Living Together Before Marriage? No Thanks!

It's weird because I feel like I often have to explain to people that we didn't live together before we were married.  We are definitely in the minority these days and most people just assume that you lived together before marriage.  I think that you should do what works best for you, but I do have some fairly strong opinions on this as well.  

I wanted to wait to live together partially because this is just the way that I was brought up and my parents had fairly strong opinions on it as well.  

I wanted something to be special after our wedding.  If you live together, then you get married and it really is just a piece of paper.  You come home after the wedding and nothing has changed.  For us everything had changed, it was this whole new adventure and we both found it very exciting!  

I know people hate this opinion, but I truly believe that if getting married is important to you, living together first just prolongs it.  News flash, men don't care about weddings.  (Ok maybe some do, but I know a lot who don't.)  If you live together, there is no pressure for them to propose because they really don't see the difference between that and getting married. I have seen time and time again a girl moves in with her boyfriend and then gets frustrated when he doesn't propose for two years.  I also think that when you live together, real life takes over and you think more about household finances and less about finding money for that ring.  

And that whole you should live together before marriage to make sure it will work thing?  Before you get married you should probably know the other person well enough to know if it will work.  Sure we had some bumps when we first got married with learning to deal with the other persons habits, but it wasn't really a huge deal.  Plus it's been proven that the divorce rate is higher in people who live together first.  (Ok so maybe this statistic has been recently disproven.)  I think maybe because people rush into it because it doesn't seem like as big of a commitment as a marriage.

So there you have it.  If you did live with your significant other before marriage, don't be offended by this.  I know a lot of people do it, this is just my perspective from someone who didn't do it and my reasoning behind it.  Because these days, it seems like people don't really understand this reasoning!