Haven’t read the whole thread but want to say beware of joint tenancy (and google if for your daughter).
Many adults keep their own place to live while essentially living with the other person. Economically it may seem unwise but committing to living together without that other place, puts a lot of pressure on a relationship. As long as she keeps her dorm room, she has the choice about whether or not to continue with the BF and he has a choice too.
Many people on this thread have expressed concern about college students renting apartments with roommates regardless of whether there is a romantic relationship because of potential lease issues, and I agree that these are valid concerns.
But if your student attends a college that does not guarantee housing for all four years, you’re stuck with this situation. Opportunities for an individual student to live alone off-campus are limited and usually very expensive. Thus, people live with apartment mates. Even students who belong to fraternities or sororities may live in apartments because the Greek organization may have more members than its house can accommodate.
For those who would find having a student living off-campus intolerable, “guarantees housing all four years” should be an essential factor in college selection.
My kids always had roommates, but they had their own lease without being responsible for their roommates.
I’d assume they are looking at 2 BRs for four people. That would be simply impossible if either couple broke up.
Romani, if your generation’s divorce rate is lower it is only because everyone is shacking up instead of getting married! This is nothing to brag about.
In the 40’s and 50’s they were young adults by 18, not extended adolescents like today. They had to be, given the war experience.
I think frazzled has disappeared. She only has 2 posts in her history.
My son lived in a place with this kind of lease. It worked out well. But sometimes, leases of this type are hard to come by.
A thing to understand about individual-lease apartments: If one person moves out, the landlord has the right to move in someone from the waiting list (although in the building where my son lived, the continuing tenants in the apartment had a several-week grace period in which to find a substitute tenant). This means that your student may end up living with a stranger.
Also, because the landlord reserves the option of moving in someone from the waiting list if someone moves out of an individual-lease apartment, landlords often require that everyone sharing the apartment be of the same gender. My son’s landlord had this requirement. This may limit the availability of individual-lease arrangements for students who want to rent apartments as part of a mixed-gender group of friends or with an opposite-sex SO.
I lived with my bf at 19 but the main difference was that I was putting myself through college and working to pay my parents rent while living at home. My bf was 8 years older, already working and willing to support me in everything but my tuition. It was a very different situation than the OP’s. My goal was law school, so I was very motivated to do well in college. Although my bf and I fought, he never did anything to derail my studies. We ultimately broke up after 7 years together, 2 years after I graduated law school because he didn’t want children, ever, and I did, eventually.
In this situation, I don’t think the OP’s D should live with this young man. It doesn’t sound like a stable relationshop. Frankly, if I had been able to go away to college, the issue would probably not have arisen. I doubt I would have met someone 8 years older while living in the dorms and I can’t imagine, knowing myself, that I would have lived with anyone off campus.
"Romani, if your generation’s divorce rate is lower it is only because everyone is shacking up instead of getting married! This is nothing to brag about.
In the 40’s and 50’s they were young adults by 18, not extended adolescents like today."
Honestly, it has more to do with choice and freedoms rights and less to do with anything smacking of moral judgments. Before birth control and more equal rights, women had limited options including things like getting a credit card on their own. Here’s a reminder of some things that didn’t change until well after the 40s and 50s.
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/05/28/10-things-that-american-women-could-not-do-before-the-1970s/
But young women were having sex. Not just young men. The numbers and breakdowns in studies from the late 40s/50s showed the same trends as the early 70s.
We just don’t want to believe our mothers’ (or grandmothers’) generation would.
Here is an interesting article on how millennials are approaching marriage, monogamy, cohabition, etc. in comparison with other generations.
I hold by my comments.
One can make a lot of mistakes along the way that can limit later choices and also damage one in many ways.
If the 18/19/20/21 YO college student was paying their own way, totally difference in maturity and responsibility.
If my mature college student was committed to another that was equally mature, I would be all for supporting the marriage, and continuing some financial support.
Living together is very lukewarm commitment and leaves room for a lot of hurt. Can be w/o love and being cherished.
H and I waited 2 years to get married (with 6 months of that during senior year of college) due to another family event pushing our wedding out. We are celebrating our 39th wedding anniversary in April.
DD1 at age 23 married her H last year, who was 27. They were friends for about 8 months, knew then they were serious about each other a few months before DD completed her BS degree. They married a little over a year later.
DD2 is interested in career and has friends. Who knows if down the road one of her current or future friends actually is ‘the one’, but many of the current male friends have to mature in their single life.
People in the current culture even talk about a ‘starter marriage, starter wife’, like you trade up later, just like a house. Not something I would want for my S or D.
"People in the current culture even talk about a ‘starter marriage, starter wife’, like you trade up later, just like a house.
No people that I cross paths with talks or thinks this way although divorce and remarriage isn’t new by any means. Look at the stats mentioned/posted previously. Divorce rates are down. Millennials are more faithful to their partners and more do live together before marriage.
Again, your values are just YOUR values but not the only path for having a loving and working relationship.
Signed,
A person who has been with her husband for over 36 years including living together in college before getting married.
However current culture takes living together to be not a harmful thing. And I am talking beyond the moral aspects.
And yes, there are men that talk like having a starter house and a starter wife - obviously no maturity.
How many couples living together actually have a loving and working relationship? Friends plus benefits? It just gets to be in most cases a short term relationship. How many times has one of the individuals wanted marriage and the other not?
We have a family member that lived with a guy for many years in her 20’s; she wanted marriage and was hoping they would get married; he broke up with her/moved out, and in less than a year was married to someone else. She had an emotional breakdown, (suicidal) and now is pregnant out of wedlock in her late 30’s - got pregnant with casual sex so no father in the picture. She has now moved in with her parents for some stability. And the baby may give her the spark she needs to pull herself together.
And people act like birth control is going to prevent any pregnancy. The slippery slope.
Anecdotes work both ways. We could go on forever sharing our own pro/con stories that don’t “prove” anything. I think the OP has gotten a lot of great feedback here but has not come back to respond and only has one post. IMO, this thread has run way past its course.
Plenty.
I see this among my late 20s/early 30s kids and their friends, as well as among people in the same age group at my office. Many of them are in long-term relationships with a partner, which may involve living together, and they put a lot of effort into making those relationships work.
Their career and/or graduate school plans may make it necessary for them to intersperse periods of living together with periods of living separately in different parts of the country – and they make it work. Their financial situations may call for considerable sacrifice to save up to buy a house or pay off student loans – and they make it work. Their careers may call for thoughtful decisions and compromises about where to live so that both people can progress along their career paths without too much sacrifice – and they make it work.
And if things do work well through several years of this kind of partnership, these couples may end up getting married. Not because they’re infatuated with each other – they got past that stage of the relationship long ago. Not because they need to be married to have sex – they don’t. Not because they feel pressure to make their relationship respectable – there is no such pressure because nobody around them considers them less than respectable.
They get married because they feel it’s time. They feel that they as individuals are ready and that their relationship is ready for this next step. And they may also want to start a family soon (although this is not always the case).
This is not traditional. It’s a new paradigm. But in a society where young people often pair off in their mid-twenties, if not earlier, but don’t plan to have children until their 30s, it seems to be a sensible way to go about things.
A successful marriage is not dependent on starting brand-new on the wedding day. It takes far more skills, savvy, and endurance than that. You either have that or not, regardless.
Living together first is not necessarily frivolous. As we’re showing, it depends on the couple and on the individuals. In fact, the divorce rate is about marriages that do fail. There’s no magic in the legalizing. No guarantee.
@marian I agree about what you are saying about young professionals and with situations much different than OP.
OP’s daughter doesn’t sound ‘ready’, sounds like a flimsy situation, D is not financially independent (so it is up to parents to decide if they want to continue to financially support), and one of the parent’s basis is fear of not being a ‘cool mom’.
I still stand by my positions and reasonings.
Really? Seriously? Really?!
My parents lived together several years before they were married. Coming up on 30 years of marriage now and they are the happiest, grossly in love people I know.
I lived with Mr R almost since the beginning of our relationship. Still doing just fine- granted it’s only 7 years but that’s longer than many of my parents’ generation lasted. We married early- much earlier than I would have liked to be honest (24)- because of insurance purposes. Nothing changed from before the wedding. Nothing.
I remember reading many, many comments on here telling me that things would change after I was married and to come back and let people know if it did. Nothing did. We’ve been married for 2.5 years now and not a day is different from before we were married.
“I remember reading many, many comments on here telling me that things would change after I was married and to come back and let people know if it did. Nothing did. We’ve been married for 2.5 years now and not a day is different from before we were married.”
Ditto because we were already committed. The rest was just a piece of paper and a legal process.