This is a subject I have been wanting to discuss for a very long time. I need to do something about this laziness I have of putting my thoughts on paper. There was a time I kept a daily journal. These days I am even lazy to jot down some inspirational lines that come to head during the course of the day. That can’t be normal.
Anyway, I have wanted to write something about “living together before marriage” for quite some time – I just never got to it – I’m in that position when I have so much to say and it’s just that I get overwhelmed trying to put it word for word.
So yha… being in a relationship and emotionally committing to it is a lot of work as it is (well, that’s just my opinion), deciding to get married and living happily ever after (well, at least trying) is a big step, but moving in together is totally something else.
The intention of this article is to just pick the bloggers’ brains.
Do you think cohabiting is the safer alternative to ‘till death do us part”?
Are you cohabiting or have you considered it?
What do you think are the pros and cons?
I know couples who are in it by default. The relationship reached a level of maturity where living apart just didn’t make sense anymore. If we are always together anyway, we have committed to each just as much as a married couple, and the only thing standing between that Mr and Mrs title is the delivery of a few cows to my parents, why not go practical and we’ll see all formalities later?
Then there are cases where “we are doing it to help us decide whether or not marriage and building a family will be an option”. This is the saddest situation, I think. It’s those ones when the guy organizes a romantic dinner and presents you with a box. You are so excited when he goes down on one knee… next thing… it’s a set of keys. Here it’s not like you have decided to build a future together yet. It’s a pilot kinda thing – a trial run so that if I can’t handle your socks on the floor and the way you leave the toilet seat up and you don’t understand how come I don’t know how the vacuum cleaner works, we can decide to go our way – Besides, we are not bound to each other and there are no divorce procedures to go through.
Then again these days there are cohabitation contracts that we can bind ourselves with especially if we plan to do things jointly like buy property and that sort of thing.
On the other hand, though I didn’t want to be any religious about this and discuss how living together is an obvious indication that you have broken the first law of #keepinitforhubby… Mostly in Christianity, this becomes an issue when your relationship with God suffers because of it. You see when you take your prayer time seriously and you feel guilty that you can’t exactly go on your knees and say “Father this, Father that” with the same knees that you were on to give it to him in that oh-so-compromising position… then you might as well come out of one of the relationships. Either this natural one, or forget about making it work with God.
This argument then leads me to question what exactly marriage is. I’ve got a friend that argues that the decision to get married is already marriage. The commitment between the two people, without being sealed by no priest nor court paper or cows or even a ring.. is a marriage. In that case, the two people can act like married couples do and God will accept them because the agreement is there and it’s not like they are killing people. – in fact they are making them (children).
So yes… outside the religious circle, does cohabitation actually work? Is it better or does it just make things more complicated?
When I have agreed to marry you before witnesses n’all… and we have a piece of paper to prove it – and I’m called by your surname nogal, that should put some restrictions to how I treat you or how I don’t treat you. Or isn’t that the case?
When I haven’t sworn to be with you till either one of us dies, there are lesser chances of me hiring hit men at some point in time just because I think my name is on a certain policy. Or kanjani?
When I’m not called by your father’s name I have better freedom to tell your mother and your aunties to mind their own businesses akere?
What do you think, bloggers?
Note: pictures were stolen from several sites across the net