Two Day Magazine

The Relationship Test Drive

You wouldn’t buy a car without ever test driving it, would you?  Of course not, so why then would you wait until after you say, “I do,” to see whether or not you are able to domestically tolerate the person that you are now living with?  I tell you what, if my grandparents would have had the chance to live together before they got married, they would have saved themselves fifty plus years of silent, probably sexless, resentful cohabitation. 

In my opinion, and I cannot stress enough that this is my opinion, the reason that so many relationships fail after living together is that all of the little things that annoyed you about your partner are now front and center in your life every day; you no longer have the option to go back to your place if you need to have some alone time. His place is your place and your place is his place, you are no longer living in the singular. 

People say, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

Even though that phrase is viciously maudlin, the principle can be applied to living together.  The small differences are called small for a reason.  Whether he leaves the seat up, or she clips her toenails in bed, shouldn’t have you heading for the hills.  Granted, if she is smoking crystal meth or he likes to get drunk on Pabst and shoot up the living room, then you may actually have a real problem.  If you turn small things into big things, you can be sure that it’s not the toenail clippings that make you not want to be with this person.  It is simply a precursor to some much bigger problem that you need to be grown up about and honestly face.

In today’s society, it seems that more couples are living together out of wedlock.  You may even know those who have lived with multiple partners; you could be one, yourself.  To me, this trend of living together before marriage and even in my case having lived with two girlfriends in college, the so called, ‘college marriage’, has become an important step in learning how to be in a committed relationship; you may even consider it the minor leagues of marriage.  Sure, there are many who consider cohabitating before marriage to be “living in sin”; our parents and grandparents never had the socially acceptable option of living together before marriage, but that was a different time, a different era of moralistic and non-secular beliefs. 

Many of our elder relatives prescribed to the notion that, no matter what, no matter how bad it gets, we will never divorce. Marriage to them was a sacrament, something holy.  Today, marriage is looked at as the next logical step in a relationship, and when you put marriage into those terms, it becomes more of a business merger than a merging of love.  I’m not saying that marriage has become cold and systemic; I am just saying that there is much more on the line these days when it comes to the success or failure of a marriage.

So, if you are living with your partner, thinking about moving in together, or even on the horizon of a break-up, always keep in the back of your mind that small things can always be overcome. Compromise is the key, sharing your life and home with someone can be one of the greatest life experiences you can have, and sharing a life and home with someone can also make you realize that your partner and you are not right for one another.  If the latter is the case, don’t think that you failed; it is better to think that you and your partner tried and succeeded at making each other better for the ‘one’ that is just a little down the road.