T
Tobi-Wan_Kenobi
Guest
My girlfriend and I have been together for about a year and a half now (our relationship became official back in October of 2016). At that point in my life, I was living with my mom and stepdad and due to some poor decisions on my part, I moved out of their house and moved in with some guys I knew all the way across the metro area (45 minutes away from my parents and girlfriend). I didn’t have a car at the time, so my girlfriend was always the one to have to drive down to see me and hang out, but because she was also in college, she had class all day every day of the week. After a few months of living with my friends, it became clear to me that my living situation was a bad one. In the two months I lived with them, my bass guitar got stolen by one of the other guys for drug money, I was far from my family and friends, was far from my girlfriend, and wasn’t within walking distance of a Catholic parish. After a while of thinking about it, I decided to move back to the town where my parents and friends and girlfriend lived, but I knew that living with my mom and stepdad again was not going to be a possibility. So, my girlfriend offered to let me move in with her. At the time, I truly didn’t see anything wrong with it. She had already used money she received through scholarships and financial assistance at her college to pay off the entirety of her rent at her apartment, so the only expenses I would have would be food, my phone bill, and putting gas in her vehicle, and I would also be able to walk to mass at one of the few parishes there in town because they were close to her apartment. Her and I live together there for the remainder of the lease and then her and I move back to her hometown and her parents give us a place to stay at their house, which is super nice, but I’ve just been wondering how morally and ethically right or wrong it is for her and I to be living together for a while now. I truly never thought about it being a problem a year ago when we first moved in together. I thought the problems and the sins would arise from having premarital sex (which we have actually abstained from) and being indecent around each other, not from simply living under the same roof. Some of the priests I have talked to about this say they don’t necessarily see any problem with us living together under the same roof at her parents’ house as long as we have separate rooms and sleeping arrangements However, my girlfriend and I are wanting to move back to my hometown so that I can finish up my last year of college and get my degree, and she keeps talking about her and I getting our own place together. At this point, I really don’t know that I can live with her and feel right about it. Her and I are not engaged and obviously not married, but even if we had separate sleeping arrangements and lived together for purely economic reasons, I now know how scandalous it would look, and my faith is the most important thing to me. All this being said, I guess I am looking for some clarification and some direction and advice. If it is only for economic reasons and we have separate sleeping arrangements and just don’t make our shared apartment known, is it still wrong?
