Living in Sin with a Safety Pin

One of the first comments I got after I got engaged was, "Congratulations! Now you won't be living in sin!"

Living in the Bible-belt, you pretty much get used to this look when you tell someone you're living with a boy before you got married:

And usually, I just roll on not caring about the silent judging and whatnot because that's how I was raised.

But recently, I saw a really heartbreaking plea for understanding from a girl I went to highschool with, asking her friends and family to understand her personal decision to live with her boyfriend before getting married, which then proceeded to her getting Bible-bashed by so called friends/family.

 


Nooooo Facebook! Why do you have to do this to me?? Now I have to get my soap box out!



There are about a million and one reasons I chose to move in with Eric before we got married. So many, I don't even know where to start.

For one, my hippy parents raised me to be an independent, rational human being who made my own choices based on my own morals, beliefs, and situations.

Also, we're both mature, financially stable adults with careers and degrees and pasts that have provided us with the experiences we need to, for the most part, be real people. (That's not to say that we don't have some weeks where we eat pizza 4/7 days of the week.)

People often say 50% of marriages end in divorce, which now isn't accurate at all due to the fact that people are marrying later, birth control, and marriage less reliant on situational circumstances instead of an actual relationship.

But when I hear people say they couldn't imagine living with someone before they were married or saying what a terrible idea it is, it just sounds ridiculous to me.


First of all, you really find out who someone is when you live with them. You find out how clean (or in my case, how messy) a person is, you find out how they sleep, how they wake up, how they spend their free time when they're not with you...all that stuff that is normally a surprise if you wait until marriage is found out in time to GTFO if you need to.

You also figure out if you can work with that person in real-life situations. Can you handle bills together? Can you handle chores together? Can you handle those days where one of you had the worst day ever and is just stomping around the house?

Living together most certainly comes with downsides, including the potential to get trapped in a relationship based off a lease and a dog and people entering into decisions too early, but that is something for each individual couple to consider and communicate through.


People who traditionally waited until marriage group up in a time without cell phones or the internet, and an entirely different dating scene to begin with.

You'd talk to someone at school, or work, maybe after school and on weekends. Now, you're in CONSTANT contact with your significant other. Literally, you have to find someone in this world that you can stand to talk to all day, all night.

While I don't think that there is anything wrong with waiting until marriage at all, I think that no matter what you choose it shouldn't be judged by anyone-especially reasoning based off of archaic context of what relationships are and how they function.

We live in a progressive world, and world where people should be allowed to make the choices that are right for them, not anyone else.


If you want to live together, live together. You want to wait, wait. But you should be supportive of the people you love no matter. That's what is important.


Do what you want, and love everyone. And if anyone tries to tell you differently, then screw 'em!

 



P.S. DREW CAREY.