s/o on marriage- transition

rayskit10

this is NBR, but i saw something interesting in our answers to AP's poll. many people talked about not living together before marriage and the transition... DH and i did live together before we were married, but didn't we all have to move in together at one point? so, i have to wonder what the difference is?

for me, moving in together seemed so natural, almost effortless. we fell quickly in to a happy and wonderful pattern and there was little to no adjustment. would this have been different if we waited to be married? would having the wedding first have made the transition more difficult for us? we weren't young- we were in our late 20s (i was 27, DH was 28) so we had been on our own for quite some time...

did anyone else not feel the pinch of transition? how much do you really think it mattered that you lived together or didn't before  marriage- as in, if you didn't and the transition was tough, do you think that it would have been different moving in together without being married? would that have been easier or harder and why?

sorry- that was a pretty long question

Nanner

With us, we moved in together when we were already engaged.  It was definitely an adjustment--I was 33 when we he moved in!  I jsut wasn't used to sharing space with anyone.  But it wasn't really hard.  We didn't fight or anything.  But it was still a challenging transition.

The biggest difference I can see between moving in before as opposed to after marriage is that you've already made the legal commitment when it happens after marriage.  It can be an "OMG, what have I gotten myself into?" kind of feeling, whereas there's still an easy out (comparatively) before marriage.

PAGAS

We moved into together a month before we were married.  Overall, the transition was easy....especially since there was now someone to take out the trash.

When I say marriage is harder, it is more about taking someone else's opinion onnearly everything and having to come to some sort of compromise.  Being an only child and living on my own for 10 years, this was a huge adjustment to my state of mind.  The actual day to day living is easy, it is the decusion making that can be hard for me.  From something as simple as where to hang a picture to something more complex like where to invest our savings, we never agree on everything and that just makes things more interesting.

melrrr

We moved in together a few months after we got engaged (4-5 months before the wedding) but it was mainly for convenience because my lease was up at that time. I probably wouldn't have done it before then though. The only transition issues we had were that we had both lived on our own for a long time before moving in together. I think he took a little more getting used to it than I did, especially since I was moving into his house.

As for difficulties, we haven't had the slightest, so I wonder what challenges parenting will bring.

CareBear01

We did not live together until we got married.  Everyone told us how much of a "shock" it would be when we moved in together.  I didn't see anything "shocking" about it.  It was a completely smooth transition - and we didn't have any problems.  Of course, we had stayed with each other before, so we already knew our "bedtime" routines, cleanliness, etc. - so I always wondered what would be so different about living together? 

I have to mention that we were together almost 5 years by the time we were married, so we knew each other really well by that point.  Well, the first 1 1/2 year was in college - where we practically saw each other 24/7, then we did long distance for 2 years (dallas/houston) and saw each other about 2 times a month, then when we got engaged, I moved to Houston and got my own place - just so I would have my own space.  We had about a 14 month engagement in Houston, then we got an apt. together when we got married.  So, even though we were together for 5 years, we had our share of the LD relationship, too.

M&M614

I didn't mean to say that the transition wouldn't be tough anytime you are moving in together.  It's just that maybe you had worked the kinks out before marriage.  Which was the gist of the question.

For me marriage was a hard transition because of the fact that we hadn't lived together.  I'm sure that if we had lived together beforehand, that would have been the hard transition, and then my answer to the marriage question would have been much different because we had already worked it all out.

Does that make sense?

savannah11

DH and I moved in together almost 2 years before we got married. ?We were practically living at his apartment together a few months before we got our own place. ?I was just going back to my place for clothes and mail. ?DH had a little tougher time getting used to sharing space because he'd been living on his own for 3 years vs me having only lived on my own for 1. ?We had one big huge fight within a couple of weeks of living together because I moved something of his in our closet to make more room for my stuff. ?We had it out and dealt with all our frustrations and that was it. ?After that we had no more problems. ?Marriage was then just a seamless transition from dating to legally bound. ?

CindyandScott

Let's see, DH moved into the apt I was sharing with a roommate after we had been dating maybe a couple of months and then a couple of months later we moved out on our own. Seems strange but before we started dating we were very close friends for about a year. It just seemed natural.

I was 19 when all of this happened. Sadly, I have never lived on my own and really wish that I would have at some point but everything works out for a reason right?

aprilprincess

We moved in together after we were married but had spent the night at each other's places often. It was a very easy move for us but DH was gone most of the time so it didn't seem like anything changed. Now after the accident when it went from him being gone months at a time to the 3 of us together 24/7 is a whole other story.

funnyvalentine

DH and I moved in together the day that we became engaged after dating for 9 months. ?We had been spending the majority of our time at his place anyway. ?The move seemed completely natural to me. ?I don't recall any serious transition period. ?We were both just very excited and so so happy. Like most things with us, the move felt like the next obvious step in our relationship and once we took the plunge it felt like it was where we were supposed to be.?

?

OK... that last sentence is really long and I don't have time to rethink it. Hopefully it makes sense.?

kat.in.the.hat

I think anytime two people have to get used to each other - there are going to be difficulties - even with a roommate in college, there was always an adjustment period.

Josh and I got lucky - we got engaged, moved in together, he started grad school and I became the breadwinner all within a two month period.  Any rough patches or hardships, we just blamed grad school for them!