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?

I'm living with a partner and it is a great source of confusion for my grandparents. (Mostly because we also have a child.) My parents and partner's parents aren't bothered. And partner's grandparents passed away before our child was born.

I’m in my 50s. I moved in with my then boyfriend when I was 25. I told my mother and she told me that I was “spoiled goods” that “no decent man would want me now” and that my then boyfriend “could always throw it back in my face that I had been with him before marriage.”

We then split up and I married someone else. There were still dark mutterings about “second hand goods” and did he not mind that someone had had me before?

My mother got really offended when my fiancé and I stayed with my cousin, shock horror in the same room 🤣
She was terrified of my uncle, her brother finding out 🤦🏽‍♀️

I was born 1974 and clearly remember some young couples in the late 80s "having to get married" because the bride was pregnant. My parents were very religious and more disapproving than most. My mum used to say it wasn't right to "put the cart before the horse". It was unusual for friends of my own age to have unmarried parents. There were a couple and it was considered a bit scandalous. However it was VERY common for people's parents to get divorced and immediately remarry (I've realised now to their affair partners). Lots of friends came back to school after the summer holidays with a new surname - it seemed to be the done thing for the kids to automatically get the stepfather name even when dad was very much on the scene. The fast remarriage after an affair seemed acceptable. Living together unmarried less so. There was a definite shift in the 90s with living together and having a first baby unmarried was more common and acceptable though most people seemed to get married after the baby. I got engaged in 1997 and even though we were living together we got given separate bedrooms when we visited my parents!

I got married both times because I was pregnant. We were told by all sets of parents except mine "well, you'll need to get married now". Both of my sets of in-laws were scandalised by our "living in sin". One set were Irish Presbyterian, the other Welsh Presbyterian. The funny thing about that is that my parents were Church of Scotland, my mum was an elder and I was (and am) a devout Christian. At the time of my first marriage, I was studying Divinity. So it wasn't all faith folk.
First marriage 1990, second one 1997.

We met a fairly elderly friend of a relative about five years ago, and the very first thing he said to us was 'So you're living over the brush I hear?'.

Neither of us had ever heard of the term and were baffled, then found it hilarious when it was explained! For context we're 40ish and have been together since our mid-20s 😂 The sin!

It was ok in 1983.

Having heard this, I am surprised how easily my conservative and religious parents accepted me living with my then partner, even coming to our flat, etc. This was in the 1970s
Possibly because I had left home some years before and, although I kept most of the horrible details about my car crash first marriage from them, they weren't blind. And my live in partner was a lovely man.

My mother was of the 'burn that bra' ilk and revelled in telling everyone she knew that me and my boyfriend were buying a flat together and skipping the getting married part. She thought it was great. Was most disappointed 10 years later when we decided to get married and start a family.

My mother called me a two penny whore when I moved in with my boyfriend during my PGCE and told.me.id struggle to get work because of it, this was 2001. But then she thinks it is acceptable she married at 17 because she was pregnant in 1975

The notion of being responsible has thankfully shifted. I'd be horrified if any of my children wanted to marry before trying out actually living with a partner!

We were made to feel bad by teachers at primary school in the 80s because our parents weren't married. We had comments about "families like yours" from staff. I remember feeling stigmatised for being "illegitimate." We were from a more educated, middle class family than most of the teachers and staff, so more critical of religious and social mores. I also remember getting into trouble for explaining in detail to another child why you don't need a ceremony in a church to make babies.

In very disparaging tones (think a Scottish version of Les Dawson) 🥴

A neighbour showed me a letter that had been delivered to his address & asked if I knew who the woman was that the l letter had been addressed to. I told him it was Jade the woman with Dave. He looked completely bewildered & said but it’s addressed to a Miss.

It’s the shame attached to having sex. Deeply problematic, thank god we’ve moved on.

I knew of few private schools who offer staff accommodation (off site so the pupils wouldn’t even be aware) but not for unmarried couples.

I'm 68. I can't remember it being an issue in the late 70s and definitely not in the 80s.

I started merrily living with boyfriends from the early/mid nineties onwards and my parents were totally fine with it but I was aware at that time that some people had more disapproving parents - a couple I knew had moved from city A to city B to both do post-grad degrees and as they wanted to live together, the parents absolutely insisted on marriage aged 21. They split a few months later so the whole thing was ridiculous. This was about 1995.

Whereas now it seems almost not done to assume anyone is married? Anyone I speak to who has any sort of official role seems to adamantly use the word partner in relation to my DH of over ten years.

I'm surprised at this. I was a teacher in the 80s. Maybe London was different.

God yes. I went away for a weekend with my first boyfriend (aged 27!!) and my father was furious and said that he expected me to 'come hone with everything I went away with' in other words- my hymen.

I was born in 1973. My mother went batshit at him for his stupid misogyny.

My MIL wouldn’t let us sleep in the same room (in twin beds!) at their house until we were married even though we lived together for years. After we married all of a sudden we were allowed to sleep in the same room!

Yes it was really frowned on.
My parents and my various aunties and uncles were still very disapproving right up to the 90s. They started to calm down a bit towards the ends of the 90s.
I can still remember doing work experience at the local pharmacy, probably in 1992 or 1993, and the pharmacist telling me something his wife had said. I then repeated this at home "His wife said..."
Sharp intake of breath from my mother followed by "Well he might call her his wife or common-law-wife or whatever she is, but they aren't married and they are living in sin". Followed by my Dad saying that the man was divorced and therefore still married in the eyes of the Church (we are RC) and definitely shouldn't be living with a woman.

I don't really know what my parents thought in 2009 when I started living in sin with my then-boyfriend. Before that I'd had relationships but hadn't been living with them. I think my parents assumed I hadn't been having sex either.

I remember my cousin coming home pregnant in 1997 and there being a bit of a family drama about that too (and she was 25 at the time and had been with her partner for quite a while).

I wouldn't live with a partner now.

Not a problem in the North East in the mid 80s when I lived with my boyfriend. I come from a solidly working class background. Neither set of parents bothered at all. All my friends also lived with their partners too.
In my case it didn't work out and I went on to live with another boyfriend until we married in the early 90s. We've just celebrated 30 years 🍾🥂
The 80s were a very liberal decade.

When ex-bf moved in with me in the late 70s my mum was terribly embarrassed by it and 'shamed' in front of her friends. My father refused to acknowledge him and/or have him in the house. If there was a family function he refused to speak to him and icily ignored him. My mum just tried to be 'polite'. Turns out he was a real shit so they were 'right', but for the 'wrong' reasons.

When DH moved in a few years later I had an engagement ring and a wedding date set. They were fine with him since we'd be 'doing the right thing' in a few months time. I guess 'immorality' was OK as long as it had an end date.

I'm nearly 50 and I don't remember ever having encountered this attitude. When I first had a boyfriend in the early 90s, neither his parents or mine objected to us sharing a bed at each other's homes. I don't mean to suggest the attitude didn't exist. I'm working class - perhaps it was a more middle class thing to object?