5 Reasons You Should Live Together before Marriage

It helps to save money. Let us start with the most practical reason. Weddings and honeymoons are expensive, and even if your parents are willing to help, you need to save as much money as you can. You’re already living in each other’s pockets, why keep on paying for both apartments? Living together is much cheaper. Additionally, it gives you an opportunity to figure out how you are going to handle money issues once you get married.

It’s less stressful. Moving in together right after the wedding is very stressful. Do you really want to spoil the first months of your married life by arguing over furniture shopping and décor, yelling at movers and trying to figure out how to fit all your stuff into your apartment or house? If you start living together before marriage, the only thing you’ll have to worry about on your wedding day is your wedding. No stressful thoughts of the impending move will cloud your big day!

Cohabitation is the ultimate test of your relationship. If your roommate drives your crazy by leaving dirty dishes in the sink or drinking milk straight out of the carton, you can find another one. But what if it’s your spouse? Cohabitation isn’t always easy even if you love your partner slash roommate to bits. You will inevitably have arguments about sharing chores, keeping the apartment tidy (because everyone has their own definition of tidiness), your annoying habits and quirks, etc. If you learn to cohabitate before tying the knot, your first year of marriage will be much easier.

You learn to resolve fights and arguments. When you’re not living together, the easiest way to resolve a fight is just walk away, calm down and then resume being all coupley as if nothing has happened. Sometimes it works, but you can’t resolve all your conflicts like that. You need to learn to talk it out, apologize and compromise. When you share a home, you can’t walk away every time you have an argument. You either learn to communicate with your partner and resolve conflicts or realize that you’re not so compatible as you thought.

You might reconsider the whole marriage thing. No, we don’t mean a break up. We mean that you might decide to postpone your wedding indefinitely. You’ve already started a life together and consider yourselves a family, do you really need to make it official? Of course, you can still get married if you want to. But if you were going to get married just because your friends and family expected you to, cohabitation might change your mind. You can get married at any point, there is not need to rush things.