Should Couples Life Together?

I've been thinking if LLBQ and I should live together... Let's see what Barbara De Angelis says:

SHOULD COUPLES LIFE TOGETHER?
In the past few decades, millions of couples of all ages have chosen to live together, either as a prelude to marriage, or in place of marriage. (NOTE: If you have strong judgments about living together due to your religious or moral beliefs, please understand that I'm looking at this issue purely from a psychological point of view, and skip this question if you wish.) I feel it's important to understand both the positive and negative consequences of living with someone you love.

The Case For Living Together:

There is a part of me that feels, after having seen so many dysfunctional and incompatible relationships over the years, all couples should live together before deciding to get married. I wonder how many unhealthy relationships would have ended if the two partners had tried being together twenty-four hours a day, and thus had come face to face with the issues they were avoiding by seeing each other only on week-ends or a few nights a week.

Here are some of the benefits of living together:

1. You discover sides of your partner's personality you cannot know about unless you live together. There is no way you can get to know a person whom you see intermittently as well as if you lived together. It's a lot easier for someone to be on his best behavior for three hours during a date than it is for him to maintain that behavior day after day when you live under the same roof. When you live with someone, you uncover habits, attitudes and behaviors you never see otherwise. You see him in his natural habitat, his home, and thus become exposed to sides of his personality he may be hiding from you when he is outside in the world. You see him when he is tired, when he is sick, when he is angry, when he is frustrated, and when he is grumpy. Living together requires a sharing of power and control; it demands compromise and flexibility from both partners. You get exposure to the full range of his emotional reactions.
I've heard so many nightmare stories about people marrying their partner and moving in together, only to discover things about their mate that are unacceptable. Marriage is tough enough without any unpleasant surprises.

2. You discover more about whether or not your lifestyles are truly compatible. Some men make great lovers in a romantic affair, but lousy husbands. Some women are fantastic part-time companions, but terrible full time wives. You may enjoy loving someone, but hate living with him. The qualities that encourage you to fall in love with someone and have a great time seeing him may not be enough to create day to day harmony once you move in together. You may find out your partner's lifestyle doesn't fit with yours, something you'd never know about unless you shared the same living space over a long period of time.

3. You discover how capable your partner is of true partnership. Living together requires a sharing of power and control; it demands compromise and flexibility from both partners since you are merging the habits and desires of two unique individuals. You may not find out how willing or capable your mate is of true partnership until you commit to living together. Only when you have to make decisions together about finances, food, household responsibilities, acquisitions , etc. do you truly discover what kind of team player your partner is.

The Case Against Living Together:

1. You can destroy the relationship by expecting too much from it when it's still developing. Although I personally feel living together with a mate can be a valuable experience at a certain stage of the relationship, I also feel that living together prematurely is a big mistake. I've counseled too many couples who moved in together for the wrong reasons:

* To save money
* Because one had a nicer place
* So they could spend more time together
* Because one partner was afraid of losing the other

Living together before your relationship has reached a significant level of commitment, maturity and emotional stability can actually speed up the disintegration of the relationship. If your relationship isn't ready to handle the pressures of living together, it might fall apart under the strain that living together prematurely brings.

2. You can become emotionally lazy. If moving in with someone feels like a goal to you, and you live together before you're ready, you risk becoming emotionally lazy in the relationship. You may avoid conflict in order to keep the peace, especially if you haven't learned to work through conflict together. You may give your partner less attention and appreciation since he or she is there all the time, or neglect the relationship in other ways.

3. You can avoid furthering your commitment to one another. You may have heard the saying "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" I think it was used by many of our mothers in their attempt to convince us that boys wouldn't marry us if we had sex with them, since they were already getting what they wanted. I've heard this same argument about living together--that if a man is living with you and enjoying the benefits of domestic life, he has no reason to ask you to marry him. I have to agree that in some cases, not all, this may be true, especially if you haven't known one another for a good length of time. Some commitment phobic men (or women) might hide behind living together in order to still experience the intimacy they crave, but also to avoid making the final commitment of marriage.

I don't believe the solution is to refuse to move in with someone unless you are engaged or married, unless that feels right to you. If you are considering living with someone, but want the formal structure of marriage somewhere down the road, you need to discuss all of this before you actually move in together in order to avoid any misunderstandings. You may want to come up with a time projection, nine months or a year, for instance, at which point you will reevaluate your relationship and decide whether or not you feel ready to marry.