Living Together before Marriage

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I am not joking!

Better to live together first to see if compatible than not and then get married and then divorce x amount of time down the road!! Its not a sin to ‘live’ together. What one does while living together could lead to sin!
It is not wise to recommend a person put themselves in a near occasion of sin. The Catholic Church would never recommend this kind of arrangement and neither should we. The truth is that a it is far more difficult to discern if your potential spouse is a good match when you make it far more difficult to seperate by moving in together. One avoids the hassle of an
embarrassing breakup and having to divide furniture, finances, pets and the messy business of dealing with the lease and finding another place to live.

That is why the divorce statistics are do high for people who cohabitate because they don’t actually discern marriage. They slide into it and figure it’s just another step to take.
 
It is not wise to recommend a person put themselves in a near occasion of sin. The Catholic Church would never recommend this kind of arrangement and neither should we. The truth is that a it is far more difficult to discern if your potential spouse is a good match when you make it far more difficult to seperate by moving in together. One avoids the hassle of an
embarrassing breakup and having to divide furniture, finances, pets and the messy business of dealing with the lease and finding another place to live.

That is why the divorce statistics are do high for people who cohabitate because they don’t actually discern marriage. They slide into it and figure it’s just another step to take.
That but also dependencies develop (along with inaertia like you describe) and you just can’t ignore the tension in the air associated with an attractive person walking around not completely dressed, walking in on each other etc. Temptations are not only to actual, physically carried out sexual intercourse, but also to fantasies, lustful looks, tiny concessions that don’t go the full way but eventually stretch the limits by quite a bit etc. And one doesn’t need to carry out the physical act to sin mortally, nor does it take a full hour of meditation to form consent. It’s much easier when such situations are avoided.
 
Thank you everyone for your insight. I appreciate the time and effort you have given me…I plan to move out until the wedding…this is the only way I can have a “clean” conscience for myself.

God Bless,
Kevin
 
Just for clarification, have you approached the Church yet regarding getting married yet. The reason why I’m asking is because it you did, the priest would likely (and properly) make an issue of your living arrangements, which could delay your marriage.
We have not yet…Pre-Cana starts in March for us,…but I’ve decided to move out anyway until the marriage…I know it’s the right thing to do…
 
I will keep this simple and short. I’m a catholic male who is currently living with his fiancé. We were engaged over a year ago, and plan to marry in June. However, I feel very guilty about living together before marriage. I was blinded by my own happiness instead of “following the rules” of remaining alone until marriage.
God is speaking to you through your conscience. It may be very hard, but it’s the right thing to do…
 
Dear OP, I haven’t been precisely in the situation you describe but I’ve been in situations where I allowed my boundaries to stretch and those were awful situations. Nothing is worth it.

The following presumes that you’re concerned with either premarital sexual relations or temptations to it, or with how your limits of decency are stretched, how your conscience bugs you about blurring the lines between what is marriage and what is not. I am not presuming that you guys merely have two separate rooms in one house because you’re asking for advice to help you.

As long as your situation does violate what our faith teaches us about morals, God needs to come first, He says, in relatively modern language, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness and the rest will be added to you,” (Matthew 6:33). We also pray for our daily bread without praying for the bread for the day after tomorrow. There are numerous verses referring to the fact that God provides for us. God cares for each sparrow that falls down from the sky, and we’re worth more than many sparrows (Matthew 10:31). Solomon himself, as rich as he was, wasn’t dressed nearly as well as a lily (Luke 12:27). In short, we need to trust God, trust ourselves to God, and do our job. This does require sacrifices sometimes but those are always for our good. It is difficult to believe that God will provide, it can be a huge leap of faith, nonetheless it is the right path. This can sometimes show already in this world rather than the next.

(For example one may feel like he’s losing a loving girlfriend, while in reality the sacrifice makes him avoid a nasty divorce, possibly without the ability to obtain a nullity decree, after a lot of pain, or a marriage to a person obsessing over sexual technique or performance or materialistic or not willing to accept rules which are of an external origin and/or which interfere with whatever that person feels like doing. Which additionally means losing the opportunity to be married to someone who actually does live the faith and sees things the same way. Such a sacrifice is already beneficial in this world, not only in the next.)

Perhaps it might help to look at the “rules” as more like the “righteousness” from that verse, i.e. not like a bunch of rules imposed by an eccentric landlord or 30 pages of small print from a service operator, but doing the right thing, basically doing what is just. The Catholic teaching is that commandments connecting to marriage (or what leads to marriage) are not mere ritual rules, they don’t deal with some kind of ritual cleanliness and purity, they tie into God’s plan for marriage and into what marriage is about. It’s not a “no because no” kind of “rules”.

There is also no concrete strong reason to cohabitate before marriage as opposed to waiting those couple of months.

You may also wish to browse the threads in the Family forum, even just titles, and see how many of them are about spouses changing their mind on things, leaving, going on birth control, causing other distressing situations. Refusing to compromise on what our faith teaches about morality doesn’t give a sure-fire guarantee but it can go a long way towards avoiding such problems. That and also honestly appraising the quarrels and tensions and the factors which cause them, especially those associated with differences between you and your prospective spouse.

Also, if a woman flatly says there’s no deal unless you cohabitate before the wedding, then you can flatly tell her it’s no deal then. You can have requirements too. You don’t need to be the one who budges.

Also, sometimes courage is what is required to get out of commonly accepted typical arrangements. Inaertia, pressure, powerlessness, reluctance to stand out are typical inhibitions. You and your girlfriend can break them and, with God’s help, conquer them (again, in so far as your current situation does go against some real morals and not just perceptions), move on to a better life in your lives. It’s worth it.
Thank you so much…your reply has meant a lot to me over the past few days that I have been dwelling…
 
The bolded part is what stood out for me when I read your OP. Continue to live together, or moving out, are the problems you are having serious enough to rethink even getting married in the first place? Have you considered what you will do if the problems continue if you move out?

If it was me, I’d move out, and take a good hard look at the relationship and see if the problems you were experiencing were due to living together before marriage or are there serious issues that are red flags that your relationship can’t move forward towards the Sacrament of Matrimony.
Yes…I plan to …this is the only way I will know what’s right in my heart regarding moving forward…

Thank you
 
We have not yet…Pre-Cana starts in March for us,…but I’ve decided to move out anyway until the marriage…I know it’s the right thing to do…
It’s good you’ve decided to move out; that eliminates a major issue that could delay your marriage.

If you have not discussed the June wedding date with you priest, please do so right away. There is typically a waiting period between the time a couple approaches the Church and date of marriage, often 6 months to a year.
 
Because there are couples who lived together, without kids, and then got married. They either converted before they were married or after.

What I’m trying to understand is how Catholics seem to think that all co-habitation is wrong and will lead to divorce…except for a couple that finds themselves in a conversion situation after they had co-habitated and got married.
Do those divorce stats suddenly disappear?

If a person is engaged and has been living together with their spouse and converts…but doesn’t move out…do those divorce stats still apply?

If a person is engaged and is a Catholic but has gone to confession but doesn’t move out and still gets married…do those divorce stats still apply?

The OP is engaged and the wedding is a few months away. They aren’t really discerning marriage…they are GETTING married. Sooner then later.

How is moving out going to improve their situation if it’s only a few months away if co-habitation will more likely lead to divorce?
Statistics are just statistics. They’re averages and means, not absolute predictions of what will happen in any given marriage. They “apply” to everyone, insofar as the statistics seek to understand what will happen in most cases to couples who cohabitate prior to marriage. Sociologically speaking, there are number of reasons why couples who cohabitate prior to marriage are more likley to divorce. Lack of a strong religious foundation, as you point out, is a contributing factor. But they’ve also found that couples who live together prior to marriage argue and communicate differently than couples who live apart.

The Church teaches that cohabitation is wrong for a number of reasons, including that it creates an occasion of sin and scandal for those aware of the situation. An engaged couple IS discerning marriage. There may be situations (such as those that include a child), where a priest would advise a non-married couple not to separate, but for a young couple on the verge of the sacrament with no such impediments, I see no reason why this would be the case.

God bless.
 
The state of Virginia was in the news for considering or passing a law making cohabitation legal. It is interesting that the same move was made about abortion, i.e., legalizing it.

The Catholic Church, indeed all Christianity, still holds the same standard about cohabitation and about abortion. God’s law, the ten commandments, has not changed.

The state is moving away from the Christian standard. That does not bode well for its future existence. Don’t all governments fall once they move away from Christian standards?
 
Just because I accept that cohabitaton is against the Catholic standard doesn’t mean I think all cohabiting couples should run to a church and get married.

I think the decision to live together outside of marriage is an indication of a low level of maturity. The sacrament of Matrimony requires a higher level of maturity. So the last thing cohabiting couples should think about is getting married. First they need to separate and each go their own way.

That is my opinion as an ordinary Catholic. I am not an authority in the Church. For spiritual direction on matters of fitness for matrimony, a couple should seek guidance from a trusted authority in the Church, like a priest, a bishop, a cardinal, the Pope (though it is unlikely such a meeting could be arranged), a nun, a deacon.
 
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