They got married six months later. As far as I know, they still are.

 

[Iceweasel]

Think the idea from the "Earth 2" series has a lot of emrit: marriage contracts for a fixed length of time with option to renew. Get married for 5 years, if things are still amicable after 5 years can renew for another 5.

Never heard of the show, I kinda like it. What about rentals? I could go for that, a rental bride. Maybe a short term lease with the option to own?

And why should she put her life on hold to accept that arrangement?

Why is her life on hold and mine isn't?

 

[Bonzi]

Think the idea from the "Earth 2" series has a lot of emrit: marriage contracts for a fixed length of time with option to renew. Get married for 5 years, if things are still amicable after 5 years can renew for another 5.

Never heard of the show, I kinda like it. What about rentals? I could go for that, a rental bride. Maybe a short term lease with the option to own?

And why should she put her life on hold to accept that arrangement?

Why is her life on hold and mine isn't?

Weird conversation.............

 

[Bonzi]

man this soup is horrible, I am going to have to find out what kind it is and warn people not to eat it... gross

 

[Iceweasel]

I'm not a fan of marriage. Seems to change people when you are tethered financially and morally like it was a corporate merger. You should be with someone because you want to, not because you have to. I can see why women would prefer it though.

Well, yeah, that's sort of the whole point. It's a major life decision, so it's kinda supposed to change you.

That whole "as long as I'm comfy, I shouldn't feel obligated or committed" is exactly why most marriages today fail.

And no, having a partner who's actually committed to you and the relationship is not just appealing to women. In many ways, it actually benefits men even more.

Yes, I know many guys that can't function without a woman. They would eat out every night and buy new clothes when they get dirty. But I am not that way and don't feel the need to change into somebody else and wouldn't ask a gal to.

 

[Iceweasel]

What are your thoughts?

Do you think it's best to live with someone before getting married?
Aside from religious reasons, can you see any reason to NOT live with someone before marriage?

Yes. Lots of them.

It makes it entirely too easy to simply "drift" into marriage, rather than making a definite, affirmative decision that THIS is the right person to spend the rest of your life with. I cannot count the number of friends I've personally seen start dating someone, move in together after a couple of months because "it's what you do", and then just kinda succumb to inertia. It's not fantastic, but it's not horrific, so they just go along, not especially happy but not really thinking about it, and the expectation and pressure to get married subtly builds up, and one day they do it, probably for boring, prosaic reasons. And almost inevitably, the marriage collapses within five years because they never really, affirmatively wanted to get married in the first place. It just happened by default.

Hand in hand with that, cohabitation makes it a lot harder to extricate yourself from a lukewarm, less-than-marriage-quality relationship, and commits you far more than the relationship might warrant before you're ready to REALLY commit.

In a weird way, I think it also has the psychological effect of subtly conveying to both your partner and yourself that the relationship isn't really important to you. I realize that's the exact opposite of what's intended, and maybe even what you consciously believe happened. But dramatic scenes in TV and movies notwithstanding, there's an excellent chance that the decision to cohabitate probably was not a huge, romantic scene almost identical to a marriage proposal (see above re: "drifting into commitment"). Even if it was, by making a halfway commitment instead of essentially pissing or getting off the pot, you have on some level signaled yourself and your partner that you view the relationship not as "'til death do us part", but as "as long as I am happy and comfy".

To some extent, this is just my perception, but it's borne out by statistics. A Columbia University study found that only 26% of women surveyed and 19% of the men married the person with whom they were cohabiting. A National Survey of Families and Households, based on interviews with 13,000 people, concluded, "About 40% of cohabiting unions in the U.S. break up without the couple getting married." The National Survey of Families and Households also indicates that "unions begun by cohabitation are almost twice as likely to dissolve within 10 years compared to all first marriages: 57% to 30%." Psychology Today reported the findings of Yale University sociologist Neil Bennett that cohabiting women were 80% more likely to separate or divorce than were women who had not lived with their spouses before marriage. Etc, etc.

Is it OK if I rest my eyelids?

Makes no difference to me if you want to know the facts or simply believe what you want to be true. I'm pretty accustomed to the latter.

I was teasing you. Jesus!

 

[Iceweasel]

Think the idea from the "Earth 2" series has a lot of emrit: marriage contracts for a fixed length of time with option to renew. Get married for 5 years, if things are still amicable after 5 years can renew for another 5.

Never heard of the show, I kinda like it. What about rentals? I could go for that, a rental bride. Maybe a short term lease with the option to own?

And why should she put her life on hold to accept that arrangement?

Why is her life on hold and mine isn't?

Weird conversation.............

You can't answer so it's weird?