How long did you know your spouse - partner before you married/moved in together?

[Todd&Copper]

Dated for 2.5 years before getting engaged & moving in together. [He knew he wanted to ask me to marry him for a while, but waited until I was finished with law school and by that time he had saved up and got me a great engagement ring]. Lived together for 2 years before getting married. Married for 7 years this past May.

 

[belle&beast]

Met DH on a blind date July 1998.
Engaged January 1999.
Married and moved in January 2000.

 

[justcantwait]

Met in Feb., he was a wrong number. He moved in April, proposed in May, we were married in Sept. It'll be 11 years in a few more weeks.

 

[Jen_in_NH]

I worked with my husband for about 3 years before we started dating. We dated for a year before we got married. We moved in together about a month before the wedding.

Jen

 

[Kitty 34]

We married 4 years after we started dating.

 

[sdarwkcabemanmy]

We started dating a few weeks before I turned 18 and were married when I was 20 1/2 and he was 23 1/2.

We had dated for about six months or so when my grandmother started pestering me about whether or not he was serious about marrying me. She didn't believe in long courtships and said if we didn't get married within the next year or so, to call it off completely.

 

[Snowy-girls]

Met in November,he moved in with me the following May,found out i was pregnant in the June(same year),got engaged on my birthday in Nov(same year).Had dd in April,got married in the Aug.We now have 2 girls and have been married 7 years next month.x.

 

[Minnesota!]

Met DH July 1993
Started dating 8/5/93 (we were both 15)
Got engaged 2/5/99
Moved in together 6/1/99
Got married 9/16/2000

I will advise my kids to live with someone before they get married.

 

[sdarwkcabemanmy]

Just out of curiosity, why?

I think that DH and I might have lived together before we were married had it not been for our parents. If my mother hadn't shot us both, his mom would have.

 

[SC Minnie]

We didn't live together until after we were married. We dated for 1 year and was engaged for a year.

 

[DevilDuckie]

We moved in together in under a year but celebrated our "five years together" anniversary flying home from our honeymoon.

 

[4greatboys]

We dated 2 yrs before he moved in with me then we lived together for 2 more years before we got married. We have now been together 13 years (married 9).

 

[Chim Chiminy]

Voted other.

We met in April, moved in together the beginning of June and married the following January. Been married 15 years now with two kids.

 

[suzimar57]

knew DH about 1 year before we (me and DS) moved in - for that prior year, was commuting between old job and DS school - got married in las vegas 2 years to the day of our first date (an alice cooper concert at PNC!)

 

[wic0721]

My hubby and I dated for 6 months, then moved in together. We got married 6 years later. During those 6 years we bought an apartment building, had a baby, and bought a single family home....then we got married!

 

[kellig]

High school sweethearts ...waited eleven years to get married. During this time we graduated high school and college and got settled into our careers. We had DD one month after our 1st anniversary. Not quite in the plan, but wouldn't change a thing about it all!

 

[SharpMomOfTwo]

I think I moved in with DH after about 4-5 months. Then we bought a house together (about a year after that), and then 6 months after that we were married.

 

[disney4us2002]

Well.. everyone's experience is different. Our parents didn't "give" us our wedding. We were adult enough to get married, and we were adult enough to pay for it ourselves. We also wouldn't have given much credence to parental objections of "shacking up" as both sets of our parents lived together before they got married. To insist that we didn't would've been pretty hypocritical.

Personally, I'd never marry someone without living with them first. You don't buy a car without a test drive, right?

I didn't mean to ruffle anyone's feathers. I was clearly brought up with a different set of morals - first marriage, then live together, then babies. YMMV. I wouldn't change a thing and I hope I've raised my sons to believe in that sequence as well. Kinda think something must be right as we don't have any divorces on either dh's or my side of the family.

 

[Mickey&Donald]

I didn't mean to ruffle anyone's feathers. I was clearly brought up with a different set of morals - first marriage, then live together, then babies. YMMV. I wouldn't change a thing and I hope I've raised my sons to believe in that sequence as well. Kinda think something must be right as we don't have any divorces on either dh's or my side of the family.

Huh. I didn't realize my "morals" were so questionable.

Personally, I'm a little more concerned with personal ethics than someone's idea of morality, but that's just me.

No divorces is great -- but it doesn't necessarily mean that all of those marriages are wonderful. Avoiding separation or divorce because of moral laws isn't always a good thing.

 

[EMom]

I didn't mean to ruffle anyone's feathers. I was clearly brought up with a different set of morals - first marriage, then live together, then babies. YMMV. I wouldn't change a thing and I hope I've raised my sons to believe in that sequence as well. Kinda think something must be right as we don't have any divorces on either dh's or my side of the family.

Met DH one spring at college and got to know him a bit, but he went home for the summer. As soon as classes started that fall, we began dating and that was IT. We dated for 2.5 years before we married. (Later, we both confessed that each of us knew within a few weeks that we wanted to marry each other, but kept mum in case we scared the other one off so early in the relationship. I'd dated a lot and recognized a keeper when I saw one.) No "test drive" was necessary or wanted, since neither of us believed in living together before marriage. It just wasn't for us. We dated long enough to figure out our morals, beliefs, goals, temperments, etc. were well-matched and would keep us together a lifetime. Two decades later, we're still happily married.