Posted on 05/04/2012 8:50:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Myth #1
Living together first will tell us if we are right for one another.
No it won't. You are comparing apples to oranges. Just because one tastes good or bad to you doesn't mean the other will taste the same. Marriage is a totally different proposition than simply living together. Marriage is built upon a promise before God to remain faithful to one another. Living together involves no such promise. You could fail at living together with someone you may have succeeded with in marriage. It all depends upon how much both people are relying on God for assistance and love. By the way, the divorce rate of couples who live together first is significantly higher than for those who do not.
If your partner will not commit to you for life, don't deceive yourself into thinking that he or she will be willing to make that commitment at some later point. Marriage is a promise to stay together. Living together for many couples lasts about 18 months, give or take. At the end of that year and a half, you still have no idea how your partner might have done if you both had taken the plunge and made a lifetime commitment to one another. Now you will never know. You settled for the easy way in and the easy way out. Your shot at true love with that person gets blown away with the wind if you decide to shack up first.
Living together prepares people to find reasons not to get married. Marriage, on the other hand, is based on unconditional love and a lifetime commitment. It is not an "audition" for marriage like you have with cohabitation. All of us are imperfect and bound to slip up at various times during the audition. Talk about conditional "love." It's "I love you" now....and "I will really love you" once you prove you are worthy. You better walk on eggshells in that situation. It's get pretty dicey in a hurry....and awkward.
Myth #2
Living together will show us if we are sexually compatible.
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No it won't. That would be true if you were animals....say dogs for example. You are human beings. You both have a soul. Sex between dogs is only physical. Sex between human beings was designed to be physical, emotional, and spiritual. God designed it in such a way that sex outside of marriage will never produce what I would call a "spiritual orgasm." That is why it leaves you still feeling empty after the physical orgasm has gone away. Without a spiritual union through Christ, sexual compatibility is only measured in a superficial way.
If you have not yet had sex in marriage while both of you are born again and living for Christ, then you have no idea what you are missing. It is the total package....body, soul, and spirit. No wonder people without that union are often drawn to continue experimenting sexually to try to satisfy their hunger for a spiritual union in sex. That hunger can be satisfied, but only in marriage and only when both the husband and the wife are believers in Christ.
Myth #3
We are just as committed to each other as a married couple.
No you're not. Neither of you are "all in." You are both "hedging your bets." You are both still "kicking the tires." Your "commitment" is conditional. It's not "for better or worse." Instead, it's "for better or....see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya." Anyone in that situation must surely feel the pressure to perform. You have been given a trial run by your partner. Aren't you lucky.
Deep down, you know in your heart that marriage is far more than a piece of paper. It is a promise before God to love and cherish your spouse for life. People who only shack up also make a promise, sort of. "I promise to do my best....and to watch you very closely to determine if you are worth it. If it doesn't work out....oh well. It's not like we were married or anything."
Myth #4
Our friendship won't suffer by moving in together.
That's what you think. Your friendship will soon become tense and uncomfortable. You went from courtship to "no man's land." You're not married, but you're not really dating either. How boring....and unnatural. No wonder the comfortable feelings of friendship soon turn into the awkward feelings that come with shacking up. It's "friends with benefits....minus the unconditional friendship." There is always the fear of being kicked to the curb if you don't measure up. No security. No deep peace. Hence, you end up with a strained relationship that is fraught with angst. Not exactly the ingredients of a healthy friendship.
Myth #5
We can love one another just as much without marriage.
No you can't. God says so. It would be true if you had evolved from a monkey. In that case, the Bible would only be a storybook filled with fantasies. As it is, you did not evolve from a monkey. You were created by God in His image. He consists of three Persons in One God....Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You too are a being that is three in one....body, soul, and spirit. Monkeys are not three in one. God did not institute marriage between monkeys. God did not promise to bless a union of monkeys.
You have no idea how much love can fill your heart for your partner until you receive God's love in Christ and get on the "marriage train" for life. Comparing living together to marriage is comparing apples to oranges....and maybe even to bananas....you know, the kind monkeys eat.
My wife and I lived together for two years before getting married. Three kids and close to thirty years later, we’re doing just fine.
While there are, of course exceptions, overall research does show negative results, especially for children. This is learned, surprisingly from a very liberal but honest prof.
I see many women who are taller than men. Does that tell me that women are taller than men in general?
While there are, of course exceptions, overall research does show negative results, especially for children. This is learned, surprisingly from a very liberal but honest prof.
Although I agree with the list for the most part, and believe it goes against God’s will for us to live together before we are married, I have seen the sexual compatibility thing in action. In my first marriage, my then-wife was happy with sex every few weeks at the most. And she literally denied it for the last 14 months of the marriage. It was 20 years long and, to be clear, she divorced me, without cause, completely out of the blue. I never saw it coming.
Now I’ve been married to my wife for 14 years and we are in our late 50’s. I feel uncomfortable discussing frequency but will say that most married 20 somethings would be jealous. We never tire of each other and it is a very important part of our relationship to this day. And as the author points out, it is both physical AND spiritual.
Having my then-girlfriend move in with me back in ‘93 revealed something about her I never expected and it happened within the first month. She was 27 and I was 34.
Much to my surprise and disgust, she vehemently resented the fact that I would close the bathroom door behind me when I sat down on the toilet. “It’s just a force-of-habit kind of thing”, I explained...”I don’t even think about it. But at least I don’t lock the door when I close it.”
I meant no disrespect, nor did I mean to shut her out of my life. To her, it meant that I must not have loved her very much if I had to close the bathroom door while I went about my business. In my mind, I was enjoying a bit of personal privacy while at the same time, respecting her olfactory comfort zone but she just didn’t get it.
Apparently, she had no concept of common domestic courtesy and once I was able to wrap my head around that, I realized that the relationship and living arrangement were far less than ideal. We were so far apart yet there we were sharing an apartment as though we had as much in common as did the long-married couples we knew including neigbors, my parents, aunts and uncles and friends of mine.
I ignored the warning signs and I was in denial. She was just a crude, vulgar and ill-tempered idiot who thought everything was always supposed to be about her.
Now that I know what to look for and what to avoid, I think maybe there could be a next time with somebody else whether we’re married or not.
Live and learn.
Your first wife obviously didn’t truly love you-—she was selfish and not selfless—as true love makes you want to please and sacrifice for the one you “love”.
Too many people equate love to “lust”. It is not about how many times you have orgasms, etc., it is all about how you make your spouse feel about themselves and God. You should always want to please those you love and promote the Good. This is ultimately what makes you happy—pleasing God and others. God has to be where there is selfless love-—always.
Marriage is a special male/female commitment which includes meeting the sexual needs of their spouse. Women are conditioned and taught in today’s atheist (godless) culture to despise male needs and marginalize men to mere animals-—as men are taught and conditioned to think women (and now men {homosexuals}) are just objects for lust—a means to an end. (The Church calls this extremely evil). It is the intentional dehumanization (communism) of man. No person will be “happy” treated with no respect for their fundamental natures.
Atheism has no respect for the opposite sex and the Nature of man and woman. Their beliefs reduce man to a base animal and urges. There is no spiritual aspect to man in their reality. Christianity is founded with the profound knowledge of Natural Law Theory which they embrace (rejected by Marx) which does not separate the physical and spiritual elements of men and women. Emotionally healthy human beings can never have their rational or their spiritual natures separated and it wasn’t until the Postmodern German Philosophy became prevalent in Europe and then America that this paradigm shift occurred. The Pope writes extensively on this transformation of Europe.
Compartmentalizing faith and reason and denying the true (whole) nature of man is the aim of Atheists/Marxists/socialists—so that they can make a colony of termites who can not use reason and knowledge and are slaves to their passions and urges. They are easy to control and eliminate. Their lifestyles do not promote trust and love and belief in God.
My point: There is no Love without God.
I’m fairly conservative on a lot of issues but I guess I’m a liberal on this one. I’ve seen from experience — myself and others — that living together really is a good “test run” for marriage. You don’t know someone until you live with them. I think it actually strengthens marriage by giving you a trial period before you make the commitment.
Amen & Amen!
Back in the 80s I was employed by a large Engineering firm (70 to 300 employees) there was a number of young couples that just lived to gether.
One I remember most, I learned the names of their partners, when I seldom knew the names of both married couples. They could say, “MY Wife, or My Husband.” Those could only call their live-ins by name.
“Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. Tha He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So men ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church. Foe we are members of His body, of His flesh, and His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning the church. Nevertheless let every one of in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.” (Ephesians 5:24-33)
My wife and I lived together for 2 years before getting married. It was the best decision we ever made. And it had nothing to do with any of those myths. We were aware that you don’t truly know a person until you live with them.
It’s one thing when you are seeing someone, you are always putting up a front. Truly knowing someone cannot happen until you live with them and the front is taken down.
Again, best decision we ever made.
Ibidinum.
(What you said)
—Your first wife obviously didn’t truly love you-—she was selfish and not selfless—as true love makes you want to please and sacrifice for the one you “love”.—
This. I’ll never forget the first conversation we had right after I was served papers:
Me: I LOVE you, D***Y!
Her: The D***Y you love is a figment of your imagination.
She turned out to be right. And you nailed her. I just never thought she could be that mean, even though the signs were clear.
And yep, when you get married your reason should be because you want to please the other, not because you want them to please you. Her narcissism eventually became quite plain to everyone.
This actually very much states what happened to me after 20 years and having three children who, at the time, were 10, 13 and 16:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Divorce.shtml
Exactly. People who are against it think that people live together to have sex. My experience is that people just want to see if they are compatible. I know a number of older people who are looking for companionship after the death of a spouse who live together before marrying. That especially is an issue if both come to the marriage with their own assets and families. You want to make sure a marriage is right in those circumstances before you take the plunge.
Exactly. Love involves making an effort to make your loved one happy, regardless of whether you happen to be in the mood.
Sorry, but God is great and this post is dumb.
I’ve said for about 25 years that EVERYONE is both loveable and hateable. When you marry someone you make a commitment to be “on their side”. You will constantly be aware of their loveable side (as a mother would be).
When you fall out of love with your spouse, it is not about them. It is about you. A person can not be responsible for another’s feelings. We all must be responsible for our own.
RE: Sorry, but God is great and this post is dumb.
Well, don’t stop at that, TELL US WHY !
“Truly knowing someone cannot happen until you live with them and the front is taken down.”
If always leaving the bathroom door hanging open is part of taking down “the front” then I don’t want to know.
“Love Stinks” is just a song by the J. Geils Band.
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