This is so sexist. Marriage is actually generally a better deal for men than women from my observations. A smart woman WOULD want to live with the guy for a while and see what he is like when he’s not just courting on occasional evenings.
And see how the intimate aspects work or not.
I moved in with DH about eight months before our wedding; we had already set the date. The simple reason was that at that point, we had been long-distance the entire time we were dating and saw each other IRL every couple of months as finances allowed. Mind you, we spent an hour a day on the phone, three hours on weekend days talking, so we had laid down a pretty sound foundation by that point (and that was in the days of AT&T evening & nighttime rates – we spent $400/mo on phone bills in 1982-83). We were both still in college when we started dating; when we got engaged, DH had just graduated and I was still in school. We were both 22. I could not afford living on my own on Philadelphia while going to school (I transferred as part of this move as well). Combining our resources made sense.
I will admit my parents, both staunch Catholics, were pretty surprised that I was moving in with DH. I was the dutiful, straight-arrow daughter who had never done anything out-of-the-box in my life. (I also converted to Judaism during this time. I had been interested in and was studying Judaism long before I met DH.)
However, DH and I felt that we needed to live in at least the same city for some period of time before we were married. We viewed not living together as an irresponsible decision on our part, given the geographical distance and the seriousness with which we took marriage. At the time, I would not have been comfortable with an open-ended living together arrangement.
As my dad drove me to the wedding ceremony, he told me we had done the right thing, and as far as he was concerned, our marriage had begun eight months earlier. He also told me that his mother had converted to Catholicism from being Southern Baptist (at age 14 in 1911, in rural Missouri – so a pretty gutsy decision at the time) and she had raised five observant Catholic children, so he felt that if I raised my children to be religious, even if it wasn’t his religion, so if his mom had done it, I could too, and that was ok with him. It was a huge leap for him, and I was (and still am) profoundly grateful.
So yes, I moved in with my DH while I was an undergrad. Still married and still working on it, 34 years later.
FWIW, I dated my best buddy from high school for 2.5 years during college. I’d known him for 4.5 years before we began dating and we had seriously discussed marriage. He lived off campus; I was in the dorms. Never had the slightest inclination to move in with him. The spidey sense was right – I broke it off with him when he repeatedly proved he was a sexist jerk, and he went on to have three broken marriages.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
The OP has long left the building, so I think she received the information she needs. Closing thread.