To wonder why living together has become the benchmark for others to recognise you’re in a serious relationship?

[AllHeart1]

I’ve read on here on numerous occasions that “if you’re not living together then he’s not your partner, he’s your boyfriend.” “If you don’t live together then it’s not a serious relationship,” and most recently “we didn’t invite anyone who wasn’t living together to our wedding.” And no this is not a TAAT, it’s a lot more common on here than that example.

Thing is, it wasn’t that long ago that people didn’t live together until they were married. yet they were engaged, planning a wedding, finding a house, wedding gifts were generally things they’d need in their new home.

And yet some people would think now that because they’re not living together, the relationship can’t possibly be serious? When actually couples move in together after five minutes of starting a relationship and their relationship is seemingly more real than that of the couple planning to move in together after the wedding.

There are all sorts of reasons why couples can’t live together such as geographical location/not wanting to blend families while children are small/both being used to their own space now., But that surely doesn’t mean that that relationship can’t be a serious one and that that person is just a boyfriend?

Oh dear, so my 26 year marriage isn't a proper committed relationship because we were engaged (and living in different countries) for 6 years before that.

Obviously is now, back then no, I wouldn't have considered it serious.

So the fact that during those 6 years (and indeed the 3 years preceding) we planned everything we did around our future marriage: got the qualifications we would need to live our whole lives together without any regrets (one of us in a foreign country far from family and friends), sorted out residency, saved money, paid off student debt, got officially engaged with an announcement in my local rag, got to know our respective relatives, learned a new language (dh), planned our lives together to make sure everything would work as well as possible for both of us to stay together for the rest of our life- that was not serious?

But if you're the kind of person who moves in with one boyfriend after a month and then with the next when that doesn't work out- that makes you more serious?

We were so old-fashioned we even collected household equipment for our future home in a special chest years before we actually got to unpack it and use it in that same home. And MIL, who also seems to have believed in our commitment, had her own little cupboard where she put things aside she had bought for us. Still using it 26 years later, haven't broken much. Still get a warm glow when I remember my pride in being able to afford a set of little tin trays and the pleasure in thinking one day we would get there and I would be using those in my own home.

Because living together is far harder than just seeing each other a few times a week.

We weren't able to see each other a few times a week: after an initial year in the same city, we had summers and Christmas together and for the rest of the time we wrote letters (no internet or skype in those days, and phoning abroad was too expensive).

After maintaining a close relationship under those conditions, I have to say my 26 year long marriage has been an absolute piece of cake.
Everything got so easy once we were in the same house and didn't have to worry about externals like the price of postage or whether you got the tone right in your last letter. I also found that because we had been so committed over the letter writing, we actually knew each other very well: there were no surprises.

What I am trying to say is- people are all different! What would be unworkable for A might actually be doable for B.

And the whole relationship by correspondence thing only seems weird because of the century we're in. A few hundred years ago, deferring marriage until you could support yourself and maybe living in different places for a few years would have seemed perfectly normal for many people.

DH and I never lived together before marriage. We were engaged for a year before getting married. I do think that we became committed on marriage and not before, as we could have called off the engagement at any point. Glad we didn’t though. 🙂

I’m another person who doesn’t live with my partner. He lives nearby and we spend most of our time together when we’re not at work, either at mine or at his. We’re in a committed relationship. My children live with me half the time and with my ex half the time; I’m committed to them too. I don’t really think of relationship commitment in terms of how difficult it would be to walk away - that seems bizarre to me. And I don’t think terms like boyfriend and girlfriend are suitable in my situation because we’re in our fifties.

If someone invited me to a wedding but didn’t invite my partner on the basis of our domestic arrangements I would simply decline the invitation because of course that’s insulting (and lazy, and unimaginative) when we’ve been a couple for many years. I can’t imagine it happening in my family or his though.

I know several married couples who live in different cities. It seems to be increasingly common among couples where women have serious careers and jobs are harder to find.

CardsforKittens I agree with you - and I also think it will become more common as we get older (and hopefully more financially independent)

If a lot of married people had somewhere to move to, they wouldn't stay in their relationship.

Living together can equal stuck and not much else.

If you live separately, but consider yourself in a commited relationship, then you're fully choosing to be with that person. You make time for each other, you aren't just shagging because you share a bed etc.

I know so many people who live together quickly, then have a shit time, before they move on to the next. I don't consider people who live together as any more committed than long term, but living separately, couples.

I will never live with someone again. I don't want to complicate my children's inheritance. I don't want to have to possibly put someone else's wants (TV/food etc) in front of my grandchildren. In my experience it's women and children who compromise and get the rough deal. Many of us are opting to live alone so that doesn't happen.

PrimalLass

Because living together is far harder than just seeing each other a few times a week

Yes, but why is difficulty the defining characteristic of commitment?

A lot of posters seem to be equating commitment with the degree of red tape that couples have that connects them to one another as if the harder it is to extricate yourself from one another, the more you love one another.

What I (and other posters) are saying is that this shouldn't be a measurement of how committed you are. Its basically the sunk costs fallacy: the more enmeshed I am with my other half and the harder it is to leave, the more I love them.

In fact I choose to frame it the other way: the less there is that enmeshes me with my partner, the more free I am to walk away. And therefore I know I have chosen to be with them rather than feeling I'm so tied up with them that I'd lose everything if I bailed.

I understand there are a lot of upsides to living together but I don't see that being massively bogged down in someone else's life is a great thing and I think we'd be able to approach relationships in a much healthier way if we didn't have this attitude.

Joint housing, legally binding contract (marriage or civil partnership, or other eg cohabitation agreement) money, business and / or co-parenting are literally commitment(s).

Couple who are not partners in those ways literally have fewer joint commitments.

They may be equally emotionally committed, but that’s subjective.

I find some people iddly need some level of validation from a hierarchy.

If they are married they insist noooe else is as valid as they are or committed, they need to see themselves as higher on the totem pole if they are living with someone.

Ultimately it's a somewhat sad reason to need validation. I don't think it can be defined. I've known people living together who of I was in that relationship aren't overly committed because they dont make joint decisions over big things, dont have any level of inclusion in bigger aspects of each others lives. I've also sen non residential partners who are to the extreme and cant do anything without each other.

I've been married (technically still am but only because divorce is expensive), living with someone and single and partnered in separate houses. My marriage was less of a partnership than my live in relationship now. We se the future as together and discuss big issues and resolve them. Emotionally it's more committed.

I usually laugh if someone tells my DP is my boyfriend (I'm 40 and hes 36, we share a house , a life , raising DC....if it really bothers people to define the relationship I generally laugh and let them crack on if it makes them happy).

Honestly why does any of it matter (excluding the legal protection of marriage...although I've always been the higher wage earner and main child care giver in my relationships so not really been an issue for me) , why on earth do people constantly seek outside validation, its genuinely just odd.

They may be equally emotionally committed, but that’s subjective.

But the results- being there for each other, staying together, supporting each other through the hardest of times- are surely just as objective as any other results of any other type of relationship?

I enjoy marriage and being enmeshed and all that lark. After a decade of fighting hard for it, I find it a joy and a privilege.

But I am no more or no less committed than my db who keeps a separate household to enable his partner to retain an amicable relationship with her ex for the benefit of her sons. To me, all that commuting, all that juggling, and having to maintain two houses (both of which need a fair bit of work), seems far more of a commitment than simply having dh pottering around here, which I have to say is hardly an effort at all.

But if you're the kind of person who moves in with one boyfriend after a month and then with the next when that doesn't work out- that makes you more serious?

Nope that obviously doesn't make you serious either. It is a combination of many factors another one of which is time.

Many of us are opting to live alone so that doesn't happen.

This

Of course society doesn’t see you as serious if you don’t live together.

I don’t consider people in relationship who live apart to be as serious as those living together, just as I don’t consider couples who aren’t married to be as serious about one another as those who are. When you live together you are in complete partnership through life. When you live apart your lives are separate and that’s all there is too it. It just shows a huge lack of commitment.

I've never lived with a partner. When I was younger it was because of cost and the geography of our postgrad degrees but we were in an incredibly committed relationship & it was seen as such. With most recent ex it was because he didn't have the cash , wouldn't commit and was on to a cushy little number at home whereas I expected him to pitch in. He also lived somewhere shit & I refused to move there!

It will be harder now. I live alone & love it atm and I also own my home. There's a clause in my leasehold saying that I can't rent it out. Adds a layer of inflexibility, for sure.

To those who say they are committed but living apart - as you get old and start having chronic illness or disabilities, will you live together to help each other?

For me, yes - if one of us needed help - whether from old age, or accident/illness now, we would definitely move in together - because that's what committed partners do, and we are committed partners. We have already done this when I was I. A serious cycling accident. He based himself entirely at mine and cared for me, and did everything in the house, and took care of my daughter, when I could hardly move.

Yawn, of course living together is a metric for how serious you are. Sometimes you'll be delayed in living together (e.g. if you have young kids still at home from previous relationships) but in general if you're serious you'll make an effort to live together.

I don't you can achieve it at all if you are just dating

And yet people achieved it in the past. My parents “dated” for a year, corresponded for another six months as my dad was posted to Egypt, married when he took a whole year’s leave in one go, corresponded for another year. They then had five years of being apart Monday to Friday, during which they had two children. They’d been married eight years before they lived together. Their marriage lasted 64 years.

The reason for short engagements weren't just pregnancy.

Spending several years planing and tens of thousands of £ on a wedding is very much a modern phenomenon.

For the vast majority of people who aren't in the army or devoutly religious a relationship progresses according to a certain trajectory and living together is generally the time on that trajectory when you're reasonably serious. No one is that interested in anyone else's life to consider the seriousness of their relationship in that much detail - they'll just look at the obvious things e.g. married? Engaged? Living together?

To those who say they are committed but living apart - as you get old and start having chronic illness or disabilities, will you live together to help each other?

That’s quite a bizarre question that seems to come from a lack of understanding of disability. My partner and I are both in our 50s and we both have disabilities. We don’t live together because it doesn’t suit us to live together. But yes, of course we help each other. Having disabilities doesn’t necessarily mean utter dependence on other adults. We both work full time, for example.

Has it? I've been with OH 6 years, we don't live together. He lives 15 minutes down the road. Suits us fine, and nobody's ever commented on us 'not being serious'. Why would others care anyway.