great article gave me a lot to think about thnks 

I think it just depends on the couple. If two people are really willing to work together, they will. 

Hmm, I'm conflicted on the matter.  I do think living together should come after marriage, from a biblical and moral standpoint.  But, I also wouldn't buy a car without buying it first.  So I can definitely see the value to living with your potential mate before tying the knot, too.  I kind of lived with my husband before we were married.  He was going off to OCS for the Navy while we were engaged and he stayed with me for a month and a half before he left, since his lease was up.  I definitely learned some things during that time that I didn't know before about him.  But I also learned that he wasn't anything I couldn't handle.  Thus, our marriage and now two children.  

Meagan, usually co-habitating is bad for couples who are living together "casually." "Casually" means that even though they are in a committed relationship, they did not set down an actual agreement to get married in the future. Therefore, when fights break out and someone takes someone else for granted, the couple breaks up because they weren't really determined to stay together permanently anyway.
However, in your case, you and your man has decided to get married. You're practically engaged. Therefore, if you and your man have problems while living together, you are more willing to talk and work it out, rather than calling it quits. You have both decided that you're "in it to win it," which is really the bottom line for successful marriages. I have a research study that says the rate of success in marriage is higher between couples who cohabited while they were engaged, than couples who never cohabited. Let me know if you want to read it. Good luck and God Bless! :)

I think you should live together when you get engaged. Before it's a bit sketchy, to me at least. Love is one thing, to be sure, and it's quite powerful, but living with that person brings its own challenges and obstacles that you can't really prepare for or anticipate until you experience them for yourself.

However, I do think there's a strong link between moving in with each other too early in a relationship and bad relationships. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I think it does exist and I think moving in together is a step that should be taken a LOT more seriously than it is now to have more long term success with relationships overall.

According to my mom, you shouldn't even stay the night with someone until after you're married.. Moving in is out of the question. I stayed the night for an ex bf's birthday because we were both going to be drinking & I don't like going home drunk. After the party was over we both fell asleep immediately, no sex, just sleep. My mom flipped out.. She thinks that people shouldn't even sleep together (actual sleep, not sex) until they're married.

I personally think that I would rather live with a guy after we dated for some time before even thinking about marriage. He might have some weird hobby that I might not like, & wouldn't know about it until we got married..or engaged.

No.

You can always learn about your boyfriend by spending time with him, talking to him, going over to his house, etc. I don't think it's necessary or a good idea to live together before marriage--in my life, the couples who had sex and lived together before marriage all broke up, even if they planned on getting married. I also learned about the statistic in my very secular sexual health class in college. Plus, if you wait until marriage to have sex and live together, there's more to look forward to. And for the people talking about buying a car...would you rather have a new car or a used car if you had to pay the same price?

I think that everyone should look at that statistic/study from Dr. Harley in the right context. Even if you and your partner move in together, engaged, married or not, that doesn't guarantee that you're compatible OR that you're ready for marriage. People change and some might fall out of love. No amount of time spent moving in together is going to accurately predict those changes nor is it a good indication that you're prepared to be married. He is right in saying that marriage is serious, and living together might skew that perception, but in today's world where we have much more freedom to do the things we want (especially women) many people are going to choose to go their separate ways if they aren't happy, notwithstanding the fact that they lived together before or after marriage. Divorce is prevalent because we choose to make it that way, not because living together before marriage makes it so.

Aside from that, I am a full supporter of couples that choose what they feel is best in their relationship. If they want to live together before marriage, that's great. If they want to wait after marriage, that's great too. People are different, we all view everything differently, and we're all going to try to find someone that fits in with our lifestyle, beliefs, and choices. There is never going to be a systematic way of viewing love and what makes a marriage successful, even if we think we find a pattern in other relationships. We should all just respect each others choices and find what works best for yourself, not other people.

I think people that move-in together usually (not always) get caught up in the "let's play house" mentality and end up moving in together too soon. After they live together, they figure "well, I guess the next step is to get married" since, let's face it, they're pretty much pretending to be married. I think that's what leads to divorce, not the fact that they lived together before marriage, but that they did it for the wrong reasons or weren't ready.