Experience Means Baggage

[Teddy_Roosevelt]

Thanks pernicious.

The article said:

"Cohabitation is also more common among those who are less religious than their peers, those who have been divorced, and those who have experienced parental divorce, fatherlessness, or high levels of marital discord during childhood. A growing percentage of cohabiting couple households, now almost 40 percent, contain children."

Well, I'd say we're less religious than our peers, but neither of us have any of the other traits. We both have stable families, no kids, had good childhoods, etc.

"The belief that living together before marriage is a useful way "to find out whether you really get along,""

That's not really our situation. We're thinking of doing it because we're already sure it's headed that way.

[closetrightyNYC]

I think moving in together is fine as long as you're doing it because you love being close to that person, have made an impending marriage commitment anyway (so you're not getting the milk for free without buying the cow, so to speak), and aren't doing it to screen for whether he leaves toothpaste on the towel or leaves the seat up.  For example, we're engaged, and if he gets a job in NYC in the next few months, we'll probably live together instead of paying for two Manhattan apartments.  However, it's understood that any household habits will be discussed and accommodated, not used as reasons to end a perfectly good relationship.  

I say, if you're going to break up with someone because of something petty he does in the bathroom or the kitchen, and are too big of a wussy to TALK to your own significant other about what bothers you, then you deserve to break up.  

And I hate it when people imply that that is a necessary screening task before marriage.  Kind of like the "You have to figure out whether you work well in the sack" argument.  Yuk.   :vomit:

[nyet]

What works for some poeple will undoubtably not work for others. Those who insist that it is absolutely necessary for all people to have a lot of sexual experience before 'settling down' with their 'mate for life' are wrong in their opinion, and those who automatically believe that because this is a choice that would create for themselves a lot of baggage, that this baggage necessarily follows to other people are also wrong.

There are those people who find that not having a variety of sexual partners works for them,and there are those people for whom this varied experience doesn't equate to baggage.

And of course, there are some people who are messed up because they made the wrong decision for them. There are those who married the first person they ever dated, and who are miserable. There are those who have had many sexual partners, and are miserable. The real idea that one of those choices is automatically better than the other for all people. It's that for each person, one of those choices is right, and one is wrong. It's up to individuals to figure out which is which, and choose, even if some of them choose unwisely for themselves.