So I briefly touched on this in the comment section of another post, but would like some more feedback from other members of this community. The post that I’m referring to ask for opinions about living together before marriage because her friends thought it was fine, but she was against it.

My boyfriend (32M) and I (25F) have been together for 3 years, do not live together and do not have any children. We also do not have any aspiration to get married because we aren’t religious and we also haven’t seen any successful marriages in our own lives. Recently, his best friend and his wife have separated after dating for 10y and being married for 2y.

We both live separately with me recently moving out of my family’s home at the beginning of this year, and he’s been on his own for many years. We’ve spoken about moving in together and it’s never been the right time. I believe a part of him is not eager to give up his space. Since moving out on my own, I now have the same understanding so I’m not in a rush to move in together. Before, I think it centred around me wanting to combine expenses to save money, but now I’m in a much better place to take care of myself financially. We both have stable careers with each person making over $70k/year and no debt.

We’ve approached the topic of marriage many times and have both agreed that although we don’t want to get married, we wouldn’t mind living as common law spouses. After the separation of his friend and seeing what he’s going through, I also added that it would probably be best to also had in a “pre-nup” but for common law relationships as added protection, not because we think someone will get bitter and greedy, but because you never know how things may end. He agrees.

To sum it up: we want to move in together once we’ve reached the stage where he would’ve traditionally proposed, probably at year 5. He would “propose” and we would live together as common law and have children.

Any thoughts, advice or criticisms?