Remembering when living with a partner was frowned on!

[girlfriend44]

Does anyone remember when it was frowned on to live together with a partner. No marriage.

Words like Living in Sin. Living Over the Brush ? any others?

I remember in the late 80s i lived with partner and the manager where i worked didnt approve, made a comment. How things change? Does anyone know anyone who is still old fashioned about it?

Yep. My grandmother refused to believe that I was living with my now-husband before we got married. She commented that I "wouldn't do a thing like that"!

Yes I remember well !
And when men would say “ I’ll make a decent woman out of you “ by offering marriage if they got a girl pregnant out of wedlock.

I am quite old. I wouldn’t have dreamt of living with my partner, now my DH of many years. My parents would have been horrified. I think if my mother was still alive, she still would be.

Oh aye. Yer "bidie-in" was spoken of in hushed tones round the Catholic heartlands I grew up in.

I remember it well as I'm old. We also would never have called him or her partner either, it would have been boyfriend or girlfriend.

Yes. My mother was horrified when (as an adult) I'd occasionally stay the night at boyfriend's flat. I was told "Everybody can see your car outside in the street and knows you are there".

This was the 80s.

Yes. My mother didn’t tell my grandmother when I moved in with my boyfriend in the late 90s. She was born in 1912, was welsh chapel and definitely wouldn’t have approved.

I was born in 1972.

I don't remember it being an issue in the 1980s, but was aware that it had been in the past.

My uncle, born 1961, and his now wife brought a house together in the early 1980s (and married a few years later). No one in my family group commented on this.

Another uncle, born early 1940s, divorced from his 1st wife and lived with his new partner in the mid-1980s. The 'scandal' was the separation and divorce, not living together with the new partner.

I started living with my then boyfriend at uni in the early 1990s and we brought a house together in 1994.

However none of my childhood friends parents weren't married whereas a good proportion of my children's friends parents weren't married.

I’m 72, and I can’t remember this for the last fifty years. By the mid seventies, people in middle class suburbia thought it was sensible to live together before marriage ( though it was often referred to as a ‘trial marriage!)

DH’s grandparents were scandalised when we moved in together and equally aghast that neither his parents nor mine were bothered. DH’s aunt had stern words with them. Once we were engaged they relaxed about the whole thing. They were both born in the 1920s.

I was told I wasn't allowed to mention staying overnight with my fiancé (or that we might live together, we didn't as he was in the Army) when working at a Catholic school in 2010!! We had to appear to be respectable women apparently.

I’m 33 and my mother told me off in 2013 for “living in sin”.

most people living in faith communities would still teach that you should marry before living together or having sex. None of the friends I grew up with lived together first and my Brice's and nephews are getting married first even now.

My mother was appalled that I owned a double bed in my twenties. She never did get over me refusing to marry.

My deeply Catholic Granny and Granda were entirely supportive of my generation of the family living together and considered it eminently sensible.

They considered themselves lucky, but knew other couples where there was abuse, alcoholism and various other unhappiness. They saw marriage as a sacrament and felt that entering into it a little older and wiser was, on balance, a good thing.

Yep, late 80s friend getting married before baby came because unmarried parents wasn't a good thing.

Yes, I'm in my early 50s been with my partner 23 years. We have 2 kids now teens, never married for no particular reason but mainly because neither of us really cared enough about the institution of marriage to do it. My "in-laws" are very lovely but have never managed to find a way to be comfortable with my status in the family. They struggle to introduce me to friends and acquaintances. For example, at a recent family gathering the following was said by way of introduction "this is my daughter in law Mary and this is June". Mary being my partner's brother's wife, and June being me. Other than them and their generation, no one else cares!

My mum told me not to bother coming home again if I moved in with DH not long before we got married in 1987. She’s complete supportive now of her grandchildren living with their partners however.

My mother tried to persuade me to wear a fake wedding ring when I was pregnant with DS in 2010.

Mind you, I could fill threads about my mother.

I think it's changed a lot in the last ten years even, since I split up with ex, or may be I have got used to it. Taking my wedding ring off and rocking up to various churches (holiday) with two kids was more stressful then than now. Mind you we tend to be the CoE end of the spectrum and not tried some of the more fundamentalist churches. Might give some of the older congregants an attack of the vapours!

My brother and I were told in the 70s that if we slept with a boyfriend d/girlfriend we would be kicked out of the home. This was a strongly atheist family so no religious views.

My aunt wanted to send a card to a young married couple she knew who had had a baby. The woman had kept her surname but my aunt refused to use it on the envelope - Jane Smith and John Brown - because the postman might think they were living in sin.

My mum didn't live with my dad before marriage.

Growing up she told me I should live with a man before I marry them, because my dad is a fucking nightmare!

My parents were not very happy when I moved into a flat with my boyfriend who I later married. My Gran was not even told. When I got divorced after he cheated on me, many years later, Gran and my Dad had died by then and my own Mum asked if I could make it work. I know my Dad would have agreed with my divorce though. He asked me if I was really sure before walking me up the aisle.

My parents lived together before they were married in the early 60s , I lived with my husband before we were married in the mid / late 80s and it was fairly normal amongst my friends and colleagues then .

My parents were appalled when I moved in with my now DH in the early 80s. They tried not to show it, but they were very upset. I remember one time I was expecting them for a visit and I glanced out of the window to see if they had arrived yet, only to see my Mum sitting in their car in floods of tears. I knew it was because we weren't married, although she never said anything. From her perspective, worse was to come because my brother's girlfriend became pregnant and they weren't married either. We lived very rurally so there was no hiding it. Ironically, the only one of my siblings to do things 'properly', so to speak, got divorced, whereas both my brother and I have been married for nearly 40 years.