Yup. I can definitely say that if it weren’t for the health insurance and other benefits, we would almost certainly not be getting legally married. For us, not a darn thing about our relationship is going to change between now and a month from now when the government considers us legally joined.
Honestly I’d rather my kids live with their significant others for a while before marriage. DH and I were a couple for seven years before we got married, we’ve been married 31 years now. I think romani might be surprised that it is different, but not a lot different.
Well, I’m sure I’ll be here to let you know if it is any different. 
I’m not religious, and I intend to be married to my Dh for life. It’s a commitment, not a religious thing for me.
I am all for living together first and think it is healthier. I have an LDS friend at work who was shocked when his only non LDS daughter lived with her boyfriend for a while. I told him to get over it. He did, and a few years later they got married.
When H and I were dating we had separate apartments in the early 80s but were living together. What is the difference really? Appearances? At that time in Texas it would have been too radical, at least we thought so. But reading the above posts maybe not.
I also think Romani will probably see a difference in being married. I’m hoping she updates us in a year or two.
It just seems very different looking back after being married for years and you can see why marriage is so important. Especially when kids are involved…at least that’s my take on it.
For me personally, and again I can only speak for myself, I don’t need a piece of paper for a commitment and that is all I see a legal marriage as. I think it is unfortunate that we have so many rights and privileges tied to marriage. I don’t agree with it and I wouldn’t partake in it if it weren’t so beneficial.
That is JUST me. I will update and I will be shocked if the legal part of our relationship changes anything. If it does, I’ll happily eat my words (preferably with ranch!)
Count us as another couple who lived together in Texas in the early 80s (and we had other friends who also did) - at first it was separate apartments, then a month of living together before we relocated to the midwest where H attended grad school.
Many years later, after her death, I found out my mom knew we were living together in the midwest and appealed to two of my brothers to talk some sense into us. We did withhold the information that we were living together for exactly this reason - she would flip. But we never knew she found out, and I suspect H’s mom, in a typical, nightly drunken stupor, called my mom and ‘let it slip’. And my parents never said a word to us that they knew, after all those years, so I know it bothered them (mostly my mom) tremendously, but mostly because they were probably embarrassed. So many things they said and did in those years of our engagement and early marriage made sense once my brother told me about her manipulative actions. Of course my brothers told her to leave me be. To this day, when I think of how embarrassed she was by this, it still unnerves me. I vowed to myself that, as my kids were launched into adulthood, and made choices I might not have made, I would remind myself that their decisions are not a reflection on me.
My mom is still disappointed my wife and I lived together before marriage.
At my daughter’s wedding shower, my mom went up to my daughter’s fiance’s mom and said… Didn’t ask… “Isn’t it terrible they are living together”.
My daughter’s future mother in law looked at my mom like she is crazy.
Having said this, I think there is a difference being married. Romani, I am very curious what you are going to say in a couple of years.
I do admit when I’m wrong… so as I said, I’ll admit it if I am.
You may be right. I’m curious.
As am I since I’ve been told many, many times that “things” change once you’re married. I’m curious to see if it’s true.
Well I guess you can be our case study out of CC posters:) With almost 25,000 posts I don’t think you’re going anywhere. Busy and helpful gal going to school and all!!
I did not, WOULD not, live with my husband before we got married…I did have his baby, though.
lol…I must be the backward one on CC. Not only did H and I not live together before marriage, but none of my 6 siblings lived with their spouses before marriage, none of H’s 7 siblings did, none of my cousins did, and none of my friends did.
In the late 70’s, when I met H, I would agree that it wasn’t that much of a commitment at first, it was to make logistics easier, and he was not the first man I had lived with.
But as someone noted on another thread, the current generation of 22-30 yr olds,are more conservative socially than their parents. I was in the tail end of the baby boomers, and contraception was widely available, and we had not heard of HIV or AIDS. We wanted some of that * free love* that we had read about in LIFE magazine when we were ten.
I barely dated either of my boyfriends before we moved in together.
( one, maybe three months?, H, about 1&1/2 yrs)
Couples often are now friends first, before they date, then they date for several years at least, before moving In together.
Probably better that they think about it more than we did.
We were engaged when we moved in together. We had been doing the long-distance thing for a year before getting engaged, and we felt it only made sense for us to live in the same city before we got married, and finances were such that we couldn’t afford separate apartments.
My siblings did not live with their spouses before they were married.
But one of them had a baby exactly nine months later, which embarrassed her at the time, and one has been married & divorced twice.
H’s siblings also did not live together before they married. They are both divorced, albeit after decades of marriage.
I would not want my kids to marry without living together first.
I am old fashioned in that I think if you are planning a family, it’s nice to be married first, even if you have to go barefoot because you can’t get your shoes on.
But I do know some couples who waited until their kids were old enough to participate in the ceremony, and that was pretty awesome too!
Neither my folks, me nor my sibs or H’s folks or sibs lived together before marrying. We are all still married to original spouses some decades later.
That said, I’d respect whatever decisions our kids made about living arrangements. So far, don’t believe either of them has had any serious relationships, so I suspect it may be awhile. 
I’m with Romani on this one. My H and I have been together since 1979; we married in 1987 five weeks before our first child was born, purely for the health insurance. The marriage certificate means absolutely nothing to us–we don’t even remember what day we were married (justice of the peace with two friends present). Our commitment to each other has nothing to do with being married, nothing at all. All of our friends assumed we were married long before we actually were and I really wish I was “brave” enough not to have done it–I just wasn’t willing to take chances with children on the way, and my partner would have had to sign a registry of “putative” fathers in order to be sure he was considered the dad–sounded very sleazy to me.