It Might Be a Mistake to Live Together Before Getting Married
Take a look at me. Once I get home and jump into bed, my eyes would not flutter until the next morning. If I sleep that much just because of tiredness from my job, then I wonder what it would be like, to come home tired and spend the rest of the night banging.
I bet, before the end of the month, my file with the admin department, would be bursting at the seam with queries. I would not only go late to the office but would probably need fire-fighters to wake me.
And that is why I respect live-in lovers. When I dated, I dreaded spending a night with my man. I always feared he might see the opportunity as one to whack me left, centre and forward! Imagine going home with a sore honey pot. If you guys have been doing it once, don’t be surprised if he wants to go for three rounds. I can feel goose pimples over my body as I imagined how long the night would be.
Living together with a lover is not funny at all! Though many feel it’s the height of life. Many call it trial marriage.
They fooled themselves that they want to know what it would be like to be married to their spouse. I remember a babe in my compound that suddenly got it into her stupid head to move out of her elder brother’s room, right into that of her lover’s, who, also incidentally, stays in the same compound. She could not be up to 22. Before long, she had started loosing weight. I can guess why! It’s not easy, I tell you!
The number of couples living together is on the increase. I want to believe that it will continue despite the hue and cry about HIV and falling moral pervading our society. Many claimed to go into it for a test run of compatibility. But how many couples that had lived together actually got married later to each other? I have a girl friend, who had once lived with two men at different times of her life. And today, we are both still single! There goes the failure of the trial marriage.
Personally, I have a strong moral and religious beliefs against living together with a man before marriage. As a rule, I don’t like telling lies, but if I’m dating a guy and he asked me to come over to his apartment to spend the night, I always quickly tell him that I have to set good examples for my younger ones who are staying with me. Why hurt his feelings or ego by telling him you’re scared he might scare or injure you with his sugar stick?
Let’s face it, I hate the idea that he might just be taking me for a ride. Imagine playing “mama and papa” roles in bed at every given hour of the day, coupled with doing his cooking and laundry and he would one day look for a flimsy reason to give me a walk-out order probably because a new face has come to the neighbourhood. Ladies do the same to men too. Live with him, probably milk him dry and later walk out, claim too bad, it didn’t work out.
The trouble with trial marriages is that both of you know in your heart, you’re only dating. Dating tends to be a little bit artificial. Both of you are walking on eggshell. Trying to make sure you don’t rub each the wrong way. So that he/she will fall for you. But marriage is for real! With marriage, you have to show and display the real you. If it is not marriage, it can never be real. No matter how long you both live together. For one thing, you would never take it serious, nor give it your best shot. In marriage, you need tolerance, patience, compromise, a stroke of luck and above all, the divine hands of God.
Have you ever asked yourself why you prefer to live with your spouse rather than go for outright marriage? It’s probably because you are not sure of your feelings for each other. It could also be because you’re not ready for commitment. You want a phoney marriage without ties. So easy for you to walk out if you get bored.
There’s no way to know what married life is all about unless you are truly married. With dating, you are both like under a test. Once either of you makes a mistake, everything is allowed to flounder and grind to a halt. But this is not so with marriage. In marriage, you would both stick it out together, no matter the odds.
Once you start dating, try as much as possible to be yourself. Build on your compatibility rather than testing it.
There’s no way you could ever run a trial marriage. Once you get married, always treat each other with love and respect, especially in the issue of decision making. Don’t ever think your wife/hubby can’t leave or walk out on you because you guys are married.
What if she becomes pregnant? Have you ever thought of that before romancing with the idea of living together? Perhaps you’re already carried away with the imagination of endless banging that would be yours during the nights. Living together like that, pregnancy is bound to occur, especially if the couples are not condom-compliant. Once the pregnancy comes, either one of you would start feeling trapped. I tell you, the worst that could happen to any relationship whether testing running or not, is for an unwanted pregnancy to make an entrance.
Did I tell you about my friend Rose? She was in the university and met this great guy, who she had immediately started living with. According to her, the guy wanted to marry her but she was not ready for marriage. The guy wanted the marriage before her graduation but she wanted it after graduation and a job. But she still continued living with him, until she got pregnant. Then all hell broke loose. She wanted an abortion but the man wanted an immediate wedding. It was so tough that he wouldn’t even allow her go out alone for fear she might buy some off-the-counter laxatives. It was a tense situation that started breeding pockets of quarrel until Rose secretly bolted from the guy’s home.
If you visit Ajegunle, you would find many couples, unmarried, living together. It has become a fad. It becomes more difficult; if one of you gets tired of the other but still hangs on for fear of hurting the other. Many would want to continue to stick it out even when they are aware that they are simply sick and tired of their partners. Many start experiencing guilty complex. They feel indebted and want to marry their live-in partner.
Whatever you do, don’t marry out of compassion or pity. And don’t fool each other that you guys are living together because you want to see how well you and your partner can get on after wedding. You’re probably living together because you both enjoy a douse of good sex. Living together would not make you have a successful marriage in life, neither would it make you have a failed one. The chances are 50-50. It is one thing to spend a weekend with your spouse and it is quite another to start living together. I remembered a lady who lived with a man for more than 10 years in trying out what a married life would be like.
She was in her forties before she realised the guy was not ready to play ball. The guy indeed had started making moves to marry a younger lady from his village and didn’t know how to break the news to our sister that it was all over. It was her friends who finally told her the bitter truth. She confronted the man. There was a horrible quarrel. She broke a lot of breakable things but it didn’t change the fact that she was in her forties. Neither did it change the fact that more than ten years of her life had been wasted on a whim and dream that lacked substance.
If there are adjustments to make in your relationship, make it so that it would work out. Put every effort into your relationship. Marry your spouse or forget about it. You both might be wasting each other’s time. You may just come home one day and discover that Sophia had made away with all your property and money. And this was after five years of living together. Think about it before you agree to the suggestion of living together. Ask yourself what the heck is wrong with visiting each other in your respective homes before your wedding day. Remember that sex does not run away!
