Put aside my personal desires-- allowed my boyfriend to move in so I can help support him. Friends judging.

lady_baker · 2016-06-08T20:21:27+00:00

I lived with my husband before we were married. We actually lived with his uncle for 6 months while we were saving money, and my God his uncle was a disgusting person. So our first "living together" experience wasn't rosy.

Seems to me that your friends are all status, no substance. Sex is already happening, which would be the only thing a Christian could morally object to, right? So its fine to sin but not to let people figure out that you are sinning? You took away their plausible deniability.

I do wonder if you will end up quasi supporting you, your dad and your boyfriend indefinitely.

CoochQuarantine · 2016-06-08T20:23:12+00:00

My SO pretty much lives with me now and it has only been 6 months. He only goes home when he has his kids because I usually have things going on so I can't watch them for him since he works weekends. From my perspective...

Shit happens.

I think it is always a bad idea to move in together before marriage as a means to save the relationship or if it is because it is just easy to do. You should want to live together. That said. Shit happens. You guys made the leap and now you are where you are. For myself, I would just make sure that he knows that you have absolutely no intention of being a perpetual girlfriend and then drop it. If he already knows this then you have nothing to worry about. Dude just spent a month with you in Maui and your dynamic seems to be progressing.

As for your friends, fuck the haters. What works for them may not work for you. You are not like your bossy feminist friends and you are more relaxed when it comes to the 'no living together before marriage rule'. You are not your friends. When they do ask, all you have to say is that your relationship is progressing and it doesn't show signs of stopping at just girlfriend status.

As for your controlly behavior... CTFO!!! Remember your RPWi roots. Start again. Surrender again. Work to be the woman you were when he wasn't around. There is a learning curve but that doesn't mean that you can't do it. Don't beat yourself up about it. I would suggest reading stuff on here again and just internalize it again.

Congrats on the step forward and just breath!!!!

Oh. Another thing that I would suggest is that maybe you could tell him your fear of there not being an end date to the living together as BF/GF and that you had envisioned something else. I have told my SO that I had envisioned us living together only when and if I get a rock on my hand. I think that the engagement period is a good time to get to know if living together is going to work before the marriage but you've already got the marriage commitment coming. I thought that was a good balance. That kindaa went out the window.

kanye shrug

edit: welcome back! miss your weekly reflections posts!

KlaiFrai · 2016-06-09T03:12:12+00:00

My husband and I have technically been living together since high school.<redacted>

I think the reason this worked out is, among other things, because he never gave off a mooch vibe. If anything, he actively avoided the perception that he was leeching off my parents. He cleaned, fixed things, kept the computers running, and frequently numbered to me the ways that he had to improve before he considered himself an adult (house, car, career rather than job, etc). Not that he didn't have the odd bad habit (everyone is used to him walking around in his underwear by now), but those are little things in the big picture.

Now we're married, he's graduating, and looking at several careers that have been offered to him, and I make sure he's got decent underwear to walk around our new place in.

You can make most situations work if you want to.

PhantomDream09 · 2016-06-08T20:57:34+00:00

You seem very invested in what your friend's think, and as soon as you described their reaction as well as what you said - I immediately found myself wondering "why did /u/fhigurethisout mention it at all?" It seems to me that women sometimes forget that they don't have to mention every little thing to their friend's and family. It's your life, and honestly, if you think you're just going to get grief for doing something you have already decided to go through with - then why add their negative feedback to your plate?

On another note - you need to have a conversation with your dad. Under no circumstances should he be 'taking up the entire living space.' He's a semi-long term guest at your residence. If anyone should be going to the library (or somewhere else to work) then it should be him. You should not feel like a prisoner in your own home.

I know people on both sides of the living vs. not living together situation. You know what it ultimately boils down to? The couple and their relationship. The people open to living together are generally more liberal/less focused on the marriage thing (compared to that 'absolutely never' crowd that tends to be very marriage driven). It sounds like you made a practical and supportive decision as a way to show that you are supportive and care. The fact that you're putting your father up, also speaks well about you in terms of loyalty to family.

It sounds like your SO looks at this as a temporary fix while he gets other things in his life under control. Just make sure you're on the same page (this is temporary - which means you need to figure out what that actually means) so that you have the same expectations.

You're dealing with a lot of growing pains right now, on multiple fronts and it sounds like the only person that is not making things more difficult is your SO. Find comfort in that.

In the meantime, it's time to work on some boundaries with both your dad and your friends.

Good luck!

whistling_dixie · 2016-06-09T00:55:37+00:00

I moved in with my SO because we were doing the long distance thing and it got to a point where we needed to make the choice - my lease was up, I'd been laid off several months prior and had just taken a job that I quickly realized I hated. It was a quick decision, and it was not easy at all. Had our circumstances been different, I would have preferred to have more savings and a job lined up and moved up to my own place, but that's not what happened.

It started out great - I hit the job search hard, and spent my days cleaning and cooking. It was stressful because I was trying to pay my own way out of the meager savings I had and I was absolutely terrified of being a burden on him. I found a job about a month in, and started it a couple weeks after that. Things kind of changed after that - we really started to settle in, and I started slacking on everything thanks to 10 hour days at my new job. Slacking bred resentment, and we live in a tiny house - so there was nowhere to go to be alone and decompress. This kept brewing for a while until a breaking point was reached, I ultimately found RPW, and things slowly but steadily began to improve.

Re: feeling ashamed of him moving in - I had lunch with my very-Catholic grandparents a few days before I left and my grandfather asked me point blank: "are you going to be like Cousin or are you going to get married first and do it right?" Cousin had two children with her live-in boyfriend and did not get married (since then they've eloped but that's beside the point). I was mortified and ashamed, hard. I knew that was not what we planned, but I felt so filthy thinking that was what everyone thought was going to happen. My grandfather laughed it off shortly afterward because that's just his very blunt sense of humor and my grandmother tried to pretend she wasn't blushing at his comments, and we moved on in the lunch. I was really self-conscious about this for a long while. Fairly quickly though, once people realized that this was what we wanted and our lives were working better for it, it stopped feeling shameful and life started feeling very natural. Plus, the added savings from living together in our super small, efficient house allowed us to take a vacation abroad together! None of this would have happened if I had not found this place though, I credit RPW entirely for the fact that we have survived the tough times and are now engaged.

snowflacke · 2016-06-09T11:36:03+00:00

I didn't live with my ex before the marriage and I regret it hard. Nobody could have told me what kind of a slob he was and it's true that you never know how a person really is until you live under the same hood. But the problem I see is that your vision is clouded because of all the different voices around you. I don't see any problem you two don't seem to be able to figure out, I couldn't hear any red flag about him or his behavior. Your issues are illusions and your fears not justified, let it go and utterly and completely ignore what ever any of your friends say. You sound very high value and their jealousness is kicking them in their sides.

aZombieKitten · 2016-06-08T20:26:20+00:00

My standard advice is to do what you think it's best for your relationship.

It's obvious your SO would rather move in together to get a better understanding of the girl he might be marrying because he doesn't want to end up in the described situation of finding out the chick is an entitled slob.

However, you also seem to have some reservations about this happening, so why did you offer that space to him in the first place? If you don't feel ready for that step, then you generally don't do it. You could develop some resentment and create a self-fulfilling prophecy about your relationship failing because you moved in together first.

At this point, since it sounds like you've already made the move, my best advice for you is to be careful about your thoughts and feelings. Take a step back when your anxiety or controlling nature surfaces. Make sure you're not behaving in a way that could cause strain on the relationship.

whitebunny87 · 2016-06-09T00:04:41+00:00

i think you're totally right in considering that the women with the failed marriages are the bossy types. i would suspect that their personalities and general relationship dynamics have a lot more to do with their marital problems than moving in together did.

i would also point out that from what you've said, your christian girlfriends seem very status oriented, and perhaps the types who wouldn't mention their relationship problems for fear of judgement. maybe their marriages are great, maybe they're not - you probably wouldn't know if it was the latter. just a thought.

either way, it is what you make it out to be. if you get it into your head that living together before marriage will doom you, it just might. i would eliminate that concern entirely, continue to be a good partner and work toward marriage on your own (as a couple) timeline.

MsSadieDunham · 2016-06-08T20:57:01+00:00

I lived with my husband before we were married and we still love each other. It sounds like you're letting your "friends" get the better of you. Keep your reasons for why you made this decision in the forefront of your mind and don't let the hamster spin so much. If these ladies aren't being supportive or are making your life harder, distance yourself. Who needs enemies with friends like that??

Living together before marriage does not automatically doom your relationship to failure and you both can learn a lot from it, both about yourselves and the other. I understand from the Christian perspective because I am a practicing Christian (more conservative now than when DH and I met) and I did at times feel judged by others. That's on them. God didn't ask us to judge our neighbor, he asks us to love them and they're the ones not doing a great job of that right now.

I think once things settle down your over controlling tendencies will settle down, perhaps you can use this time to practice patience and keeping a lid on nagging or micro managing. Those are fantastic skills to have when living with someone. :-) Putting space in your relationship early on is a great idea, like you said you're doing.

Don't let anyone including yourself rain on your parade! We all have/had goals (like you not living with someone before marriage) that didn't work out but that doesn't mean life isn't still awesome.

DivaExMachina · 2016-06-10T11:51:43+00:00

I lived with my husband for two years before we were married. This year will be our seventh wedding anniversary. So I don't think living in sin will sound the death knell for your relationship.

I also think you place way too much importance on what your friends think. Most of the judgy church ladies I've known have far more messy and unsatisfying personal lives than you might think.

Title	Put aside my personal desires-- allowed my boyfriend to move in so I can help support him. Friends judging.
Author	fhigurethisout
Upvotes	13
Comments	28
Date	June 8, 2016 7:58 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/RedPillWives
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/RedPillWives/comments/4n70id/put_aside_my_personal_desires_allowed_my/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/RedPillWives/put-aside-my-personal-desires-allowed-my-boyfriend.209924 https://theredarchive.com/post/209924

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