(Trial is done for the moment and I’ve been home sick with Lung Horror, so you all finally get a new blog post.)
Minor back-and-forth in the feminist blogosphere at the moment about marriage and feminist responses thereto–from people getting shrieky at the revelation that some “traditions” are more than a little sexist, to Jill’s realization that maybe this marriage thing is not necessary nor inevitable, to Hugo’s musing on how marriage is an emotional raw deal for women.
That said, one thing in Amanda’s latest puzzles me, because it’s not really about marriage: Why shack up?
It’s not that I think “living in sin” is, well, sinful. Or necessarily wrong. But I’ve always seen it as a precursor to something more permanent; you’re setting up your household, you’re just not waiting for the blessing of the ceremony to start moving in the furniture. I don’t see it as a natural stage in the progression of a romantic relationship–we’ve been dating exclusively for [period of time] so now we’re living together. What’s the point? So that if you break up, you can add the fun of finding a new apartment and sorting through your DVDs to the other trauma? So that people will realize you’re really, truly a couple? Because it’s easier to avoid any potential sexual tension between roommates if you start off sleeping together?
This isn’t a criticism, just utter bafflement. Thoughts?
mythago
15 Responses to “Living in tedium”
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I tend to think of living together (don’t care much for the term “shacking up,” but to each his or her own) as the happy medium. Yes you’re together, you get to see each other every day and you get the economy of scale in the household expenses. No you don’t have that awful piece of paper that too often seems to change a person’s thinking (sometimes overnight), no you’re not as likely to stay together just because it’s too big a pain in the ass to get a divorce, no it’s not as likely that one person will be able to rake another person over the coals financially and legally should the breakup come.
I tend to be with you on this – I don’t see a lot of reason to shack up as more than a temporary stage on the way to the license that makes sure everyone recognizes you belong by each other’s side in the hospital.
However, I have heard one reason given, by a friend, for living together rather than marrying, that I could make sense of. It was that she didn’t want her finances entangled with anyone else’s to the degree that community property laws involve; and she had past marital experience with bad debts to drive that point home.
Other than the financial aspect of affording a place on your own versus with a partner, no I don’t see much of a point either.
I think it’s pretty relationship-specific. I don’t have a burning desire to live with someone (and I’ve got 20 years of living alone to prove it), and I found living with my not-yet-ex husband to be difficult at times, but figured it was a price, and everything has one, but we also considered bunk apartments if we could afford it.
Wait. Rambling.
Sometimes it makes sense, to the people involved, in the situation they happen to be in/have created, other times not so much. I do think, in general, it’s not wise to live with someone who has never lived alone.
I’m about to embark on this particular phase for the first time. A lot of it is that we wanted to sleep together every night, and even though my girlfriend and I lived in the same neighborhood (3 blocks apart, in fact), the whole process of getting my glasses and cell phone charger and clothes for the next morning and whatever else I didn’t have at her house together was getting old. It just took a lot of time, and I’m not the most organized person so I’d end up with whatever shirt I wanted at the wrong house. We also wanted to have a lot of time together by default, without organizing it, so we weren’t constantly figuring out if we were doing something and whose house and when who came over. Basically it was a lot of work to have separate houses.
I’m also excited to have a space that belongs to both us by right, in which neither of us is a visitor. It helps that our neighborhood is cheap enough that we can afford a two-bedroom, so there can be a study and we won’t be quite as much at each other’s elbows all the time.
There’s no question of getting married, even if it were legally recognized. I’m not sure I want to spend the rest of my life with her: that’d be great, but I don’t think either of us is sure. On the other hand, signing the lease isn’t much of a gamble. We’re pretty sure we won’t break up this year. We’re just not sure we won’t break up in three years. So I guess in that sense it could be a precursor to marriage/whatever, but there’s no guarantee we’ll ever get there. For the time being, it’s just a lot more convenient.
“I do think, in general, it’s not wise to live with someone who has never lived alone.”
You know, that’s close to being me: between living with family, living in college housing, and living with roommates, I only actually lived all by myself for one year of my pre-married life (and no years of my married life).
(And again, this isn’t meant as criticism.)
We’re just not sure we won’t break up in three years.
But if you’re not sure you’ll be together in three years, you’re saying that in more than one but possibly less than three years, you’ll both have to extricate your stuff, find new places to live, etc. I understand this for temporary-roommate-planning; I don’t understand it when it’s added to a relationship, rather than being a plannedly temporary thing.
I’ve lived with SOs twice – one I was engaged to, and one where I thought we were just roommates and there was nothing romantic involved. (Samwise, it turned out, had other ideas, but that’s another story.) I did have SOs in between who wanted to move in together and it just struck me as asking for trouble; if I wasn’t sure I wanted to be with them permanently, why get all glued together when odds were we’d just have to unglue?
Another thought: I lived in a college coop where people could choose opposite sex roommates. Some people did, in fact, arrange to room with their SOs (opposite or same sex). None of those relationships lasted, and some of them ran into messy situations such as overlapping relationships while the couple was still rooming together. But, on the other hand, everyone involved was already in that student living situations are temporary mode, and rooming with your SO did guarantee a level of privacy for sex that was otherwise hard to come by as a college student. So there was an upside as well as a downside.
I think living alone gives people the opportunity to experience the best part about it (when you get home, no one’s there) and the worst part (when you get home, no one’s there), and deal with both. It also helps people figure out how much mess they really can tolerate, and systems for dealing with said mess. Of course, that also means that such systems are likely to conflict, if ever one lives with another person.
Incidentally, I developed this personal quasi-requirement only after observing a significant number of men who seemed to be looking for a girlfriend primarily so they could stop washing their own socks and providing their own food (or having their mothers wash and provide in the meanwhile). YMMV, of course.
There were a number of things all conflated in the essay. However, just addressing the name change, diamond ring, and living together:
1) Actually, I saw no reason for Jane to change her name. Even after we were married, I once tried to get a message to her under her “maiden” name. Ity was she who teased me “What is my name?”, and set the expectation that it would be Jane Kay. Me? I saw no reason to change it. I’m bewildered by this as I am by the tendency of the NEXT generation to follow the name change path.
2) Diamond ring was avoided for a couple reasons: A) Jane doesn’t like diamonds, B) We thought it was an idiotic way to waste money, when we were really going to need a new car. We did go the egalitarian route on wedding bands, but both of us generally find jewelry too cumbersome and don’t wear them.
3) We lived together in anticipation of marriage. However, I could see living together without that expectation. It is more conveniently logistically, if you expect to be something like primaries of each other. It is also possible to realize that however close you are, one or both will be headed to new turf once they graduate or some similar event forces a seperation of location. Mostly, this depends on how detached the people can be and if they can say “You know, this is a nice relationship, but we just are meant to be forever with each other.”
(I suppose I could address the batchlor party and “ball and chain” and sexual expectation things too, but they seemed to have been ladled on just to be sensitive and PC)
But if you’re not sure you’ll be together in three years, you’re saying that in more than one but possibly less than three years, you’ll both have to extricate your stuff, find new places to live, etc.
You and I have wildly different levels of stability. I will definitely move within the next three years, and will probably move at the end of this year. I haven’t lived in one place for more than two years since I graduated from college four years ago, and last year I moved three or four times, depending on what you count. The only added inconvenience of living with the person I’m dating is that I have to move this year and next year, not just next year. On the logistical plus side, it’s cheaper and I’m not constantly packing an overnight bag.
The difference in my head is that I’d like to be with her permanently, I just can’t see that far ahead in my life. So I figure, might as well see if it works now. If we move different places next year, no worse to extricate my stuff and my life than it would have been in my current 4-person house. If we stay together, we’ll probably move to the Bay Area and be financially compelled to live together anyway.
Some of us want to live together – companionship, economies of scale, all that – without bothering to get married. Marriage doesn’t interest us, and here in Canada just living together gives us all the legal rights that the expensive marriage certificate provides.
I and most of my friends are in couples who live together. They’re as married as anyone with a ceremony; but they’ve never had to deal with the expense and insanity of a ceremony. Win-win, as far as we’re concerned.
And yes, our finances aren’t tangled together – and if we ever decided to split, we don’t need to get lawyers involved.
What I mean to say is that, to us, living together is not a step on the road to marriage. We’re not on that road at all.
and here in Canada just living together gives us all the legal rights that the expensive marriage certificate provides
If you’re talking about common-law marriage, then yes, you do need a lawyer if you ever decide to split.
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