Why have things changed so much (relationships)?

[NewUser2022]

Genuine question. Not being judgy but would love to know why!

When I got married, 35 years ago, no one lived together before being married (or very few.) It was called 'living in sin' if you did.
Because of circumstances, I had to end the lease on my house and move in with my fiance for a few weeks before our wedding. My parents were ashamed and didn't even like telling people.

I know this is hard to believe.

But now, the pendulum has gone the other way.

None of my friends sons or daughters get engaged while living apart in their own places, then marry. They all live together and then an engagement and wedding (might) follow at some point, even after a child arrives.

If you are under 55, you might not be aware of how dramatically things have changed over 30 years.

But what I'm asking is why?

Why does no one live separately any more and then buy/move in once they are engaged or married?

Is it really all about try before you buy, as well as not placing any value on marriage any more?

I'm with you OP.

I remember well that 'living in sin' was frowned upon.

I lived in sin over thirty years ago but it was becoming commonplace.

What I find really sad these days are the multiple threads about relationships where each partner has children from previous relationships plus children in current relationships and the dynamics aren't working.

It's always the children that suffer in these situations.

There are far too many threads/posts from people squealing 'but what about me?'

No one seems to get on with people any more. Just look at that vile 'MIL' thread that's ongoing.

Yes some folk are bloody annoying, that's always been the case, but the sheer hatred and bile on that thread is frightening. Many of the posts are simple misunderstandings but it's all 'LTB' or go 'NC!'

It's all about meeee!!!

[quote firstimemamma]@AmandaHugenkiss I love your moe's tavern username!! [/quote]
Thanks! Massive Simpsons fan 😁

I'm quite surprised at the assertion that the prevalent view during the mid 80s was that living together before marriage was shameful or sinful. The generation before, maybe.
My parents eventually married in 1991 because they wanted to adopt. They'd been living together for about 15 years at that point. Of my three aunts and four uncles, all but one aunt (who got married at eighteen) lived with their partners during the 70s and 80s before marrying them. Most of them (as well as both my parents) had previous boyfriends or girlfriends who they had lived with. Several had children without getting married. The same is true of friends of my parents.

This was not, in any conceivable way, a bohemian or especially progressive circle of friends family. My parents (and most of their close friends) came from Northern, working class Catholic backgrounds and so I imagine that there might have been a fair bit of tutting about living in sin from more religiously minded relatives but it doesn't seem to have much effect on what they chose to do.

That’s quite odd. I’m 52 and got married 30 years ago after having lived with my boyfriend. Most of my friends lived with their boyfriends - some with no intentions of getting wed. Living in Sin was quite a dated term even then - and this was only five years after you got married.

Many of my school friends were married by 1977. They went from home to marriage.

Ok. So now you're actually saying that you're talking about 45 years ago - not 35. Even then, plenty of people were still living together. You are basing your Q on your own limited experience.

Plenty of us are pointing out that announcing 35 years ago, no one lived together before being married (or very few.) It was called 'living in sin' if you did. doesn't bear much resemblance to what we remember from the time and certainly wasn't the case for many of us.

Attitudes have changed a lot but I think social class and possibly the area of the country you lived in, played a big part in whether people talked about "living in sin" in the 80s. I lived in the south in a middle class family where both parents had been to university and had professional jobs. We weren't a religious family. My friends were mostly similar, though their mothers tended to have non professional jobs, and some were religious.

Education was highly valued and prety much everyone I knew went to university/ polytechnic. All the women took on professional roles, living independently away from home. None of us married before our late 20s or 30s and everyone had several relationships before marriage though generally didn't actually live together. To me then, living together would suggest I had decided to make a long term commitment to someone and I didn't feel that before I met my DH, although had several relationshps lasting two to three years.

We also mainly lived in London which was likely more liberal than elsewhere.

So OP, although we're probably a similar age, my experience was very different from yours in some ways, not so much in others.

I think people are now a lot more more open sexually than we were. For all our experimenting, we didn't easily have access to accurate information and there was still a feeling that somehow men knew more about it than we did as women! When I first asked my doctor for the pill, she asked me if my bf was coercing me!

I think also there is more awareness of what one might look for in a partner. I just muddled through, getting into relationships for reasons I now don't feel were always right, and without a real sense of what or who I was looking for. Waiting for Mr Right kind of!

I think it's great that my daughters have a access to so much more information and the opportunities to meet far more people via the internet (both as partners and friends). They talk far more openly about
relationships and sex with me than I ever would have done with my mother.

Was it really that unusual 35 years ago? My parents married around that time but had lived together for a few years. The same is true of various aunts and uncles also

To add, we are also northerners and RC!

I was probably the only if my group of friends to do things the traditional way 32 years ago, strict mother. I think the modern way is preferable despite having had a long and happy marriage.

I'm just about to turn 51. 35 years ago, 'living together' became the cool thing to do. Getting married before living together was something our parents did and we'd all evolved a bit.

@NewUser2022 where are your peers now?

Still married to the same people? Truly happy? Love still a part of their life?

@NewUser2022

Genuine question. Not being judgy but would love to know why!

When I got married, 35 years ago, no one lived together before being married (or very few.) It was called 'living in sin' if you did.
Because of circumstances, I had to end the lease on my house and move in with my fiance for a few weeks before our wedding. My parents were ashamed and didn't even like telling people.

I know this is hard to believe.

But now, the pendulum has gone the other way.

None of my friends sons or daughters get engaged while living apart in their own places, then marry. They all live together and then an engagement and wedding (might) follow at some point, even after a child arrives.

If you are under 55, you might not be aware of how dramatically things have changed over 30 years.

But what I'm asking is why?

Why does no one live separately any more and then buy/move in once they are engaged or married?

Is it really all about try before you buy, as well as not placing any value on marriage any more?

I married 35 years ago and lived with OH to be before we married... it seemed quite normal??

Why would anyone have been concerned about pregnancy? The pill was free and available to all (I certainly began taking it as a teenager in the 70s).

Also nearly all of my friendship group lived with their partners (now into the 80s) and I don’t recall any stigma - my very large family ranges in class spectrum - so class is not a significant factor from my perspective.

I’ve been living with the same partner since I was 22 (we are actually married now - but this was just for admin purposes!).

OP looking at the responses on this thread, surely you can see that your experience is by no means the norm for that era, in fact going back even 45+ years many posters can share experiences of people cohabiting before marriage.

@Adventsquirrel

I couldn't imagine promising to spend my life with someone I had not lived with. How do you know you're properly compatible? Living with someone helps you understand how they'll be with money/ bills, meals, routines, household tasks etc - things that can end up being important in a marriage. Also housing is expensive so it's practical/money-saving to live together before committing to marriage, if you'd be spending a lot of time at each other's houses anyway.

Exactly.

Seriously, how ridiculous it was to promise yourself to another person for life without living with them first. You do not truly know anybody untill you have lived with them. I would be horrified if any of my children married before living with their partner.

I think there is some cherry picking here over who is telling the 'truth'.

There are plenty of posts from women who recall things being as I said. So please stop trying to suggest I'm making it up or am the only one with these memories.

For 'proof' I could dig into the ONS and show the change, but don't have time today!

I didn't marry in 1977. I did say that many of my school friends /peers did when they came out of uni and without the living together bit first.

By the late 80s, it was becoming more acceptable but it definitely wasn't the 'norm' as it is now.

The point I was making is that now, the concept of an engagement and a wedding, in that order, without living together , has gone and in a relatively short amount of time. (And I think 30-40 years is a short time when it comes to social changes.)

I'm not making a moral judgement. I'm looking at it from a sociology perspective on why it's changed.

@KurtWilde

There are other posters saying the same as me, and others not saying the same.

@douliket

Seriously, how ridiculous it was to promise yourself to another person for life without living with them first. You do not truly know anybody untill you have lived with them. I would be horrified if any of my children married before living with their partner.

Some people still marry without living together first.

Also, as I have said several times now, living together first doesn't particularly seem to make for happy successful marriages does it? The divorce rate is still pretty high

I think there is some cherry picking here over who is telling the 'truth'.

We are all telling the truth. But it seems clear from the discussion that the change has happened over a much longer time period than the 35 years that you first claimed, and that it also happened very patchily across UK society.

I'm looking at it from a sociology perspective on why it's changed.

I'm sure there have been a ton of studies on attitudes and how they've changed and why. But your question was based entirely on your own personal experience and that of people you know, not what happened in society as a whole. And so was my answer.

You can't really blame the rest of us for cherry picking when you did exactly that and haven't yet got round to looking at any actual statistics yourself.

I lived with my now husband for 7 years before we got married. We got engaged before living together but that was more of a promise because we were relocating aged 18/19. I never would have married him before living together, i wouldn't have known all his habits etc... Gotta know it works before making that marriage commitment.

Hi OP

I don't think your original post sounds judgemental and I'm sorry people are giving you such a hard time, maybe it does sound like a bit of an obvious answer though, and a bit naïve, so maybe that's why people might think you aren't genuine.

If your question is genuine- here are some reasons.

Until recently, it was not possible to marry same sex partners, or have a civil partnership. Therefore many couples would never be able to wait until marriage. Why miss out on the main part of the relationship, cohabiting for the sake of a certificate.

Marriage was never an equal opportunity so why set a timeline around it?

Marriage now is thankfully less of a religious ceremony and is accepted as a secular commitment. Most of us would laugh at the fire and brimstone idea of "sin". Obviously it comes from the idea that you're having sex before marriage, which, most people are also happy to do. If someone told me I'd sinned I'd PMSL.

If I were religious I'd say maybe murdering someone or stealing was a sin, but not having sex with someone I wasn't married to, wearing mixed fabrics or being jealous of my mate's new coat.

The idea of learning about someone AFTER you marry and move in with them is absolutely insane and very dangerous, considering the price of housing now also.

Basically, the world has evolved
People are more emotionally and financially intelligent, and the fear of judgement is rightly nonexistent. Many old ways of doing things are good, like baking bread, making furniture, and writing music. The things that actually affect our societal wellbeing were NOT better.

Thankfully we have shaken a lot of them off as made up nonsense, however those who wish to observe those old customs are still welcome to do so without judgement because it literally doesn't affect anyone else - same as cohabiting before marriage never affected anyone else.

@KatherineJaneway

35 years ago was the 1980s.

We all loved together. Nobody called it living in sin.

Yes, some did. Just because it didn't happen in your social circle, didn't mean it didn't happen to come of us.

Yeah!

A point I made just a few posts later when it became obvious that others the same age as me had very, very different experiences of the 80s.

Which I still find fascinating as, for me, the whole of the 80s was very much a liberated time and the 90s a much more regressive return to stereotypes. From Annie Lennox to the Spice Girls for example.

There's no real need to be so spiky about it!

Why does no one live separately any more and then buy/move in once they are engaged or married?

We've been married for 23 years, together 27 years and both either the wrong side of 50 or bang on it.

We weren't living together when we first got engaged, as my wife had her own rented flat and I'd just moved back to the area, so lived with my parents for 6 months (well, most of the time I was at my wife's flat, but not all the time), whilst I saved for a deposit on a house. As soon as I bought the house, we lived together. This was a year before we got married.

Apart from the fact we wanted to be together, it made financial sense. We were saving for our wedding and honeymoon, so why pay a mortgage and rent.

The overriding reason though was because we wanted to be together.

(And I think 30-40 years is a short time when it comes to social changes.)

30-40 years is at least a generation. And although it may have only been one generation in any one part of society, over UK society as a whole it's been more like 60-70 years. And not totally universal yet.

People lived together before getting married in the 80s 🤣