[nalovely]

Hi.
My boyfriend and I are both 21 and we have been together for one and a half year. We both live with our parents and have slept over at each others houses but now his parents are going to sell their house and get an apartment for us, him and me, where we can live together. The only problem is that i have reed many articles about cohabitation and the risk for divorce when cohabiting at a young age. Should i bee concearned about this? We love each other and want to get engage married and eventually start a family together. So what should we do? Should we move in together right away? Or should we wait until we get older and are ready for marriage?

[April Masini, your AskApril]

If you want to hedge against divorce, then you should get to know yourself and your boyfriend to figure out whether or not you’re compatible for the long run. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds — but living together isn’t the cause of divorce. Marrying before you know yourself and each other well enough, or ignoring incompatibilities, are much bigger reasons for divorce. 😉

Since you’re both young, and have the support of your families, and are fortunate enough to have his parents buy you a home, you probably have very issues — but marriage brings money issues, child-rearing issues, career issues, etc. And when you have challenges in a relationship, that’s when you get to know each other in a way that is different than when things are easy. 😉 Discussing things like religion and family involvement, who’s going to work, when, and what to do if someone gets sick or has an accident — are all ways to try and get to know each other and yourselves better.

It doesn’t sound like the two of you are engaged, so marriage may be a long way off. Or soon — I can’t tell from your post. If you’re counting on living together to lead to marriage, that may be a mistake. On the other hand, it sounds like you have the support of both families, which will help cut down a lot of the problems many couples have.

So, in answer to your questions, I don’t think that living together before marriage leads to divorce. But the studies that draw this conclusion are often short sighted, and they don’t look at who is living together, for how long, or what their personal or relationship issues or histories are. Bottom line: One thing alone, like living together prior to marriage, doesn’t necessarily lead to divorce. Incompatibilities, however, do.

Let me know if you have any other questions — I’m guessing that my post will make you think of some more. 😉

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[nalovely]

Thanks. This was very helpful for me and I think that you are right about many things that you wrote above. No we are not engaged yet but we have talked about how we would like our future to look like. I guess that we need to get to know each other better first although we seem to have the same values and seem to be compatible so far. Our parents support us and our relationshio and I am really thankful for that but as you say maybe it would look different for us if we could experience more challenging situations and see how we can handle it.

I havent got any more questions right now but this really helped me to put things into perspective so thanks for that. 🙂

[April Masini, your AskApril]

You’re very welcome. 🙂

I’m here if you need me. 😉

[b]Everyone likes to be liked! If the advice you found on AskApril.com was helpful “like” us on FB — and tell a friend!
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