You wanna go steady?

I have been married for just over a month now, so I can justifiably claim to be an expert at relationships and marriage. There are two schools of thought when it comes to living together before getting married.

1. Living together gives you a good idea of what spending the rest of your lives together will be like. I agree with this, but you don’t have a good idea until after a couple of months (probably a year) of living together.
2. If you wait until getting married before living together, then you are more willing to work through the problems you discover.

While I believe both are true, I think it is wise to live together before getting married. If you can work out your problems while living together and not being married, then I think it shows you are compatible and committed.

Any girl that I dated for more than a month I have lived with for some amount of time. Vanessa and I lived together for 4 years before getting married. The only thing that has changed is the word “wife” and “husband” has replaced “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” (when I don’t forget). Other than that everything is the same. I didn’t suddenly start doing dishes and laundry. She didn’t suddenly start taking out the trash. The trash, taking care of the cars, and the yard are my “jobs”. By the way, we don’t have a yard.