Preface: My girlfriend and I knew each other as friends for 5 years before we started dating. It was a kind of situation in which we both knew that we felt something for each other, but the circumstances had never been quite right. We started dating a little more than 6 months ago. It has been wonderful. After a while, hanging out late at night progressed to sleeping in the same bed occasionally to doing so nearly every night. Our relationship, I feel, has only strengthened. We’ve accepted and enjoy each others idiosyncrasies and are currently engaged in serious dialogue regarding marriage. As we were both raised in church-going homes, we take marriage very seriously as a commitment.

Question: How does a pastor telling us that we are married change something inside of us or between us that makes us more compatible and able to live together?

I’m not undermining the significance of a “Christian marriage”. I simply fail to see how a symbolic ceremony can affect change between people. If we love each other and have had thorough, serious discussions about our relationship and its progression, no amount of ceremony will change how we feel about each other.

It probably sounds like I’m being incredibly cynical but I really want answers. Am I simplifying the entire process too much?

Thanks for reading and responding,
Nick

My fiance and I are in pretty much the same situation. His parents asked him to leave shortly after we started dating and he really didn’t have anywhere else to go, so my parents allowed him to move in with us. Since then, we have grown as a couple and are still madly in love. My parents are now in a situation where they can no longer really afford to have us live here and it is causing stress and tension to have so many people live in one house. My fiance cannot afford to live on his own without my help, so we decided to get a small apartment by my school and work. I feel that us living together with my parents has helped us grow as a couple because we have learned so much about each other and have really seen how to love each other unconditionally (I’m not the prettiest when I wake up in the morning and when you live together, conflict has to be dealt with quickly and effectively in order to be successful.) I feel (and our families even agree) that us having our apartment prior to getting married will allow us the chance to get to know each other even more so we can really learn how the other person works. We are getting married at the end of September 2012 and living together in the long run will save us and my parents money and unnecessary stress. I often do not tell people that I know that I am living with my fiance because I am afraid of being judged. I do believe in God and I do believe in Jesus Christ as my savior. However, extenuating circumstances caused my fiance and I to come together and it has made us stronger. I am honestly SICK AND TIRED of being judged by people who don’t understand my situation. We take marriage seriously, but our situation calls for actions to be taken. My personal feeling is that yes, we are called to help each other, but we are called to love each other first! you cannot help someone you don’t love and those who live with the one they love before they are married are the ones who will have to face God. Everyone sins and no sin is greater than another! Chris Daughtry says it perfectly on his first CD. “Open up the book you beat me with again… read it all ONE SENTENCE AT A TIME… I’m tired of all you lines, convictions and your lies… read it all, there’s no need for separating it to say what you only try to justify.” Just because people cohabitate does not mean that God cannot bless their marriage and love them!

The true calling of a Christian is to find out where people come from and love them where they are at!

I’m a christian and moving in with my bf we are getting married 7 months. I know sex before marriage is a sin, if we live together but don’t have sex won’t this be ok? The problem ive got is i can no longer live at home with my parents we are not getting on and have asked me to move out, i can not afford to live on my own and save up for a marriage neither can my bf. So i said to my family me and my bf can get married on our own in a register office for 50 odd pounds. They went mental at me and mum started crying. They want me to have a wedding in a church etc. Ive been in tears over this. Mum and dad can only afford to pay for my dress.His parents have offered to py for 75% of the wedding reception. The church is chargin me 400 pounds alone. on top of that i have flowers, rings, a cake , bridemaids , gifts etc. If me and my bf live together both work full time and save up we can pay for it all. What am i ment to do??

Rich – Thanks for doing the math for us, you appear to have a gift for that!

The problem is that you’re adding percentages together that don’t go together. The three percentages you cite can be consistent because they are not all percentages of the same whole. The 80% (it’s just easier to round) of couples break up before marriage or divorce means that 20% don’t. The 5-10% (again, let’s use 5% for rounding purposes) who don’t marry but don’t break up is part of that 20%, which would mean that the remaining 10-15% (since we used 5% before, we have to use 15% now) are those who get married after cohabitating and stay married. Of the 80% who do break up, 45% don’t get married, meaning 35% do get married and divorce (80-45=35).

Thus, of all of those who live together under this set of numbers:
5% remain together and don’t marry
15% remain together after getting married
45% break up before getting married
35% divorce after getting married
—-
100%

The “50% more likely to divorce” has nothing to do with this set of numbers, but would come from a separate comparison of all couples who actually marry, comparing those who cohabitated with those who did not. And “50% more likely” means that there is half as many more who divorce after cohabitating than those who do not. These aren’t the numbers from this survey, but, for example, if 60% of those couples who cohabitate divorce, that means that 40% of those who did not cohabitate divorce, since 60% of the whole is 50% greater than the 40% of the whole (40 + half of 40 (20) = 60).

# More than eight out of ten couples who live together will break up either before the wedding or afterwards in divorce.
# About 45 percent of those who begin cohabiting, do not marry. Another 5-10 percent continue living together and do not marry.
# Couples who do marry after living together are 50% more likely to divorce than those who did not.