Why I Decided Not to Move In With My Girlfriend

Posted: 2 May 2012

I have been going out with my girlfriend for almost three months and thankfully all is going very well. I was filling in a friend on this news the other day and at the end of the conversation the person asked me, with a face of anticipated excitement, “Will you be moving in together”? I was initially surprised by the question as I imagined it was obvious to most people I know where I would stand on such an issue. However I guess that it is no longer ‘obvious’ why a young dating couple would decide not to pack their bags and find a place together. Let me explain then why I have decided not to share a bed with my girlfriend.

Cohabitation prior to marriage is well and truly the most popular path for young couples. Just over 75% of couples now live together prior to marriage and for many of them it is something they slide into rather than necessarily consciously deciding upon. When he or she begins to spend more nights at the other person’s house than their own, eventually it seems natural to stop paying two lots of rent.

But while cohabitation is billed as an important way to get to know the other person and ensure a more secure future marriage there is really no evidence to back that up. Social data shows cohabiting relationships last about 2.5 years before breaking up or converting to marriage but conversion rates to marriage are declining. Among couples who begin cohabiting, 46% will have married and 46% will have broken up in within five years. For those who do eventually marry though, divorce rates are double those who do not cohabit before marriage.

Why then is cohabitation the accepted norm, and at the same time completely useless in helping couples discern their future? The answer to both questions is the same: sex. When a couple moves in together it is the fruit of that fact that they have began engaging in sexual relations already. Cohabitation is about sex, let’s not be confused. The cohabiting couple make the subliminal statement to each other that “I don’t need to be married to you to have sex with you”. That is a very critical statement in the health of a relationship because sex goes from something once worthy of vows before God, to something not much bigger than deciding what one will have for lunch. The vow a cohabiting couple make is this, “I promise to have sex with you until such a time that I meet someone else who I would rather have sex with”. I watched the movie ‘The Vow’ recently, a romantic comedy/drama based on a true story. The main couple meet, begin dating and eventually the guy asks the girl to move in with him. The scene was portrayed as this special romantic moment where the man had finally stepped up and done the right thing. Rubbish! All he had really said was, “I want to have sex with you more regularly but I want the freedom to end it all in case it doesn’t work out”. How romantic is that?!

So what about the couples who do live together but eventually marry? I question the freedom with which they entered into that marriage and their real desire to be together until death. Sex by its very nature is designed to bond a couple but when a relationship gets physical before its time, important issues like character, life philosophy, and compatibility go to the wayside. Consequently, everything is romanticised and it becomes difficult to remember the important issues let alone talk about them. When a dating couple engage in sex, they disregard checking for an intellectual commitment and instead enter into an emotional and sexual one. Budding love is very fragile and can easily be crushed by lust. Just because a cohabiting couple may eventually make it to the altar (or more likely the garden) is not a sign that share a true love. Many couples who marry today do not choose marriage as freely as they might have, they often simple slide into it. It just became the next choice in a series of unwise choices. A cohabiting relationship is based on the principle that one can walk away at any time and this attitude is not easily dislodged just because a wedding certificate has been signed.

Couples who cohabit certainly desire love and they undoubtedly try their best to love one another, but the problem is their best will not be good enough because they are relying on tainted and corrupted information. They learn how to have sex with the other person but not about the person, they desire to be loved but fail to understand how to love.

If I was not interested in discerning any possible future with my girlfriend, then sure, we might as well shack up now. But my heart like every other human heart desires to find a love that will last a lifetime. I have a far diminished chance of finding that love if I take the easy option now and simply follow the social trend. Love is too precious a commodity to be is cheapened and destroyed through the social evil that is cohabitation.

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Winning at the Dating Game

Posted: 27 November 2011

Dating someone is tricky business. It is a bit like playing poker, we do not want to reveal our cards too quickly, yet if we hold onto them for too long the correct moment can pass and the game might be lost. In both dating and poker there is always a risk factor involved. If you never sit down to play a game of poker it is absolutely guaranteed that you will never lose a game of poker, however, it also means you will never win a game of poker. Similarly if you never allow yourself to enter into a relationship with another person it is absolutely guaranteed that you will never be hurt by the other person, but of course it is also guaranteed you will never share in the joys of a relationship.

While there is always the risk of getting hurt in a relationship it is possible to live out a relationship in a way that both minimises the risk of hurt and increases the likelihood of discerning whether or not it is a relationship that might be a keeper. Everything really comes down to prudence, which in modern times has sadly been reduced to being overly cautious. However, prudence is the pivotal virtue which gives us the ability to know what actions are appropriate for us in a particular time and place. Prudence is very much ‘practical wisdom’ for daily living.

So here is my list of three ways to practice prudence in a relationship. They are three ‘do-nots’ but each ‘do not’ should be seen as an invitation to ‘do’ something. The points are simple in theory but not always so in reality. Just as one needs to practice strategy and skills to win at poker, one needs to practice strategy and skills to win at dating.

One. Do not place all your hopes for happiness on the other person. This rule works for dating right through to marriage. There is a natural desire in a relationship to seek joy through the person we are with, and that makes sense, I mean if there was no joy in being with a person why would we bother? We all come to a relationship though with our personal set of needs, perhaps we have a tendency to be lonely, or, perhaps we have a low sense of self worth. It is important to try and discover what our particular needs are and be aware that we do not place them all on the other person because if we do that we will very quickly suffocate them. And we can become so suffocating that we kill off any future the relationship might have had.

Two. Do not neglect the rest of your life. When we begin a relationship with someone who brings us a great deal of happiness we can tend to leave other parts of our life to one side. We naturally desire to spend more and more time with the other person and that is not a negative but it can cause us to put aside the company of family and friends and focus solely on the person we are in a relationship with. Especially at the start of a dating relationship, there needs to be aspects of our life that exist, to some extent, without the other person, we need to remain who we were before we begun dating. Without that balance of other people and activities we risk finding ourselves back at point one putting all our needs on the other.

Three. Do not grasp for what is not there…yet. This is perhaps the most important point. If you really think about it, most of the problems we have in relationships come about because we try to jump ahead of where we are. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we reach out to take the fruit because we do not want to wait. Often we grasp out of fear, we are scared that the outcome which we long for will not come to us. Ironically when we do grasp in a relationship we can end up taking a step backwards, we can do damage to the way we see the other person and end up being disappointed and hurt.

If you are dating someone, the relationship will last because you have played the ‘game’ correctly. If we suffocate the other with our needs, if we let the other aspects of our life lay empty, we will end up letting some card slip out to soon and others come out too late. And once that is happening we can grasp at the end result all we want, it will only serve to frustrate the relationship and we risk losing the game entirely.

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When Life is Like an iPod

Posted: 22 September 2011

As I write this I am sitting on a train and the girl next to me is listening to her iPod. She is flicking through her playlist to find a song that she likes, however it seems that just because she starts a song does not mean she will finish it. Some songs get ten seconds of play time, some get a minute, but it seems she is not satisfied with the level of enjoyment she is receiving from her playlist (which I assume is made up of songs she herself selected).

This inability to be satisfied is not limited to this young lady, nor is it limited to iPods. This is an age which has a general inability to commit, but perhaps more to the point; this is an age that must be continually entertained.

Commercial radio believes that any piece of music needs to be three minutes or less for fear that we will not ‘commit’ to the song; one day cricket is becoming increasingly popular at the expense of test matches which require several days of investment; the TV remote control reminds us that there might always be something better on the next channel. The problem is that when the highest value in one’s life is immediate gratification, we lose the ability to persevere. After all, why spend the afternoon cooking over a hot stove when we can simply reheat a frozen meal in the microwave? Life, however, is not a microwave, nor is it an iPod or a remote control. Life will not always entertain. There will be times that are joyous and there will be times that are difficult. Life will not always give, so that we can simply lie back and receive.

If we have an inability to look at the bigger picture of life and understand the overall good, then every inconvenience, every suffering, every second listening to a song we do not like, become moments to be avoided at all costs.

Now, of course, this is not to say we must delight in everything we do, but we do need to have an awareness of when we are becoming too quick to ‘change songs’. Life is full of ups and downs, they cannot be avoided.

What happens, for example, when two people who are always used to ‘changing the channel’ get married? What will happen when the inevitable trials of life come upon them? Will they have the ability to see the greater good and sacrifice immediate self-gratification for the greater good of the other person or the relationship as a whole?

Once we have become serial ‘channel changers’ we find that nothing satisfies. There may always be something better; there may always be more fun to be had elsewhere.
Real and lasting joy, however, can only come through perseverance and commitment to the task and duties before us.

Would Sir Edmund Hillary have reached the top of Mt Everest and been able to appreciate its views if he was seeking immediate pleasure every step of the way?

So go on … think about getting yourself in training. Go for a long walk in the mountains; bake a cake from scratch; listen to an entire symphony. Experience the fullness of the beauty in the world around us. And most importantly; stop flicking though the songs on your iPod!

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