Dating Advice: Living together before marriage – the pluses and minuses.

If you are reading this article it means that your are thinking about doing next step in your life - living together before marriage. There are a many pluses and minuses of living together and this article we will try to find out what is good and what is not.

First you should know that the question to live or not to live together before marriage visits not only your head. Research shows that about half of engaged couples live together and sure they were thinking about that before accepting decision to live together before marriage. This article main goal is to provide you with two points of view and only you can decide what to do next.

What are the pluses of living together before marriage?

1. Know each other better.
You will know each other better before doing very important step in your life. Sometimes dates are not saying all about person you like and only when living together you will be able to find pluses and minuses about your partner.

2. You’ll spend more time together.
You'll have a lot more time together, there'll be someone there to support you when things go wrong - and you can look forward to a kiss and a cuddle at the end of the day. It‘s something you miss when you don‘t live together.

3. It could speed up your marriage process.
Sometime after living for a few months understand that they found what they were looking for and decide to marriage.

4. More sex.
Sometimes sex is the main reason of living together before marriage. Especially young peoples decide to live together just because when living together they get more chances to have a sex.

5. Save money.
When you live together you split your phone bills, you don’t call each other so frequent as it was before marriage.

What are the disadvantages of living together before marriage?

1. Couples living together have weaker marriages
It‘s not logical from the first look but it’s a stats. The reason is that people willing to live together before marriage usually have commitment issues. Let‘s try to understand why couples who live together don't marry. Ask yourself that question. Why did you choose to live with your boyfriend instead of marrying him? The answer is simple in most cases you are not sure does he or she is right person for you and you decine to live together and you just get accustomed to your partner. And when you finally marriage you‘re doing this because you used to this person but it‘s just a marriage in partnership not in love.

2. You fear to say I don’t love you anymore
When living together before marriage couples usually make a some time period to test each other (6 months, 1 year, 3 years…) but when marriage date is coming you just can’t say I don’t love you anymore to the person which probably dream about your marriage. You just afraid to break his or her heart 2 weeks before marriage date. But sooner or later your partner will understand that you don’t love anymore. Divorce is a result of such partnership.

3. High sexual activity before marriage may lead to divorce
A study of 2,746 women in the National Survey of Family Growth performed by Dr. Kahn of the University of Maryland and Dr. London of the National Center for Health Statistics found that nonvirgin brides increase their odds of divorce by about 60%. Some would argue that cohabitation does not automatically mean that sex is taking place. However, cohabitation and sexual relations are related or that there is a strong correlation between them.

So as you see both options has own pros and cons of living together before marriage and general advice we can give you which probably would help you to be successful after living together is now to wait too long your marriage. 2-3 month is enough to understand your partner and to decide about marriage. As more time you live together as more you will depend on each other but your love may go away…

Also we recommend to read following articles which help you to find right answer to live or not live together before marriage.

1. To live or not live together – real letters from different people
2. Dr. Harley advice on the question about living together before marriage
3. Four myths about living together before marriage
4. Social reasons of not living together