Practically speaking, if you and your beloved live together first, that can be a good indication of what it will be like when you are married. You learn as much about yourself as you do about the other person when you live with them. Being with each other every day will teach you both what you individually need to balance yourself as well as teach you the things you need together. Marriage just furthers all this legally and financially.

Now some men feel differently about a wife than they do about a girlfriend, live in girlfriend or not. My husband and I were together for 3 years before we got married and lived together for 2 years of that. After we got married he got bossier and he quit doing domestic duties because he felt that since he was my husband now that meant he was the head of household. And since I was his wife now that meant I was responsible for all the domestic work. You could have knocked me over with a feather. We talked it out and he made some adjustments in his views on husband and wife responsibilities. To some extent I did too. So even if you live together, really discuss in detail what being married would mean for your relationship, what are the roles and responsibilities for each of you and how you both can be flexible and adaptable to changes in those roles and responsibilities.

And no he wasn’t all, Hey you’re my wife now, clean the bathroom. What he did was he stopped cleaning the bathroom. He stopped picking up after himself. He stopped doing housework. When I was like WTF?? his reasoning was well we’re married now. Although knowing me he should have known better, but since I come from a background of married parents in traditional roles he just assumed I felt the same way as he did about traditional roles in a marriage. Oh yes, best believe we learned our lesson from that and have tried real hard not assume anything about what the other ‘should’ be doing because they are the husband or the wife.

Some things I did that caused friction was to assume that my husband would be the primary financial provider. So I would quit jobs whenever I felt like it or splurge money instead of paying bills because after all, I had a husband now. Yes, I do feel that a man should provide for his wife and children, and my husband feels this. My husband has always done this, to the point of working 3 jobs when he was in college getting his first degree, but my mistake was in assuming this and in not doing my part to lessen the hardship of supporting a family of 5 while you are also a full-time student.

It’s hard to anticipate what is going to cause friction if you assume that your spouse or spouse to be is thinking the same way you do or understands how you feel. Assume nothing, talk everything as much as you can think of out before hand.

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