Matt Walsh explains why:
We commonly view living together as a logical step before marriage, but it isn’t. It’s something some people do, but it isn’t a step to marriage. Your marriage is defined by the commitment you make to the other person — not by the bathroom or mortgage you share. Living with someone is not a “warm up” for marriage or a “try out” period, precisely because it lacks the essential, definitive characteristic of that permanent commitment. You can’t comfortably transition into an eternal vow. You make it, and then it’s made. Period.
Dreher nods along:
This sounds familiar, because it’s a lot like the path Julie and I followed.
We met one weekend in the autumn of 1996, when I was visiting Austin. We fell instantly, and hard. I was living in Fort Lauderdale, she was finishing college in Austin. Our courtship, such as it was, became mostly a matter of letters and phone calls. Owing to the expense of plane tickets, we saw each other maybe once a month, but usually less frequently. After four months, we became engaged, but waited most of that year for Julie to finish college before we married. Our honeymoon was the longest continuous period of time we had spent in each other’s company since we met.
But it worked, and worked brilliantly, because the answers we held in our hearts were the same as Matt Walsh and his wife held in their hearts. You cannot know in advance what will await you in the wild unknown country of marriage. All you can know — and it’s a matter of intuition as much as anything else — is that you want to have that adventure with the one you love.
The Dish 