How long should you be together before marriage?

By the time we get married in the fall we would have been together for 4 years. I don't necessarily think there is a one size fits all rule for everyone in this instance. There are people who are together for years, then get married only to divorce a short time later and then there are those who've known each other only a short time before marriage and end up lasting for decades. I really think it depends on the two people involved and their willingness to work at the relationship through all the ups and downs.

I think it varies with each couple and things going on in their lives. My FH and I were together for 4 years before he proposed. We knew that we were going to get married about 4 months in though. There were just too many things going on in our lives that we decided to wait to get engaged. We will be just shy of 6yrs when we get married in March.

I know I judge others who have only been together a few months and get engaged. I'll admit it, I'm not going to waste my time being politically correct. I truly think you don't 'really' know a person until about 9 months or so together.

When you think the time is right and you are both ready.Getting married "too soon" or "too late" makes no sense if it's going to work it's going to work weather you've known each other 1 year or your whole life.

Thats a loaded question. Some can be together for a short period of time and be madly in love and engaged and married within a year. Then others can be together for years before getting engaged and then engaged for years before wedding and it not last.

Amen - Catherine!

I think if you've never had a big fight with your significant other, you've never compromised on anything (big stuff, not just what movie to watch kind of stuff), and you've never done something so totally embarrassing in front of them --- they don't really know you, and you don't really know them. FH and I will have been together for 5.5 yrs before we get married (engaged for 4 of them). We both "knew" we were getting married about a year after we had been dating -- but it was more important to us to finish school before we started our lives together....

I'm with you MissMe, I think you actually need even more than 9 months to really know a person. People are on their best behavior in the beginning, and while I realize some marriages do work out after knowing each other only a short time....I call that luck! It's all about the individual personalities of the couple too. Easy going, open minded people will probably have much better luck getting married so quickly. People with rigid values, beliefs, and expectations for life should definitely take their time in making their choice IMO.

I think you need more like at least 1 1/2 years before getting engaged to truly know someone. My FH and I were together 4 years when he proposed and will be together almost 5 years when we get married. When I think about how I felt about at our 1 year anniversary and how I feel now, it's different in a good way.

For some people being together 2 months and then getting engaged works. But for the majority, it does not.

I'm so glad some of you agree... I feel like way too many people say if you know it's right then it's right and go for it! I think at about 9 months is when you begin to realize who the person truly is that you're in love with and from there you begin to build your relationship on each other's true selves.

Honestly I don't think there is a magic number. When you know you know. It is true. I have seen couples who dated for years and years and divorced quickly after marriage; while others who were together only a short time and have wonderful marriages. I have also seen the reverse. Marriage is work. You have to work everyday otherwise you fall into a routine.

I think people may be biased based on their relationship(including myself lol)..IMO 9 months is probably too soon, you haven't had the chance to be with the other person long term and still kind of in the giggly exciting stage..so maybe 1-2 years is more ideal. BUT it depends on the couple and I think there is something to be said about kind of just knowing he/she is the one..also as Noei mentioned you can be with someone for a really long time and still not have it be the one (clearly I have mixed opinions hehe!)..Also another note, it's quite a different thing to have a marriage last vs. having a HAPPY marriage that lasts! :-)

I think it completely depends on the couple. I personally think age and/or experience has a lot to do with not waiting a few years. I think as you get older you are less inclined to wait around getting to know someone, honestly, if I wasn't feeling in it in the first month or so, I was gone. Less tolerance for BS... (at 42 I knew exactly who and what I wanted in my life).

I was engaged after 8 months and married after 2 years. Although we were talking about getting married within 5 months. We just knew.

I personally think it depends on the couple. I knew my ex for over 4 years and he ended up cheating on me with seven different women. I knew FH for two years but we were only dating 10 months before he proposed. In that 10 months, I learned more about my FH than I could have ever learned about my ex. We had gone through a really rough time and we knew what the other person was made of. IMO, I don't think it's right to judge people who plan to get married after a short amount of time. No one anything about what goes on in that relationship when you're on the outside looking in.

That's a very good point Sharon!

You guys raise some good points. I am pretty sure that if my situation were different (I was NOT a single mom to my daughter) my FH and I would have gotten married about 2 years ago. But being the 2-for-1 package I am, FH wanted to be 100% ready in his life to take on the both of us and be a father and a husband all at once.

I'm glad he waited until he was ready although the waiting was killing me!

Honestly, I thinking waiting a long time is good. I really don't think there should be any big 'surprises' in the relationship when you get married.....we've been together for a little more than 5 years, have lived together for about 3 1/2 years, and by the time we marry it'll be more than 6 1/2 years. We felt early on that it was the right match, but taking our time has only solidified that. I'd rather know the person very comfortably and completely, and vice-versa, before taking such a big step.

I too think it takes a while to know someone. I would never get engaged before a year at least personally. The hard thing is there's no "magic number." And every couple's experience is difference. I know at 9 months, after hanging out like every day, I felt I knew everything about FS. But I continued to find out more. It does take a while to truly know everything important about a person, things they might not let out in just a couple of months. However, couples break up after any period of time, so waiting a few extra years isn't any insurance that you'll stay together necessarily.

I still don't see the harm in waiting though (I get that a lot as well, since I'm young.) Even if you know they're the one, there's no reason to get married right away. You can still just continue dating them for a while.

But, if it works for them, and they're sure about it, then that's great for them No matter how long you wait, it could still end up being a mistake, you just have to trust yourself.

Like Sharon said, I think that age and experience plays a huge part in this. I am older and just didn't put up with crap in my previous relationships. If I knew it wasn't going to work, I was out of there. Same idea on the other side. My DS and I knew each other for 6 months before getting engaged and we got married just shy of being together 2 years. I knew pretty quickly that he was the one and we were both very open about it. There was no reason for us to wait.

Both my parents and grandparents met and married within 9 months. My grandparents were married 50 + years and my parents have been married for 39 years. My DS and I have two sets of friends. One set dated for 3 years, got married, and filed for divorce 5 weeks later. Other set dated for 5 years, got married, and divorced 8 months later.

It definitely depends on the couple - there is no magic number.

I guess I'm the odd lady out. My FH and I dated for 2 months before we got engaged. I think when you know you know. I've dated a lot of guys before I met him and I had never met someone that I felt so comfortable with. We've only been together a short time, but it's so easy for me to see that we will last because we are both willing to work on our relationship and we've been through some hard things together that would've made other people run. So I think it really all depends. And we are both at a point in our lives where we know what we want and where we want to go and it's in the same direction. But before meeting FH, I used to think people were crazy for getting married so soon into a relationship.

I honestly believe it depends on the individual people. Some people just know what they look for in a person, others learn from experience, etc. When i met my fiance I couldn't believe how much we had in common. We couldn't stop talking to eachother. After a month or two of dating, I had learned more about him than any one of my past relationships. We're already living together, so it's allowed us to "really see what a persons like" i suppose. We'll be getting married on our 1 year anniversary.