Living together or moving in has nothing to do with marriage and it doesn’t necessarily depend on how long you have been dating your partner. Friends can live together, fall in love and later get married. Two colleagues can move in to save money and eventually fall in love. A couple that wants to get married may decide to live together for a while before tying the knot. Many people make an emotional decision, some people make a planned move while some do so impulsively just to see how things go. Living together or moving in, before marriage or without any plans for marriage is an absolutely personal call. But there are some advantages and disadvantages of doing so.
List of Pros of Living Together Before Marriage
1. The Real Deal
It is one thing to date, meet a few times every week, to go out on dinner and to stay overnight at your partner’s place from time to time. It is a completely different ballgame when two people stay together in the same house. This gets you closer to your partner, it reintroduces you to that person, helps you understand everything that you did not have a clue about and your bond can become much stronger than you would have expected. It is not possible to know a person fully unless you have lived together for a while. You get to explore the real deal when you live together before marriage.
2. A Pragmatic Move
From sharing the bed to doing chores, taking financial responsibility to being truly responsible for one another, living together is a pragmatic move if you wish to get married. If you have a nice experience while living together before marriage, then marriage can be just a formality. You know things are going to work out.
3. Numerous Rewards
Living together can save you money, time and effort. You can deck up your home as both of you want, you can explore each other’s worlds and also set common goals. While getting accustomed with the little things is one end of the spectrum, you also get to know if you are comfortable with your partner around all the time.
List of Cons of Living Together Before Marriage
1. Deal Breaker
Living together can lead to a breakup. Too many surprises, too many unpleasant realizations, little things that you don’t want to deal with or just some characteristics of your partner that you don’t think you can live with can lead to a breakup.
2. Compulsion to Marry
Living together often comes across as a precurso to marriage and hence the man or the woman may feel a certain degree of compulsion to marry.
3. Waste of Time, Money & Effort
Should the relationship fall apart, all the effort and money as well as time put into the whole exercise of moving in and living together may seem to be futile.