I’ve come to an age when I have had time to see many friends and acquaintances move in with boyfriends or girlfriends and it ruins them. Living together gives you everything except the actual commitment. I don’t care how much the person tells you their heart is committed to you. If they are really committed they will put it on paper and in front of the Church because they want you for who you are as a person.
It’s one thing to say you want to finish school before marrying, as long as there is no cohabitation or premarital sex in the relationship. The desire to wait would then insinuate that he would be open to starting a family after finishing school. He may think he can be better at the commitment of being a husband after he finishes school. HOWEVER, if he wants to sleep together and/or live together without marriage during school he just wants the sex with the convenience of being able to easily leave if he changes his mind. It sounds so harsh, but I have seen it happen to too many people.
My husband and I did not live together or have sex until marriage. We did not get married until after college and we waited a LONG time because we met when we were very young. However, this waiting period helps you to determine the caliber of the person you will marry. A lot of average guys will leave over something like that. A good man is willing to make that sacrifice and wait. I have also seen something interesting with these kinds of relationships. It’s certainly not a scientific observation, but among my co-workers, friends, classmates, etc. the girls like me that wouldn’t move in with a guy or sleep with him until marriage got engagement rings a lot sooner. If a good man came along he was willing to commit. The lesser men usually didn’t stick around long because they realized they were going to have to make a big commitment. (Good “spouse-filter”!)
Meanwhile, the co-workers, classmates, friends, etc. that were sleeping together and co-habitating often complained of boyfriends that wouldn’t commit. Despite all the girl would do to act like a perfect “wife” at home he just wasn’t that interested. More often than not bills were NOT split evenly and over time some of them merged bank accounts with the hope that all of these day to day aspects of being married would lead to an engagement ring. I know girls that end up raising multiple children with a man that “loves” them but doesn’t want to be officially married. I even knew a girl that left her job and moved to keep living with a boyfriend that had to move for his job work. Her bosses told her she needed to demand a ring and it was ridiculous to leave a job and move if he won’t even marry her yet. As far as I know, they are still together, but had he broken up with her when they reached this new location, she would be jobless, on her own, and she would have no legal right to much of anything. She certainly wouldn’t have the kind of rights a married woman would have if her husband left her.
How do I know how few rights most of these women have? I have heard the sob stories of the break-ups. After spilling years of blood, sweat and tears into relationships hoping for marriage they learn the man cheated or maybe they just get in a big fight and break up. Either way, that merged bank account is NEVER split fairly like they think it would be. By this point someone is usually supporting the other almost entirely and that’s money they won’t get back. Who gets the house? Who gets the stuff? They both spent money on it but often something is in one name or the other so someone loses big money on these items. There are nasty civil divorces that are cleaner than some of these break-ups because at least they have a legal structure. These breakups are a long time coming but inevitably they feel there is nothing to show for all of those years. More often than not a lot of these relationships have been going since college, but the breakup happens closer to 30+. It’s awfully heartbreaking when you see a friend tell you they were hoping to have already started having children by now, but now they are starting all over. They didn’t get the commitment and the family that they tried to get for so many years. They hung all of their hopes on one man because they were living together. Had they not been living together they could have broken up so much more easily much longer ago and already found a better man and started the family they wanted!
I’ll be fair to the very few that do marry and I will explain what happens to many of them when they do actually marry. They have been living together for years so the marriage itself is really uneventful for them. I never see big, beautiful weddings for these couples. They usually live together long enough to realize that the legal document helps with taxes or something and then they have a small wedding just to get it over with. No one brings any decent wedding presents because they don’t need anything. The wedding never has the excitement of the weddings for couples that haven’t been living together because they are not starting a home. They are going to go home after the ceremony and resume where they already were.
It’s just a big huge mess. Seriously, don’t do it. I just wrote you a novel about all the reasons not to do it because I have seen so many people lose so much in co-habitating relationships.