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Original poster

Remembering when living with a partner was frowned on!

152 replies

girlfriend44 · 22/04/2023 13:41

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?

OP posts:
DragonflyLady · 22/04/2023 18:39

I don’t recall it being an issue in the late 80s and knew lots of people living together. I moved in with my boyfriend in 1991 when I was 22. I had a friend who wouldn’t move in with her boyfriend until they were married - they were in a long-distance relationship and a month after they married, sadly he died.

Dacadactyl · 22/04/2023 18:41

My parents would not have been happy if either my sister or I had lived with a man before marriage. I had a child out of wedlock but when my (now) DH came to visit, he had to sleep downstairs, even after I'd had a baby.

Even with my background I would advise my kids not to live with their OH before marriage.

Neurodiversitydoctor · 22/04/2023 18:42

Dacadactyl · 22/04/2023 18:41

My parents would not have been happy if either my sister or I had lived with a man before marriage. I had a child out of wedlock but when my (now) DH came to visit, he had to sleep downstairs, even after I'd had a baby.

Even with my background I would advise my kids not to live with their OH before marriage.

Can I ask why ?

Greensleeves · 22/04/2023 18:45

My Irish MIL is still like this. Before DH and I were married we stayed at her house, and she put us in separate rooms. I had a massive panic attack in the middle of the night (I was quite ill at the time) and DH came and slept on the floor in my room. Next day after I'd gone, she gave him both barrels about us "feckin' away all night under my roof" and called me a harlot!

She has a partner she's been with for over 20 years. She still introduces him as her "friend", because she's widowed and can't get her head around having another relationship openly.

MRex · 22/04/2023 18:48

This came up the other day when my DM tutted about someone planning to marry when they aren't living together full-time. "Seems a bit daft to me, how is she going to know if he's alright or not without living together?" I commented it used to be normal and got "Well at least some things in life are supposed to have improved!" I expect we are now at the tipping point the other way, where it's a bit odd not to live together before marriage.

Dacadactyl · 22/04/2023 18:48

I just think it leads to people not being serious about relationships. Like, if someone is good enough to live with, why not get married to them?

My husband wanted to rent a house with me before we got married (we'd had DD by this time). I said no because I wanted to get married first and think you run the risk of never getting married then, if you're living together first. I think women in particular fall foul of this (as we see so often on here)

Dacadactyl · 22/04/2023 18:48

@Neurodiversitydoctor my comment above was in response to you.

DeadButDelicious · 22/04/2023 18:48

My now DH's Granny had a literal heart attack the day she found out we were living together, I am not even exaggerating, she came to visit not long after he'd got the flat, realised I lived there too and that evening had a minor heart attack. Now it's probably just a coincidence but she was not at all impressed, muttering about living in sin etc asking what my parents thought about it. She was even less impressed when we got engaged 6 months later. She came round by the wedding though. Just about.

WeBuiltThisCity · 22/04/2023 18:53

I know certainly our local Catholic school diocese doesn’t allow it still for senior teachers, clearly there in the policy.

HoobleDooble · 22/04/2023 18:57

I was sworn to secrecy in front of my grandmothers, both born early 1900s, about my sister living with her boyfriend as my parents thought the shock might kill them!

I was always aware that my parents didn't approve of me (or my sister) "living in sin" and were a lot happier when we both eventually got married.

Enfys1982 · 22/04/2023 18:58

My parents only got married in the early 80’s because my grandmother was disgusted with them when she heard they were planning to move into together before being wed.

HoobleDooble · 22/04/2023 19:10

I grew up in the 1970s/80s and remember divorce was a big deal too. I wonder if where you lived made a difference to attitudes. I grew up in a "little England" village and I was 13 before any of my friend's parents got a divorce. I only remember a couple of my friend's mums having jobs and/or cars too. When my sister told me her friend had a half-brother when I was about 7 I imagined him to not have any legs! 😂

A couple of my friends only moved in with their partners once they were married, but these were the ones who got married very young. Some are still together 30 odd years on though.

PauliesWalnuts · 22/04/2023 19:16

I was born in 1972 and come from a working class catholic family of Irish heritage. My dad would have disowned me if I’d lived in sin. Going through my family tree it looks like there’s never been a child born out of wedlock until my brother’s daughter who arrived two weeks before my dad died. He was terminally ill at that point and wept when he met her. Told my brother he was glad they hadn’t waited until they were married.

thecatsmeows · 22/04/2023 19:20

I was born in 1968, I ended up marrying my first 'official' boyfriend in 1989, when I had just turned 21 as my parents threatened to disown me if I lived with him. Even though he had a very good job, we'd been dating 3 and a half years and had even bought a house...

He wasn't even allowed upstairs at my parent's house while we were dating, didn't see my bedroom until the day after our wedding, when he helped me back it up. While we were away on a week's honeymoon, my father announced to my mother that he was leaving her for another woman, who he'd been having an affair with for the previous 6 months. I returned home to familiar WW3 having broken out. Amongst the many many marital revelations my mother then burdened me with, was that she'd had been living with my father and was 3 months pregnant with my older brother when she'd married my father...they'd met at in the January and they were married in the December of the same year. So utter utter raging hypocrites...

To say I was livid was the understatement of the year (34 years on, I still am). My marriage lasted less than 2 and a half years, as I was far too immature and had done it for all the wrong reasons.

Cindy1802 · 22/04/2023 19:37

Frustratedwithbadlegaladviceontheinternet · 22/04/2023 14:01

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

Ditto! It was 2011 for me and I was 23, I was told "I wasn't brought up that way"

I had moved cities for a graduate job and my BF of 4 years worked in a neighbouring city meaning we were able to live together. My parents would rather that I lived with a random stranger than him.

CurlewKate · 22/04/2023 20:00

@Dacadactyl "Like, if someone is good enough to live with, why not get married to them? " Because I don't want to be married?

Dacadactyl · 22/04/2023 20:03

@CurlewKate yes, but I did and i would get rid of any bloke who thought i was good enough to live with but not marry. And if I was a man, I think I'd feel the same way, so if a woman didn't want to marry me, I would bin her off too. We are all different.

MiddleParking · 22/04/2023 20:04

CurlewKate · 22/04/2023 18:16

I often wonder on threads like this whether I lived in a strange bubble, or if some people have inaccurate memories, because a lot of the attitudes people talk about seem to me to be from a generation earlier than mine, and I am very old to be a Mumsnetter. The same goes for memories of attitudes to childcare, and many other things. It sometimes seems that people are transposing attitudes from the 50s and 60s into the 70s and 80s.

Same. My eldest sibling was born in 1984 to my cohabiting parents who wouldn’t have had a notion of getting married and nor could any of their friends with children. My (Roman Catholic) grandmother, then in her seventies, couldn’t have cared less. Their whole circle was full of unmarried cohabiting and no small amount of extracurricular shagging by the sounds of it. If anything I’d say my own generation of young couples (in our 20s and 30s) now tend toward marrying much more frequently and earlier than our parents did.

Spanielsarepainless · 22/04/2023 20:17

I lived with my soon-to-be husband in the mid-1980s and our parents weren't exactly thrilled.

Strawberry0909 · 22/04/2023 20:32

My mum had to marry my dad before she was allowed to move in with him

Strangley my grandparents didn't apply Same rule for my uncle, and have never once mentioned anything about me and my brother both living unmarried with our partners and having children

Trumpton · 22/04/2023 20:42

My sister was pregnant at 16 and my mum ( bless her) gave her the options of keeping the baby or a termination but sister was determined to get married. It was a planned baby as we were being posted abroad (Service family) and she was unwilling to come with us.
It was deeply shameful to have a pregnant sister and I was teased at school.
Baby was born but marriage fell apart and my sister and baby joined us abroad. Father’s family said baby could go into care! So my mum went and got the baby and my traumatised sister.

I moved in with my DH in 1971, we were students in London, and was banned from his house although I had been made welcome before.
His father died and I was then allowed to visit but we had separate rooms until we married in 1975.
Now been together for 52 years.

CurlewKate · 22/04/2023 20:52

@Dacadactyl Ah. Good enough to live with but not to marry. You're saying that marriage is inherently better than not being married. The patriarchy remains powerful.

sparkli · 22/04/2023 20:52

Yes! I wasn’t allowed to tell my DGF that I was living with my DP in the late 90’s! We actually only lived together for 3 weeks before our wedding 😂

BinkyBeaufort · 22/04/2023 21:12

Oh yes! DM wouldn't visit my sister and her OH when they were living together. She called it a house of sin.
We did once manage to get her to go (can't remember how) and eventually she got over it, but not until they were engaged.
This was in the 1980s not the 1880s.

MRex · 22/04/2023 22:01

Dacadactyl · 22/04/2023 18:48

I just think it leads to people not being serious about relationships. Like, if someone is good enough to live with, why not get married to them?

My husband wanted to rent a house with me before we got married (we'd had DD by this time). I said no because I wanted to get married first and think you run the risk of never getting married then, if you're living together first. I think women in particular fall foul of this (as we see so often on here)

I find this utterly bizarre. Why on earth did you have a child with someone when you couldn't work out if you were just dating or serious? What kind of man is he that he just had you going through pregnancy while he's just ducking off to "his place"? And why be living apart when there is a child already born? It's like you don't understand what a father is nor does, how could he do 50% of care or did you hand the baby off for him to take home like you were divorced? And if he wanted to stay together but not marry, you'd have split from your child's father and an otherwise good relationship, just on principle? It's all really confusing.