There is nothing in life that stirs up more hope, inspires more dreams, or establishes a grander set of aspirations than marriage. The reasons for this are obvious. For most people, marriage is a paradigm-shifting event. It transitions them from an independent existence to one which is conjoined to another person.
Most successful marriages require that both parties respect their mutual individuality, independent personalities, and overall uniqueness. However, such marriages also require accepting the fact that tolerance, patience, empathy, and sharing are also necessary. As odd as it may sound, the key to a successful marriage is an awkward balancing act between maintaining your individualness while also making sacrifices for the greater good of the relationship.
For many young married couples, their first weeks and months as husband and wife can come as a shock. As much as you love each other, the realities of living in the same space can bring with it unexpected consequences.
Each of your habits and idiosyncrasies will begin to emerge. No matter how well prepared you think you are, there is nothing like finding your husband rummaging through the laundry bin searching for the cleanest dirty shirt to wear because he’s “running late.” Likewise, there might be nothing to prepare your husband for the first moment that you allow yourself to fart in his presence.
In the not too distant past, there wasn’t a socially acceptable “training ground” for married life. The first taste of life together came after you had taken your wedding vows. Fortunately, in the present day, the concept of living together before marriage is practically the norm. It is estimated that in the last 50 years the number of couples living together outside of marriage has increased by almost 1,000 percent.
What benefit can you get out of living together before getting married?
1. You’ll Both Learn to Share Responsibilities
A wife is not a maid; a husband is not a butler. There is no better way to learn this than by living together. Buoyed by the energy and passion of young newfound love, it is easier to learn to share the tasks associated with maintaining the home when you live together before marriage.
You can discover what tasks each of you prefers doing. This will help you to find a fair balance in dividing the household chores.
Whether you create task lists for each other and check off each completed task on your smartphones as you go about your day, or if you use an old-fashioned paper list stuck to the fridge — sharing the household chores makes living together fairer and easier.
2. Money Management
It should be no surprise that one of the biggest strains on a marriage comes from money-related issues. Many of these problems could have been mitigated if the married couple had developed proper money management skills before entering into marriage.
Living together provides an excellent opportunity to develop these essential money management skills. When two people move in together their financial responsibilities tend to be narrower than those of a married couple. Usually, they are going to revolve strictly around rent, food, entertainment, and some discretionary items. This provides the perfect environment to develop a money-managing style with little external pressures.
You will be able to learn basic budgeting skills that will serve you well when you are married and begin to budget for bigger things such as children, purchasing a home, retirement, etc.
Engaging in money management while you’re living together will allow you the luxury of developing a mutual financial plan. This eliminates the sudden shock of trying to reconcile a new lifestyle as a married couple without truly knowing what both of you bring to the financial table in terms of income, liabilities, and spending habits.
3. Learn How to Handle Arguments
All couples have arguments that are inevitable. It doesn’t matter how different or similar you are, whether there’s an age gap or not, whether you met on a hookup site or at work, arguments are sure to find their way into every relationship. When each of you has their own place, it is easy for you to go to your own home and allow things to cool down before making up. However, when you live together you do not have that luxury — much less so when you are married.
This is yet another reason why living together is such an excellent training ground for married life. Living together will accustom you to the art of conflict resolution. You will both begin to triage the causes of fights. In so doing, you will notice that fights over trivial matters begin to dissipate.
By the time you are married senseless arguments will be less frequent. You will even notice that debate and constructive discussion will begin to replace grandstanding and shouting.
Yes, there will still be arguments when you are married. However, they will be less frequent, less intense and less hurtful if you have lived together before saying, “I do.”
4. Smooth the Transition from “I” to “We”
No matter how much you love each other. No matter how well prepared you think you are, there is nothing like the actual moment when you start living together as a married couple.
Once you’re married, not only must you acclimate yourself to the little things of going from an “I” to a “we,” but you also have to share the helm of a brand new household and everything that it implies.
Think about it. Everything from furniture selection, to what sort of paper towels to buy, along with the bigger things — such as choosing the right mortgage or deciding when to have kids — all need to be dealt with.
This is why if you can eliminate the initial acclimation process — the one that involves things such as who’s going to do the laundry, allowing the dishes to dry properly before putting them away, keeping the toilet seat down, etc. — before marriage, the better.
This way your first weeks as a married couple will not find you addressing the small details involved with acclimating to your spouse’s established habits. You would have already gone through all of that. You can both now focus on the more strategic side of marriage.
If you ask any couple that has been happily married for more than ten years, they will tell you how a real married lifestyle does not begin the day after the honeymoon. They will tell you how it truly begins the first day that you actually click as a team. That process is made faster and more efficient when you live together before marriage.
5. Love Triumphs All (Especially With Practice)
The saying, “love triumphs all,” is true — that is not in question. However, when you give yourself the added margin that comes with practicing for married life in the form of living together beforehand, you greatly enhance the power of love. In other words, living together can help you maximize the enjoyment of your first years of married life. In so doing, it also improves your chances of having a wondrous marriage that will be the envy of all. Much as practicing for a cheerleading routine or gymnastics sets helps you improve the quality of your live performance, so too does living together before marriage improve the quality of your married life.