Getting
to know your partner before you marry
When
it comes to family tradition, many people
still believe in cohabitation post-marriage.
This is due partly because the act of moving
in together and sharing each other's space
signifies the beginning of a new start in
life with your mate. Like the exchanging
of vows, it is a commitment to the couple
embarking on a new beginning together. Sociologists
have reported that traditionalist people
feel that their marriage would have less
novelty or importance if they lived together
before tying the knot.
Recently,
sociologists have found couples who do not
live together before they marry to have
divorce rates higher than those who do live
together before they get married. You all
know the saying, "You don't know someone
until you've lived with them." It appears
to be ringing true for those couples that
are getting a divorce several years after
moving into the marital abode because of
such things as "irreconcilable differences."
Apparently,
moving in with your significant other before
marriage has both its pros and cons. For
me, the pros outweigh the cons, especially
since I am 33 years old and although I love
my partner dearly, he is a man who has never
had a serious relationship last more than
six months before. Our relationship of 14
months is a new record for him.
One
thing that I miss about our relationship
before we moved in together is having space
of my own to escape to if down time is needed.
It was easy to let a lover's tiff die down
when each of us could just go home, and
let time heal the heated tempers, usually
a few hours, or a day at the most. But now
that both of us are under the same roof,
it is impossible to go about one's routine
without sort of running into the other,
exchanging glances, or putting your foot
in your mouth and causing the temperatures
to rise again.
But
looking at it another way, we can no longer
escape or run away from our disagreements.
Instead, we are forced to face each other
and deal with our problems head-on, which
is good experience for when we eventually
do get married and have to deal with possibly
larger issues.
For
some, though, cohabiting before marriage
is taboo. If two people live together for
years and then get married, what is the
difference? This is a popular argument,
that marriage loses all of its special qualities
that typically surround two people when
they move into a new home together and embark
on a new and different life. It is reduced
to a mere piece of paper with a raised seal
on it, which in itself is not special at
all.
Nevertheless,
at 33, I am no longer partial to the belief
of being swept off my feet by a knight in
shining armor that will carry me away to
his castle in which we will live happily
ever after. Instead, I now am more privy
to precaution in making sure that this person
is right for me, and the only way to know
that is by living with him and truly getting
to know each other.
I
am not the kind of person who would like
to live with someone as common-law, never
to marry. But I am the kind of person who
gets married for the longevity and once
the vows have been made I am in it for the
long haul. So it is important to really
know whom it is I am going to make those
vows to, and to do that, I have to live
with the person first.
Joe
Appleton is journalism major at Cal State
Long Beach.
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