I'm assuming from the winky emoticon this was a little in jest. Sure, I was light on long-term relationship experience, and frankly, spending all of my time with another person, as opposed to only having to be concerned with myself. The rest of your assumptions are off the mark.Ags4DaWin said:Squirrel Master said:I've selectively quoted what I'm responding too.Ags4DaWin said:
If you've been dating for over a year (which is the mile marker I hear of spoken so frequently for moving in together) and you are committed enough to move in together, just get married. Never understood the wait. There's not much more you're gonna learn about a potential spouse than what you will learn by 12-16 months into your relationship.
Everything about your relationship changes once you say I Do and no length of time living together is going to make that transition easier or prepare you for the changes that follow. At 12-15 months you know whether you love that person enough to commit to whatever **** hits the fan once the ring is on.
The idea of 'just get married, you're not going to learn more' is overly simplistic. I'd say the period of living together was less about us learning about each other than it was (for me atleast), me learning about myself in living with someone else. But maybe that's because I wasn't a serial dater in my pre-marriage years, always in a relationship, but rather mostly single. I'd also say ages matter. The younger you are, the more true all of these things will be, and even the learning about each other aspect.
Of course, because of the living together for a fair amount of time before getting married, I completely disagree with the idea of "Everything about your relationship changes once you say I Do and no length of time living together is going to make that transition easier or prepare you for the changes that follow. " I'd say almost nothing changes, if you've been living a committed relationship together before.
Sounds like you didn't have very much relationship experience before you met the future wife. Everyone is a little different but if you're saying that in your case you needed to learn about yourself when you moved in together this and everything you said tells me a few things: 1) you had little to zero dating and relationship experience prior to meeting the future wife. You date more people you learn more about yourself. 2) sounds like you didn't have too many friends, perhaps socially awkward in Hs and college. 3) only child or one of a few kids with large age gaps. 4) either didn't have to suffer through roommates in college or had roommates just as socially awkward and introverted as you.
So in your case, yeah maybe good to live together before but the exception rather than the rule. Also, if you want to claim that neither you nor she changed much after the vows...yeah sure we will all smile and nod with you, but unless you already had kids before the vows, were exchanged the likelihood of that is nil.
We don't have kids now, so nothing has changed. Sure, having kids changes things, but that's irrelevant to whether things change when you get married.