(Girls jewelry gifts) If Your Goal is Marriage, Don’t Move In Until You Say I DO!
No commentsBy Deborrah Cooper
Several years ago I read an article MEN’S HEALTH Magazine which reported that couples who live together first are most likely to NOT get married. The studies further concluded that when cohabitating couples married, they were statistically more likely to divorce.
In college I thought that living together was probably a good idea. We’d both get the opportunity to “see how things worked out” and save money on both rent and utilities. But I’m older now and have a lot more life and relationship experience under my belt. And after spending two decades observing people’s relationships, I’ve come to realize that living together doesn’t do one positive thing for a couple or their relationship. Living together is not the path to a happy, long-lasting marriage.
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of Cohabitation
Carolyn is an administrative assistant at a major corporation in downtown San Francisco. “There’s a guy on my job now who is shacking up with his fiancee. He doesn’t seem to be as enthusiastic as he was when they weren’t living together. I wonder how that’s going to turn out?”
Regina reports that one of her best friends is experiencing this now. “She and her man have been together 3 years, living together for 1+, and she’s ready to marry. He’s not. Why should he be, he’s got it all right now! What’s the paper going to mean to him? Now, she’s ready to lower her standards (of wanting to be married before she has children, yada yada) and have a child with him (of course with the stupid notion that maybe this will help the relationship move toward marriage. I want to say to her “HELLO! IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN. And if it does, do you really want to look back and feel that you had to trap your man into marriage?)!”
Erlinda is a recent college graduate and witnessed “move-in mania” amongst her friends.
“I wouldn’t move in with a boyfriend unless I had a ring and a date. Even then, it would only be a few weeks before the wedding. If we’re getting married toward the end of the month, I would move in at the beginning of the month, but not before then. From what I’ve seen in these shacking up situations, all a woman gets from “playing house” is taken advantage of!”
Older Couples May See Things Differently
Nick and Virginia have both been married and divorced, so the concept of marriage is not a new issue for either. “We’re comfortable and happy and in love” Virginia reports.
“Some of my friends think I need to go on and marry him to catch him, but Nick is already mine! They don’t understand that though. Children are not an issue. We’re both in our early 50s and neither of us can have anymore children. We only have my high school age children with us - his son is almost an adult. So there is no ‘having his baby to catch him” syndrome going on here! The best I can tell you is this, we choose the way we live and we are happy with it. If in the future we get married, we will be happy with that too.”
Should Women Should Avoid “Giving Away the Milk?”
Very often men opt out of marriage after a period of cohabitation. In theory, it appears to be a great solution. However, I feel the better plan is to resist that desire to marry/live together too early and instead, spend time learning as much about your partner as possible before making such a major commitment. Unfortunately, I see many people in relationships and marriages simply to avoid being alone.
The likelihood of marrying takes a nosedive when a couple shacks up. For one, marrying would seem anticlimactic, because seemingly little if anything changes, hence the urgency to marry goes down significantly or even disappears.
Also, if you’re not married, it’s easier to leave the relationship over petty matters. No matter what cohabitating couples say, the commitment of marriage is not the same when a couple shacks up.
David is a 29 year old fireman, and looking forward to the day he marries. “If I feel committed enough to want to live with the woman I’m with, I will buy the ring and ask her to marry me because obviously I feel she’s the woman for me to spend the rest of my life with. Proponents of shacking up will say that if a couple shacks up and doesn’t get married, it’s good that they found out they weren’t meant for each other before they walked down the aisle. To that, I say: if you can’t determine that the person you’re with isn’t someone you can grow with for the rest of your life just from dating them over a period of time without living together, you’re either not very perceptive or not ready to marry anyone at all. My parents have been married for over 26 years. I long to have a marriage like that, and won’t settle for less.”
My Vote: Get Married or Leave it Alone!
I believe that only certain people with a fear of giving themselves over to a commitment would agree to living together. Those fears are what brought the couple into the shacking up arrangement and what keeps them from advancing to marriage and the reason they prefer a situation that is fun and convenient, but also disposable and easily replaceable.
Their attitude of “let’s try this and SEE IF IT WORKS” is a recipe for failure. When a couple approaches marriage with this mindset, what they are actually doing is not taking the time to see if marriage will work and what they need to do to make it work, but instead seeing if it their little setup will fail. They are taking the path of least commitment and setting things up so they can get the benefits of a marital commitment with the least amount of commitment and damage.
Maturity, realistic expectations, an ability to negotiate and compromise, commitment, common values and morals, sharing of resources, and honest open communication are key to any long-term relationship, whether living together or not. You can find out all of these things about your potential partner through dating and conversations - you don’t need to reside under the same roof to find out what you need to know!
When a woman wants marriage and settles for shacking up, she has already lost the battle and her man’s respect. She did not stand up for herself or what she believes in as she chooses to just go with HIS flow.
Things are only going to go down hill from there.
A couple that truly believe in the sanctity of marriage would find no value in living together and therefore would not make living together or having families, buying property etc. without the legal, emotional and spiritual protections and commitments to each other of marriage a lifestyle choice.
(c) 2008 Deborrah Cooper. Deborrah has authored dozens of relationship articles and advice columns on Ask HeartBeat!, which focuses on modern relationships for teens and adults. Her dating guide Sucka Free Love! provides street-smart, hilarious insight into the toughest issues facing singles today. Check out The Sucka Free Dating Radio Talk Show on Wednesday night at 7:00 pm PST.
Rekindleing The Fire In Your Marriage May Be Easier Than You Think
By Rachel Yoshida
When two people marry, they say it’s for life. Well, there are always rocky roads that most marriages will run into. They say that the first two years are the worst. After that, they say it is going to go a little easier and much better.
The fire in your marriage is always the hottest at first and does cool down over the years. This doesn’t mean that you don’t love your partner anymore or any less. It just means that you are getting comfortable in your marriage and your lives together.
If you feel like you need to rekindle this spark to a blazing fire, you can start by doing little things like these:
1. If you both work, try fixing his favorite dinner and sit in a cozy area for your setting, such as the park, by a lake, or even in front of your fireplace.
2. Try changing your hair color or style to something that will get his attention. Husbands, this also goes for you. If you want to do something to get her attention, you could miss watching your football game for one Sunday.
3. If you really want this fire to blaze, then you can step up your methods to bring in sex toys and playthings to the bedroom. Sometimes, all you need to do is make sure that you are enjoying your private time together. If you have children at home, make sure they are gone for the night.
Some couples really go way out of the way to rekindle their love life and they end up hurting their marriage. If you really feel like you must do this, be very careful that both parties are in agreement to what ever you decide to do.
Here are a few things not to do because your fire will most definitely die:
1. Never have children around at this time because they will just get in the way.
2. Never start to fight with each other or someone else. Never go to bed mad at each other.
3. Always try to be nice to each other no matter how hard it is.
4. Always kiss your partner and give him or her a hug. Tell them to have a good day at work and when they come home give them a hug. Ask how their day was and be understanding to their moods.
With older couples, their fires are most of the time like small little sparks, but they love their life mates just as if their marriages had just started. They still kiss and hug each other and maybe still have a tumble under the sheets once in a while, but most of the time their health has put a stop to this. Their spark, however, never dies.
Rachel Yoshida is a writer of many topics, visit some of her sites, like
Water Damage and Flood Damage Cleanup.
Wake Up Every Morning Full Of Energy
By Hans Thorn
Imagine yourself wakening up every morning full of energy and ready for the challenges of the day. Lots of exciting things are happening and you manage them with success. You turn around the negative to the positive and with the positive you create balance and success within all areas. Would not this be wonderful?
This scenario could be yours, but the question is: Does your life look like this? Most likely most people would like to have a life like this, but the reality for many people is not as positive as the scenario above. A lot of people struggle with bad finances, bad health and bad relationships. How come?
No-one is born with a negative approach or negative thoughts of herself. However, when the years pass by, a lot of people create a negative pattern of thoughts that leads to negative feelings, which always leads to poor results. There is nothing wrong with that and it is pure naturally if you understand the law of cause and effect, where every effect has a cause and every cause has an effect.
The reason for that we think positively or negatively about ourselves and what we can accomplish is to a large extent shaped of what we have seen, experienced and heard as a child. If you have grown up surrounded by harmony, the chances that you have life balance are greater than what you would have had if you had grown up under tougher circumstances. Maybe it sounds unfair, and maybe it is, but you cannot change the past.
However, you can change what you think and feel about yourself now. What has been programmed in your past can be replaced with a new program where you get positive results, all according to the law of cause and effect.
How is this done? The first thing we need to do is to let go of the emotional connection to what causes poor results. To let go of everything that is negative and forgive those who might have done this. Not so much for their sake as for you to be able to be free from the strong bounds that creates your unwished results.
When you then feel free and released from the negative, it is time to program your brain with your dream scenario with assistance of new messages, for example:
1. I love myself
2. I am running a successful business
3. I have many excellent relationships
Read your sentences 10 times each morning and evening during three weeks and continue thereafter with new positive sentences that you want to experience. This will become you new cause and the results will be positive and totally different from your previous results.
Hans Thorn has over 20 years of experience in personal development. He has helped hundreds of clients with success in areas like economy, health and relationships. Get his Personal
Coaching Tips here
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