Dear Bartender,
Me and my boo have been talking about moving in together in preparation for marriage. My concern is him getting too comfortable and not moving forward, but I’ve expressed my concern and he seems to be on the same page as me. What are your thoughts on a couple living together before even being engaged?
Dear Meditating on Moving,
Does moving in with a man before you get a ring mean he will never marry you? No. But, unless you’re a magician, it is a bullet-proof way of complicating the road to commitment and slowing down your efforts.
Living with a man with the hopes of marriage vs. being married is the difference between buying a car vs. leasing one. When you lease a car you:
- Sign the contract
- Keep up the maintenance
- Drive it around for all your friends to see, etc.
But, in the end, that car isn’t yours. You don’t FULLY claim it. Once your lease is up you have the option to buy or get another vehicle. If it breaks down and it’s too much to handle, you can turn it in. If you decide you want a vehicle with more amenities, you can take it to the dealer and get an upgrade. If it gives you too much grief, you can turn over the keys and find a vehicle for the same cost, minimum headache and sometimes, more features.
When you own a car you:
- Sign the contract
- Keep up the maintenance
- Drive it around for all your friends to see, etc.
But this car is YOURS. You own it! That fact alone makes you treat it differently. You’ll not only be more in tune with what your vehicle needs but you will make sure you can provide for fear of it not working otherwise. If you neglect the car you own you will have wasted all your time, efforts, energy and money.
Now, if a man leases, sure he might buy eventually but that car better be on its best behavior because any mishaps will make the lessee second guess keeping the vehicle.
Moving in before a commitment is made puts you in an unbalanced situation. When you live together things get REAL quickly. Once your man is exposed to your regular habits he may begin to second guess fully committing (just like a lessee will second guess keeping a car that requires a lot of maintenance). Your beau might decide he now needs time to see if he can “deal” with your habits. This is the beginning of the stalling period and you have no control over how long it lasts because it all depends on when HE DECIDES he can deal with you for the “long haul”.
While many people believe living together is necessary in preparation for marriage, I disagree. Marriage is like the office of the presidency; nothing can prepare you but counseling and on the job training (but that’s another post). In the end, once you have found the love of your life; the person who was created for you; the one that makes you better and keeps you anchored to all things real, none of his/her housing habits will be deal-breakers. People who live together before marriage, do so because they WANT to not because they HAVE to.
Shall we drink to that?!?!?
-The Bartender
If you disagree with The Bartender or have additional advice for “Meditating on Moving”, leave a comment and join this Open Bar Discussion.
I will drink to that..actually give me a double shot of what u just said.the analogy of the car is right on….
Sometimes I believe the moving in together let’s you know if you are truly ready for that big move of marriage. I was confident in my relationship until we moved in and the player player in him came out about 3 months into the relationship… Bye bye Mr. Fly Guy.
Sassy you are right on. Sorry, but I can’t drink to that, maybe because I drank way too much last night. Moving in together is similar to leasing a car; however, with a lease, it is like an extended rental period. You get the opportunity to see the car for what it is, drive for a good period, but stay under the mileage limit. When you determine the car is good, you have the option to buy. Actually, you could buy it anytime as long as you have good credit. If you don’t like the car then you leave it and go for another.
Unfortunately ladies, a man has this option even when he is renting the car. Seeing it everyone once and while, when he needs to take a trip. The difference is when you lease, the car gets a good look at its driver. Nobody else has to take the car for an oil change and other maintenance needs, he has to. For the car, this should be a good thing, because maybe the car doesn’t like the fact the he doesn’t tune-her-up as much as he should. LOL.
The only problem with the analogy of a car is that the car seems more like an inanimate object versus a partner in the relationship. One that contributes to the discord and peace. One that has equally as much input and responsibility for input and output as the driver.
@Sassy Pantz, moving in together does not let you know if you are truly ready for that big move of marriage. Thats like saying “you know if you are ready for college if you can deal with roomates.” College isn’t about roomates, its about earning a degree. Marriage isn’t about living together, its about loving each other and becoming one. Living together is just the result of marriage. Put it like this, if you move in with every man to see if yall are ready marriage, you’ll have a LONG list of live-ins…which in essence makes you not wifeable. No one wants a woman with a rap sheet of live ins….just a thought for you.
Bartender, well said. If dude is getting all the benefits of a wife, why marry her? Also, when you live together before marriage, you leave nothing to be desired. After my honeymoon, I was excited for the new life and journey ahead of moving together. But if you live together before, what the heck is there to look forward to…
Hassan,
I hear you but the reality is when a man sees a car he wants and he has the money to pay for it, HE BUYS IT. Leasing is for people who already know they may want to change their decision.
When men encourage moving in together it is to have “easy access” along with a host of other things. While I recognize the car analogy objectifies women, ladies, we need to call this what it is. If you let a man “lease” don’t sit around waiting for him to make the full commitment. Yes, it MAY happen but it MAY NOT and if you are not willing to take that risk (and deal with the emotionally charged circumstances that come with it), stay on the “buyers-only lot” and drive off into the sunset with someone willing to claim you.
I agree with the bartender…. if you want something bad enough you will work hard do whats necessary at purchasing the product not leasing it knowing it aint yours after you put forth time energy work….
I really have to disagree, here. This response is written as if, once a couple moves in together, the man is in charge of moving things forward, or breaking up. Why? Couldn’t a woman just as easily move in with a man and decide his habits or way of living just don’t jive with hers and break up if it’s not working for her? Couldn’t she also decide to pop the question once they get settled together, in order to move things forward?
The analogy with the car is not apt. It’s just another way of restating that cliche “why buy the cow when you’ve got the milk?” It’s 2010, relationships and marriage are not about ownership, where a man decides if he wants to keep something around, they are about about partnership. Moving in isn’t just so a man can make sure he really wants a woman, it’s so that a couple can see what living together and being life partners is like. It’s to make sure that each person in the relationship is really comfortable with the other.
I’m not saying for every couple moving in before marriage is always a good idea, or that it isn’t. It’s a personal decision. But to talk about marriage like it’s about a man buying a (woman) car is not fair to the choices women can also make in this situation. Let’s encourage equality in modern relationships and marriage, not fall back on old stereotypes about the way men and women “should” act.
Catherine,
While I see your point, I don’t think moving in with someone gives you an idea of what it will be like to be married to that person. Instead it gives you an idea of what it’s like LIVING with that person. There is a HUGE difference!
In my opinion, too many people want to “play house” but the reality is issues are amplified in marriage in a way they aren’t when you are not married (whether you are living together or not). Living together unites you with a person physically while marriage unites you with a person emotionally, financially, spiritually etc. It even unites your families. It is a whole different kind of union that you can’t fake by doing everything that comes with marriage without getting married.
I agree with Catherine in that we should not be promoting ownership of women. However, that’s not what the Bartender was saying.
I happen to be a proponent of moving in together before marriage. You will truly never know another person until you live with them. But living together will not make you any more certain that you want to be with that person or that two people are compatible. Some people are not self-aware enough to know what they need or see the signs of incompatibility in the early love stages. And like Sassy points out, some people are incredibly adept at concealing their true selves and portraying a nice persona. So you might think that you love a person…until you live with them and see their true negative sides: lying, cheating, abusing, etc. And while many married friends of mine say that marriage did not change their relationship, I think it’s the symbolism of commitment that matters here. Having said that, you don’t need to get married in order to be in a loving, committed relationship.
I think the Bartender’s point is that if you want to get married and you think that cohabitation is a necessary step or will automatically lead to engagement, you are sorely mistaken. Bottom line: women should stop settling for less than what they want and deserve.
A question for you, Bartender: a gay couple lives together for 40 years, unable to legally marry. They love one another, provide for each other, their families all know each other and consider themselves a united family, even if not legally. They have power of attorney, and joint bank accounts, and own the home they live in together. They have committed themselves to being together for their lives in all ways except, walking down an aisle and signing a paper at City Hall. Have they been playing house all this time? Will they never know about the emotional, financial and spiritual aspects of marriage simply because they can’t sign that piece of paper? Do you really think that the commitment of people living together and loving together every day is nothing more than aping the real thing?
If you are going to argue that gay couples somehow don’t count because there is no male/female structure, imagine a straight couple doing the same thing, for the same period of time. Would you really have the guts to tell these people, to their faces, after 40 years, that what they are doing simply doesn’t count? That they will never understand how much they can love and unite with one another until they register that love with the state?
I agree with Megan, that women should not settle for less than what they want. If a woman wants marriage and not to move in first, than she shouldn’t do so. Like I said, it’s a personal choice.
What really strikes me about what you, Bartender, have said, is simply that the reasoning behind your advice is an outmoded idea of gender norms (women are like property, men call the shot in the relationship), and a similarly old-fashioned idea of what love, marriage and commitment is today (signing that piece of paper changes everything). I just want to point this out, so maybe people can start thinking about marriage realistically, as a modern union of equals, of two people who already love each other, who are already deeply committed to one another, and simply want to make it official, rather than some magical act which can never be approximated.
Catherine,
If ANYBODY thinks living together will help their relationship move towards marriage, they are in for the shock of their lives.
In terms of the gender norms, while I understand that this example objectifies women, I could have (and would have) used the SAME example if a man wrote in with the same question.
The reality is, NOBODY (male or female) should move in with someone with the HOPES that it is going to take the relationship to the next level. I argue that even if your relationship goes to the next level it isn’t because you moved in with your partner or they realized that now they KNOW you. Instead, it is because you are the person they truly love and have decided to be committed to. And that, Catherine, is something a person can realize withOUT cohabitation.
I just want to know one thing: Are these proponents of living together before marriage even married?
INTERESTING observation and question, Nia. While I think people have valuable insight to share either way, the person who is asking this question clearly WANTS to get married so following advice from people who aren’t married doesn’t make that much sense. With that said, I respect the opinions of people on both sides of the issue and the “broom”.
cocktailsandcognac, you are not seeing or acknowleding Catherine’s and “Opinioness of the World”‘s view that we should stop promoting OWNERSHIP of women. I think this mindset is the very same mind set that lead to your previous question regarding women taking on a man’s name. WHy are we assuming that the man is the one moving in with HER, to sample HER, and then do away with HER if he pleases as if the woman sits back with no agency. C’mon son!
Catherine makes an excelent point. We can’t assume that the man is moving in with HER “have “easy access” along with a host of other things. ” That is totally sexist. What are these hosst of other things I might ask?
I am not going to tackle that again. I have already answered Catherine’s point. I am not saying that women don’t have the agency to make their own decisions (although I recognize that is what the analogy suggests). Rather I am arguing that when you want the marriage and the other person is still contemplating it, you are automatically in an unbalanced situation (MALE OR FEMALE).
Well, let me first preface my opinion with one disclaimer: namely, that on this blog there is a lot of focus on “Black relationships” and on “Christian values”, perspectives which really represent a particular niched view by a certain Bartender and some (but not all!) of her friends, and which doesn’t necessarily represent the wide spectrum of varied perspectives found in the rest of society and readers of this blog.
Now, as far as this particular issue goes. What’s wrong with leasing a car if your thinking of one day buying it?
I think in this day and age its imperative to know what you are getting into! Case in point, I my self had a very intense relationship which led to engagement, and everything was more than rosy. We lived together for two years and then realized that while we loved each other, we were NOT going to be able to live together and were NOT in fact good for each other. So we called off the damn engagement! We would NOT have realized this if we hadn’t live together.
Now subsequently, I was lucky enough to fall in love again with another woman. Now we tried the same lease-to-own thing… And unlike my prior lease option, it was like heaven living with this woman. We then moved confidently into marriage and are enjoying an unbelievably close and loving partnership, confident in our future together because we have already lived together and we KNOW this is right.
So, where are my lease to own brothers and sisters? I know you’re out there… Good luck to everyone on their search.
LEASE TO OWN!!!!!!
Oh, and let me also add that while the “Black”, “Christian”, and gender constructs implied/expressed on this blog by the Bartender and others definitely do not represent the views of all the other readers of the blog, many of whom are Black and/or Christian themselves or ahave a more pluralized sensibility their backgrounds and belief systems and not so… narrow.
Any of you out there feel me on this?
Why do you think this is a focus on black relationships? Because of the pictures I’ve chosen? No color was addressed in this post and their is only ONE post on this blog addressing color and that is b/c of the question that was posed by a black reader. Also, EVERYONE (of every ethnic background) is battling with some of these same questions that are addressed on this blog. This isn’t a blog about color. It’s a blog about relationships. Yes, sometimes we will address the intersectionality of race, class, gender perspectives etc. but it ISN’T only for people of color.
Yes breezy good point. We all don’t fit these narrow confines. I’m curious though, as a queer woman though how do you feel it differs for “leasing to own” opposed to straight up buying?
Breezy, thanks for your comments.
I have a question though, the woman that you eventually married, would you NOT have married her if living with her was “difficult”? Would you have totally ignored the love you have for her b/c she couldn’t cook and didn’t clean the house to your liking? What about the way she LIVED made you want to pop the question? May I argue that it was NOTHING? I would suggest that this was just the person that you were destined to be with; the one you loved and who you connected with in mentally, physically, spiritually etc.
Why you proclaim that my views are narrow, I challenge you to re-read this post and the letter preceding it. I am not saying that people shouldn’t live together or even that living together WON’T lead to marriage. I am saying that NOTHING about living together is going to keep you from your “the one”. You can just as well find out if a person is “the one” withOUT playing house with them. People do it because they WANT TO not because they HAVE TO.
I think the point of Breezy’s anecdote was that yes, he was glad to have moved in with a woman because, even though he loved her, he found he could not live with her, and therefor avoided an unhappy marriage. When he subsequently moved in with another woman whom he loves, he found that they were a better match. So there was something in the way the first woman lived that was lacking, and something in the way the second woman lived that confirmed that he wanted to spend his life with her. That is, emphatically, not NOTHING. It is indeed something.
And it’s worth noting that nothing was said about her cooking or cleaning, which you completely added here on your own. Why are you so attached to these strict gender norms? We don’t know if the lack of compatibility had to do with money habits, sexual habits, sloppiness, or one of a million other things that–guess what?–you find out about people when you live with them, that are not always apparent before you do so. That was another point of Breezy’s story: he would not have learned the things about the first woman, that they were not really compatible, unless he lived with her. It was an important step. Not an important step for everyone in the world, but an important step for his relationship.
You use words like “nobody”, “nothing” and “ever” in a lot of your replies, and I think the answer to the original question, about moving in, is not so absolute. The woman originally asking the question had concerns that moving in would delay the march towards marriage, and she may be correct. Your advice to her, in that sense, may have been good in part, but that does not mean that advice extends to the entirety of the human race, or even to the western world. It does not mean that no one should move in with their partner before marriage, or that it will never help. For some people it will. For some it won’t. It’s about assessing what you, as an individual, want from your relationship, and whether moving in with your partner will help you reach that goal (marriage, in this case).
Well, Catherine, I disagree. I honestly don’t feel like there is anything in moving in with someone that will prepare you for marriage. Yeah, you might see how they live and that may confirm for some people that they are compatible with this person but there are TONS of people who live together for years and can’t stay married for 6 months. This is why, in my view (and I make it clear that these are my views), marriage is marriage and shacking is shacking. You can’t PLAY marriage. You can’t find compatibility for marriage in living together.
I would argue (despite how Breezy views the experience) that this second woman wasn’t just a compatible match in terms of living together but she was THE ONE – in every since of the word. And, if they didn’t live together, if she is truly THE ONE, I would argue that (though it might be difficult) they would STILL be married. Who the heck passes up their “the one” b/c of living habits???? To me, that is idiotic.
To me, to be a fully-grown woman, who has experienced any kind of long-term relationship, who understands the ups and downs and ins and outs of what it means to commit to and love another individual for who they are, as they are, yet to still believe the Disney fairytale that THE ONE is out there, waiting to be met and wooed, with whom inevitable fate will unite her, is naive at best.
So I guess this is the basic sticking point in our conversation–the reason we are not seeing eye-to-eye. How a person lives is, for me, an important part of what makes a person who he or she is, and having materially incompatible living habits may mean that a lasting marriage will not be possible. Of course if you really love a person it’s not hard to ignore hair in the drain, or to calmly help them to be aware of their mess, but sometimes people have very private parts of their personalities that you don’t get to know unless you live with them, and if those parts of them are nasty or cruel or simply unacceptable to their partner, I think it’s good for that person to know before tying the knot.
I suppose by your theory, it doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s fate that brings couple together, anyway? Then why vigorously defend moving in or not moving moving in, one way or the other?
I definitely loved the above post. I say that’s really heartening you got to share your thoughts on this subject. It will definitely strengthen people to read what you think about. Please, continue