after having read on this site about the percentage of failed marriages after living together, it made me reflect on my own relationship. my boyfriend and i worked together and were friends (although relatively new friends) before we were dating. i needed a roommate at the time and he also needed a roommate....so he moved into my apartment. at this point, as i mentioned, we were just friends. i did have some thoughts of seeing where the friendship could lead but that was before we became roommates. once he moved in i was determined not to get involved with him because he was my roommate. anyway, after a while, it became impossible for us to not become a couple. eventually, we both gave into our feelings for each other and began dating. we really have a great relationship. we rarely argue...we do have disagreements sometimes but are very good with communicating with each other and discussing the issues we may have.
because we were living together before we were even together, it seems weird to me that in order for us to have a better percentage of marital longevity, i should have kicked him out once we became romantically involved. we have been together for 2 years now and have recently bought a house together (we both know we want to be married someday and it was cheaper than paying rent). so needless to say, he isn't going to be moving out anytime soon.
i guess my thoughts are that the basis of why live in before marriages don't work is because of the mentality of a month to month agreement. if neither person has that mentality and we have bought a house together (big committment), would we have a better chance at staying together after marriage? (in case you are wondering, the reason we aren't already married or engaged is mainly a monetary one....and i don't want to elope or go down to city hall. i want to do it right..like i have always dreamed about. also, we are both getting our master's right now and want to wait until we are finished with that). so anyway, what do you guys think? i know it's a kind of weird situation....

So you've always dreamed of living together before you got married? I'll admit, that is probably a little off the normal fairy tale, but that's OK.

Your sitch is not really weird, it's typical, and to be honest, I dont' think there's anything so special about your love for each other that's any different from all those other people that ended up being a statistic. YOu may be lucky, but the odds are against you.

If this is really your soulmate, and looking at the long view you want the greatest chance of success, then you'll find a way to make it work w/o living together.

Please feel free to prove the statistics wrong, that's my hope.

ThePiedPiper,

Anecdotal evidence probably isn’t much help but I will offer you my story.

My H and I lived together for.. oh, about 5 years.. before we got married. The reasons were financial. We’ve been together now for almost 14 years, we’ll be married 10 years next year. As far as I can tell, our marriage is quite good. I asked him recently (last week or so) how he’d rate his satisfaction with our marriage and how we handle our relationship on a scale of 1-10 and he rated them both a 9 or 10 and it’s the same for me. We’ve managed to both preserve our love for each other and stay in love with each other.

I believe, that marriage is less a matter of geography before you have the ceremony and more how you treat each other throughout your lives together. If it were me, I’d focus my efforts on using some of the concepts of this site to strengthen your relationship rather than trying to figure out how to make it work with a geographic separation. I think that would give you more bang for your buck.

Good luck to you,

Mys

I believe that the success of a marriage post living together is also tied to economic status and educational status and whether or not the two of you had long term goals headed toward matrimony or not.

Sounds like you are both highly educated and seems like you have both been marital oriented. I think if you are aware of the stats and keep yourself attentive to the problems that Harley describes you could beat the odds...

V.

What does that mean you want to do it right?