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Here's the fun answer. Never move in. Have your own place where you can pursue your hobbies and they have theirs. Date for years and years, stress free. No fights about animals, housework.
Bonus: it makes the time you spend around that person genuinely fun, planned, and enjoyable.
I hate that the system generally forces people live together because it's otherwise too damn expensive. I feel like if it wasn't, probably more people would choose to live this way.
i would consider it a well-known fact that there is a link between cohabitation before marriage and higher rate of divorce.
granted, divorce rates are rising anyway. but to be totally honest, if OP considers this boomer talk, it just speaks to lack of insight and life experience (which you will get when you move in with someone, to be fair). also, looking for an exact number to reach some kind of threshold just seems like a cry for validation. you certainly don't need to gain approval from people on the internet to make a decision (myself included). you won't need to know a number when you're ready, because you'll know the time is right.
regardless of what i said, i hope you find further research on the matter (try using pubmed or national institute of mental health resources) and i hope you find happiness if you're taking that next step in life.
It can hardly be called a “well-known fact.” There are many conflicting studies on this matter, even coming from the same research organizations. For example, this snippet from an article in The Atlantic:
In 2012, a study in the Journal of Marriage and Family concluded that “since the mid-1990s, whether men or women cohabited with their spouse prior to marriage is not related to marital stability.” This is the same journal that just published a study finding the opposite.
perhaps i need to revisit the subject in detail, but a posted above a more recent study from 2019 which looks at the same subject.
like i said in a comment above, i'm happy to be proven wrong about this, i was just reporting what i knew about it from academic experience.
My now wife movies in with me pretty quickly, maybe like 8 months after we started dating.
We spent a lot of time together as it was, but Covid came and her sister was doing her residency.
I was happy to have her move in as it would limit our exposure and we could still see each other.
Shortly after that, she moved in with her parents to look after them for a few months and we just did a long distance thing as the city went on lockdown and they lived outside the city.
After about 6 months she moved in. We ended up getting married like 2 years or so later.
We have have been married for a year this October and things are great. I love living with my wife and I always have.
Of course there were times that were hard as we adapted to so emotional each others habits and stuff. One example, is that I’m a super light sleeper so she had to adapt to be extra quiet while I’m sleeping.
She grew up and lived next to an airport most of her life, so her entire family are heavy sleepers.
