I’ve been considering it for a while. She was my neighbor, long-time good friend, and I’ve been into her for a while. We started going on dates and becoming official not too long ago, and I was thinking of moving in with her.
All our families completely support the idea and so does my GF.
Things aren’t so cut and dry:
This was also an interesting read: Are Couples That Live Together Before Marriage More Likely to Divorce?
And that’s from Psychology Today, which is irreligious.
A large percentage of the people who wait for marriage don’t believe in divorce at all. That doesn’t mean that they are all happily married.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8847607/
It’s not just divorce, there’s a variety of factors that are correlated with decision to cohabit. This article goes through a bunch, including for example, martial satisfaction (they call it “adjustment” in this paper) which in their sample was slightly lower in men who cohabit before marriage and a lot lower in women who cohabit before marriage. They don’t really speculate on the reasons for this, but I’ve heard it suggested that cohabitation increases marriages out of convenience among couples who probably wouldn’t have gotten married otherwise.
Also important is that these impacts are long-term, and both cohabitation and marriage have positive outcomes in the short-term.
I… don’t disagree with you there.
This may be good advice if your goal is to keep your relationship as long as possible, but that shouldn’t be your goal. It should be to be happy.