Whats stopping you from starting your life together now?

For me it was finances. I wanted to wait until I had some debt paid off abd received a promotion before marrying.

Also my relationship is semi long distance (100 miles apart) and I didn't want to legally marry someone who lived 100 mikes away from me. So I waited until I got a job in his metropolitan area and my apartment lease is up.

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See those make sense but I see a lot of comments that are like "We are cutting our guest list and going with a venue we don't like so we can start our lives together now." Thats where I'm confused. Why go with something you hate when you can save up for a few years and have a wedding you'd like more.

I would be so sad having to be Long distance. You are a tough lady! Also screw apartment leases.

I'm guessing it's outside pressure from family and society in general. "You have to do things a certain way or it won't be valid" mentality that doesn't work for most but they want to keep the peace.


People have lives together everyday without getting married by a certain date.

I have thought the exact same thing! I always wonder exactly what “starting our lives together“ entails. FH and I have chosen to push back our wedding to 2022 in order to have the type of celebration we really want (because we are only doing this once!) And in no way do we feel like we cannot “start our lives together“ until we sign a piece of paper. I mean, if you are marrying someone and committing the rest of your life to them, shouldn’t you have already started your lives together?? You should have already committed to one another, cultivated a healthy, happy relationship together and a life that incorporates one another. Not being able to start your lives together until after a wedding sounds like an arranged marriage where are you are just meeting your spouse and beginning from scratch. I thought maybe those people meant they wouldn’t be moving into a home together or having children until after marriage... but a majority of the people I’ve seen use that statement already live with their spouses and/or have children with them. So I am curious to see what is meant by that statement as well 🤔

I think most comments saying they want to start their lives probably mean that they want to start having children. Especially for religious reasons, a lot of people wait to have children until they're married. Plus being married makes other things easier like finances and insurance, especially if you have a child together. Most women don't want to wait until they're older to start trying to have a family. So having a shorter engagement will make those things happen sooner. Some people don't mind waiting and some do. It's definitely a personal preference/decision and it will be different for everyone.

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I wish I could heart react to your comment, thats literally what I think too. I'm always hoping they already have started a life with that person. When my FH and I moved in together 2 years ago (we were dating 7-8 years that point) I wanted to kill him, I needed to adjust to living with him and how he lives. Imagine waiting until marriage to move in with someone.

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I forgot kids are even a thing people want to have. I'm such a moron. lol

I think for some people they’re just kind of traditional about it. I had a friend who was engaged but they did not want to live together yet because I guess they were religious or some thing. So even though they were engaged they still didn’t want to live together yet til marriage.
I started living with my fiancé when we got engaged I didn’t do that before hand because he was living with his family and so it wasn’t really something we felt like appropriate I guess for me to move in but when we got engaged I don’t know I guess It just felt different enough for me to want to move in. I am not against moving in together as boyfriend and girlfriend though. I wouldn’t have minded that but I guess I felt awkward doing that in his family‘s home ha ha. But if we had moved out together separately that would’ve been fine. We just also wanted to wait until we were better in terms of our financial savings

View Quoted Comment It really isn't that bad. Before COVID, I saw him every weekend. Now witj COVID we both work from home. Sometimes he'll stay at my place for a week and I'll stay at his place for a week or two. 100 miles to many ppl is NOT considered long distance.

View Quoted Comment I agree with this. Even stats say that an unmarried couple that lives together will be broken up (67% chance) by the time the kid turns 12. While a MARRIED couple with a child only has a 25% chance of divorcing or separating by the time the kid turns 12. Huge difference!

Everyone is different, but I have struggled with this concept as well. I have always pushed for what I wanted. I often times went against tradition. I went the "correct" way the first time I was married: dated for just over a year, eloped, had a baby 2+ years into the marriage. For me, going after what I wanted was more important than anything than standards for young people.

For us, we have been living our lives together since the very beginning. We have been together over 4 years. We got an apartment together within the first 2 months of our relationship (he was still going back and forth across town to be with his daughter and his job, but spent his days off at our apartment). We have been raising our children together since the very beginning. We parent very similar, so it was not a big adjustment for us. We have vehicles together. We had a baby in 2019. We have animals together. The only thing we are really missing is the marriage license and the house.

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This is pretty much what I was going to say!

While my FH and I have been living together for almost 7 years, 'starting our lives together' for us means moving forward. Forward into being married, buying a house, having children. We're not very religious, but we are traditional on that aspect, and want to be married before any of that can happen.

We def. already have a life together, and have been for years, but this is what we consider it to mean when we read that phrase!

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I actually had not planned to move in with my fiancé until after we were married. Our entire relationship has been long distance up until this last year when we finally made the decision to move in together. In hindsight, I am super glad we made that decision, because it was quite a long adjustment period! (still adjusting a little bit now LOL) but, that being said, We had most definitely started a life together prior to even moving in together. We were both most definitely a part of almost every facet of each others lives, even though we lived in separate homes. He had met my friends, I had met his, we had made new mutual friends together; we shared our interests and hobbies with one another; we went to concerts and parties and hockey games and game nights; we attended weddings and funerals together; we talked for hours every single day, shared everything from how our day went to the most intimate details of our lives; we were always each other‘s first phone call when something great or something terrible happened; he drove four hours just to sit in a waiting room for another five hours while I had surgery, then waited for me to wake up from the anesthesia just so his face would be the first one I saw when I woke up... then immediately had to drive another four hours home in order to work mandatory overtime that night; he was there for me throughout my entire year long recovery from surgery; I helped him financially when he found himself in the position of having to pay two mortgages and two car loans; we have adopted fur children together; we were there for each other during the best times, worst times, and everything in between. We were living a life together every single day, without needing a piece of paper or a singular address to validate it. I just don’t understand the mindset of "not having started a life" with your partner until after you sign a piece of paper. I am assuming it is just poor wording, and those people actually mean they cannot wait "to move in together" or "to have children together"; because people in relationships that cannot live with one another or cannot/chose not to have children (married or not), have "started lives together" that are just as valid and meaningful as those who do those things.

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I guess I am in both of those statistics.

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Nope, that is long distance!

Lots of people view getting married as a rite of passage/sacrament/whatever and as starting the next stage of life. There are legal issues with marriage as well - you can go to a lawyer and draw up papers to take care of all those things but marriage does it too automatically. And while no one plans to break up when they are in love, there are enough really messy stories about dividing a big joint asset like a house without being married.

There’s also a trend during times of upheaval that increases marriages.

I’ve thought the same thing. My wife and I started our lives together long before we were legally married. My best guess is the brides that make those comments come from a more conservative background and believe you must be married in order to cohabitate or have children.

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Is it easier to split a house and assests when married?

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There is precedent that assets acquired while married are joint. Buying a house together before married makes both people the legal owners of the house, but if they break up, the parties can argue about who paid more for the house, who's assets were used for any upgrades, where the down payment money came from, etc. I'm not saying that people don't do it all the time, just that if it goes bad, it can go very bad.

For example: if I have 40K for a down payment, and my FH has 50K, if we are married, once those funds are mingled into the joint asset, it is still a joint asset. If he spends 1000 hours redoing the kitchen and adds 40K value to the house, he can argue that he contributed more to that increase in value. That's a nightmare in court and usually ends up losing everyone money. But...people in a break up often don't act rationally. You can take steps when married to protect a larger portion (say from an inheritance), and that may hold up in court, but again, marriage makes anything acquired during the marriage a joint asset.