I grew up in a very conservative Christian environment and as I have grown into adulthood I have gravitated away from that view of Christianity in favor of, for lack of a better word, liberal Christianity. Recently I brought up to my parents that my girlfriend and I plan on getting an apartment together (my girlfriend and I are both 25 and have been together for a year now). They reacted like I murdered an entire village of orphan children and vowed to disown me should I “live in sin.”
As a Christian myself I have been doing a lot of research on this topic, but I have struggled mightily explaining my views to my parents. My mom has told me many times that by doing this I am going straight to hell. I find this very troubling because she was there when I sought Jesus as my savior and knows how that event changed my life. She is convinced that I did not mean it at that time and that I have let Satan enter my life and tempt me. I love my girlfriend and we plan on getting married and ideally I would like to have a relationship with my parents, but I am at a loss as for how to reconcile our differences on this issue. I would very much appreciate any insight you could give on this topic. Thanks
Really? Satan? Your mom goes straight to Satan?
Worst debater ever.
How come she couldn’t just talk to you about this first? You know; what about the ol’, “Well, honey, you might want to think about living together before getting married. Because . . . ”
Wait. What is the reason people aren’t supposed to live together before getting married?
Oh, duh. Sex. It’s not a sin for you to live with your girlfriend; it’s just assumed that doing so means you’ll also be sleeping with her. Which makes sense. Even if you tried to not have sex with your live-in girlfriend it’s only a matter of time until the two of you are working together in the kitchen and one of you accidentally trips and stumbles into the other one’s genitals. And that, right there, is exactly the kind of accident that keeps restaurants in business.
So let’s not get in a conversation about whether the Bible does or doesn’t proscribe [moderately big word alert: it means forbid, prohibit, ban—unlike prescribe, which means recommend, suggest, endorse, because English is difficult, challenging, sucks] premarital sex. Like so many things that apparently God wanted Christians to bitch at each other about forever, a decent case can be made either way with quotes yanked out of context from the Bible and wielded like weapons in some epic battle in World War Stupid.
Have you already slept with your girlfriend? If so, maybe you should tell your parents that. It’s not like you can put that cat back in the bag. I think a good biblical argument can be made in support of the idea that once you have slept with someone the honorable thing to do is cleave your life to theirs in the way that moving into together does do. It shows how seriously you take the relationship.
Fundamentally, of course, I have no idea how to advise you on this. I don’t know your parents. If they’re crazy and intransigent [uncompromising, stubborn, pigheaded] dogmatists, then you’re screwed. If they’re just having a knee-jerk reaction to their little boy being all grown up, then do what you need to do and trust they’ll come around.
Lately I’ve had a spate of letters from young Christians asking me what amounts to this same question; namely, “I’ve changed my theology and my parents are freaking out. Help!” And what I’ve been generally recommending to such people is that, if it’s true, they tell their parents that they still believe in Jesus. That’s what parents really want to know: they’re much less concerned with their child getting Jesus wrong than they are with them altogether abandoning Jesus. (As long as we’re talking about this: if you can’t tell your parents that you believe in Jesus, tell them [again, assuming it's true] that you believe in some sort of God, and that all you want to do is spend some time figuring out what exactly that means—and that they should trust that if Jesus was God then in time that truth will be revealed to you, and all will be well.)
In your case, you do believe in Jesus. If I were you, I would insist that my belief in and understanding of Jesus, God, and the Bible does not tell me that it’s a sin to live with the woman whom I fully intend to marry. You’re twenty-five, for bleepssakes. That’s old enough for your reflections and conclusions on such matters to be taken seriously. You’re reading the Bible differently than they are. Thoughtfully and lovingly make your case for why—have the conversation with them about what Scripture does and doesn’t actually say on this matter—and then leave them to their thoughts and convictions.
In life we have to choose our battles. This sounds like one you’re going to fight; that is, wanting to please your parents doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a strong enough reason for you to choose not to live with your girlfriend. If that’s the case, then make your best argument for the morality of what you’re doing, do it, and see what happens. Always remain good-natured and respectful: always let your parents know that you love them. Then it’s on them.
You know what? If you’re really planning on marrying your girlfriend, why not make that official? I wonder what your parents’ attitude would be if you were planning on moving in with the girl to whom you were Officially Engaged: with a date set and invitations sent out and all of that? Seems reasonable to believe that might loosen them up a little.
Also, what’s your girlfriend say? Is she, like, “Screw ‘em. We wanna live together; they can deal.”? Or is she concerned with maintaining the integrity of your relationship with your parents? I hope it’s the latter. Because (assuming you and your parents are pretty close) she should be concerned about that. Not to mention that if you guys do get married, she’s likely going to have to live in harmony with your parents. Might as well start preparing that table now.
Anyway, good luck. Let us know how it goes. (Hey, have your girlfriend write in. I’d like to hear her take on this.) Thanks for writing.
In case anyone cares (and hasn’t read it before) here’s a short thing about my wife Cat and I on the morning following the day of our wedding–which came after some three years of our living together: The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
{ 90 comments… read them below or add one }
« 1 2
Church history professor, sorry.
To be a priest, you had to know how to read. Not so common in the Middle Ages.
In the Middle Ages (in England, I believe), didn’t the priest visit the outlier villages only now and then? My CHurch history told me “once a year”.
So what people did was convene the people of the village and jump over a broom.
And the priest would bless it at his next visit.
First of all, the Church did not invent marriage. It pre-existed Christianity and even most religions.
I believe that what is important here is the intent, the honesty.
Now, I really don’t know what to say about your parents.
I’d argue that living together before marriage as a “test” is only a true “test” so long as the parties still have an easy enough “out” if things aren’t going the greatest. If their lives, possessions, animals, etc, become too intertwined, it’s too much work to get out and they’ll be more likely to plod along and keep telling themselves it’s a great relationship, even if it’s not. So that is one reason why I think living together leads to more divorces down the road. I’ve seen it happen that way!
And what’s the deal with unmarried people buying HOUSES together?! That to me seems like a very dangerous thing indeed. Even getting a pet together makes you feel like you have to stay together even if it’s not the best idea. No mortgage before a marriage! Just my thoughts.
This is a tough one. At 23 I was not strong enough to tell my parents to shove it, so my poor darling hubby rented a room in a friend-of-a-friend’s house so we could keep up the appearance of having separate residences, but of course he was at my place every night until we got married and he could move in the few possessions that were not already at my place, LOL. Now I’m in my mid-30s and if I was just now meeting “the One” I think I would laugh if my parents gave me some mumbo-jumbo about morality and blahbadeblah. Could NEVER have done that at 23! Where you are in your life and in your own self-journey makes a big difference. I think I was one of the last people to manage to not live together before marriage, but of course we were already “active” and “sleeping over” so it was really just a sham. I won’t expect my kids to live a sham.
I loved your response on this topic as it seems to be a mega issue for us Christians. Like you said it primarily boils down to abstinence/purity which in my upbringing was just about the best thing you could do outside of performing miracles. I was wondering if anyone on here has some verses they can share that maybe tell a different side (I know John made mention of them in the response) of the premarital sex issue than the one I heard growing up. Thanks.
Or, how about Exodus 21:7-11. A man could have a female slave (specifically *not* a wife), but “If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights.” (v10). So, even under Moses it was at least not unheard of for a man and a woman to live together without being married (but, by implication, having sex – if the slave was entitled to marital rights when the man eventually married, I’m guessing she would have been expected to do more than just cook and clean…). There is also an OT story of the Levite and his concubine. This was in the days of women being treated as property. In the modern era, when women are legally independent – surely they can make up their own minds?
God-honoring sexual ethics is more about acting with integrity and not dishonoring one another (through deception, cheating, false promises, etc) than about ‘putting a ring on it’ (which is in itself no guarantee of fidelity, etc). Can it be good to wait until marriage, to stay together until death? Well, of course (it’s working pretty well for me, so far) – but people need to be free to choose what’s good for them. If both parties are in honest agreement about the status of the relationship, then what business is it of anyone else? The guy is 25, not 15 – his mother needs to mind her own business and stop her manipulative tactics…
not really wondering,
Esther 2:16-17. Ten months of cohabitation and a night of premarital sex so good he marries her immediately. Of course, the young man above doesn’t *have* to keep a second house for his concubines. And I really hope he doesn’t wage war against his girlfriend. She’d be a prophet and feminist icon and he’d… still live in the twenty-first century. My cat is named Esther. That’s as pertinent as yours. Fetch me a verse.
I don’t see anything wrong with it…I think it’s good to live together before getting married. You start to become a bit closer to the person if you really love them, and plus you are thinking about marrying them, so….You obviously have to get used to living together if you’re going to put up with all of their crap.
DD Have to see if you really want to spend that time with them in marriage, and you have to know how to fix the problems you both come across in that time of living together before marriage. If you can’t solve them/deal with them as a couple or come to some kind of peace, then I don’t think the marriage is really worth it.
SG and I lived together approximately four months, but it was what you said to me, John, that helped me understand that an intimate relationship was a big enough deal to warrant a more formal commitment.
Sinfulness aside, I have mixed feelings about living together.
It’s a good idea: You should know what it is like to live together, day in and day out, with that person. You need to know whether you can share all of the same personal space. How much their nasty habits oog you out. Whether you can divide chores fairly. You will never, ever know this unless you live with this person.
It’s a bad idea: You can remain the relationship far longer than you should out of sheer inertia. You share a year lease on the place, moving is a pain, finding a new place is a hassle, and all that.
And as for what Robert Morwell said above, “I frequently ask co-habiting couples why they want to get married…why not just keep living together?”
I think there are different levels of trusting another person and being invested in a relationship, and different people hit those levels at different times. There is emotional intimacy, and there is sex. There is living one’s life together in a shared household, and there is combining one’s finances and operating as a single economic unit. There is having children, and planning a shared future.
For me, marriage marks the first point when you operate as a single economic unit, plan a shared future, and feel ready for children. For others, marriage includes all of those things, plus sex and a shared household. On the other hand, I knew of a couple who married, maintained separate households, and raised several kids together that way. Some people marry and never have sex.
So, marriage is what you make of it. Any of those definitions is fine, I think, as long as you and your significant other both wholeheartedly agree on what you want at that time, and how you view marriage.
In case anyone cares (and hasn’t read it before) here’s a short thing about my wife Cat and I on the morning following the day of our wedding–which came after some three years of our living together.
The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives
I loved this one. You and Cat give me hope for the institution of marriage. Yours is just so… cool. The comment thread is also classic.
Ditto. Gotta love a pair of people who flip the world the bird and keep on loving.
Man, if you two couldn’t BE any cuter?! Holy cats. (Is that a touch of Elvis in that smile?)
« 1 2