It’s a personal decision, but I wouldn’t nor would I recommend to anyone as a single parent to move in with someone else in a romantic relationship. Kids quickly become attached. I assume that you two are proposing to live together, because you’re not quite sure that you want to get married yet, and this would be sort of trial run. Even your kids say they understand, they don’t. If they move into the same place as your boyfriend, he will now be their father figure in their lives. If you two call it quits in a year or two, it’s like losing their dad.
I personally wouldn’t put my kids through that risk.
Given that children are involved, moving at any time before you’re absolutely certain it will be permanent is vastly irresponsible. I vote to wait until marriage, or at least until several months into your engagement. Absolutely not before becoming engaged, unless you mutually decide you never want to get married (at which point, I’d recommend no less than a year from when that decision is made).
I am just thinking back to how unstable my mother was when I was in that age range. I know you said you’ve never lived with anybody, either, so for you to learn to get along with another adult in your space is going to be an ever huger adjustment than it is for most people. Don’t do it right now. I know you don’t think you’re unstable, and maybe you’re not. But my mom didn’t think she was unstable, either.
My feelings on this issue would be less inflexible if you planned to keep your current home or apartment until the marriage, just in case things don’t work out. But if you’re planning to combine households and get rid of your old place to save money, it’s very very bad unless you are as absolutely certain of something as it is possible for a human to be… 6 months, in comparison to the rest of your life, is nothing. You don’t want to risk that things go badly with this guy and he issues you an ultimatum to get out within 30 days, because you have kids (if it was just you, I’d say go for it, but it isn’t). You don’t want to have to be scrambling physically and financially to find a new place, on top of the emotional upset that accompanies the end of a romantic relationship.
Your kids may be all gung-ho to move in with this guy and his kids when you talk to them, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best decision. You have to be surer than sure, and that usually means marriage is either imminent or has already happened.
Of course my child is my main worry, and I want to be “surer than sure”. If things went to hell in the relationship I would financially be able to part ways, but of course that would mean having to find a place to live and move.
I hesitated to voice my opinion here, because I know my old-fashioned views on relationships aren’t terribly popular. (And because I’ve never actually lived with a man, so I’m not exactly speaking from experience.)
But I’ve gotta ask, why aren’t you getting married yet? Why do you feel ready to move in together but not to get married? I know some people like to view moving in together as a trial period, but if you have other reservations besides this than I don’t think it’s a good idea to move in together. Prior to moving in together, you have a relatively quick and easy exit should things go south, but once you move in together, you’ve made it a lot more complicated to extricate yourself from the situation.
A two week vacation with our schedules and children is not possible! Tempting though.
I’m more old fashioned as well, but I didn’t exactly go about life the way I was supposed to to begin with. I had a child out of wedlock and have been a single mother the whole time; he got divorced a few years ago and is a “single” father. I think tradition was thrown out the window a long time ago! I do, however, lean more toward marriage first. The moving in together is something we’ve discussed, as well as marriage and the possibility of more children.
I’ve been a single mother for 13 years, and I’ve always put the kibosh on living with men during this time. I realize that I’m more old-fashioned than most, as well, but it just seems to me that there’s very little benefit to living with someone without the rights that marriage confers, and a lot of risk. And that’s on top of the risk that you’ll break up and the child(ren) will be affected. Of course, that can happen if you marry, too, but chances are you’ll work harder to keep a marriage together than you will a live-in relationship. It just seems too iffy and unstable a situation to have my child in, but maybe it’s just me being old-fashioned.
Do you have any friends or relatives that had parents that lived with people as they were growing up? Maybe you could poll them to see how they were affected by those relationships.
Considering there are kids involved, you shouldn’t move in together until you’re married. I’d feel the same way if there weren’t kids involved, but that you’re dragging kids into it makes me feel that much more strongly about it.
See Bringitinbro? I’m actually looking more liberal than most!
I have to reiterate that even in these ‘enlightened’ times that one shouldn’t move in together with kids unless marriage is the intent. I’m not going so far as to say you have to BE married, but marriage should be the intent and that implies engagement.
I agree with those saying you shouldn’t do it at all if there isn’t at least a wedding date set if kids are involved. 11 and 9 is when the kids are at about their most vulnerable when it comes to their parent’s relationship choices. It often doesn’t go well for reasons that are outside of any one person’s control and the kids become the victims of it often in a repeating cycle. 100% irresponsible parenting idea.
This is not something that’s being planned, it has just been discussed. I personally feel like we should be on the verge of marriage before moving in, but I wasn’t sure if that was my “old fashioned” ways leading me on. I see that my fuddy duddy values are being validated, and that’s really reassuring!
Let me reiterate that I’ve never lived with anyone besides myself, so this whole concept is very new to me.
Ideally, you shouldn’t move in together until you are 100% sure of what it will be like after you move in together. Since this isn’t possible, I suggest just skipping the idea altogether. It’s just safer that way!
Quoted for truth. It’s a bit of a stereotype, but guys are usually thinking the former and girls are usually thinking the latter. And once you move in, especially if you live in a big city where rent is expensive, it’s REALLY difficult to extricate yourself.
My boyfriend and I moved in together about 6 months after we met. Things have turned out great, but in hindsight it was a bit rash.
I agree with the majority view to be extremely cautious about moving in without being engaged (since there are kids).
My biggest question is how are the two parenting styles? Moving in together isn’t just sharing bills and whatnot, but also parenting. If you guys each have different strategies, philosophies and rules, how are you going to work it out so the kids don’t get confused or resentful? One set of rules for one kid and a different set for the other really sounds like a recipe for disaster.
What about each other’s authority over the other’s kid? Would he be able to punish (etc) your kid and vice versa, or is final say always with the parent? Where do you draw the line? And if you guys keep parenting separate, how would you change that (which I’d hope you would!) if you got married?
We’d been in a long-distance relationship for … a year, give or take, depending on what you count from. There has been no time that we were living in the same state but different homes*. That might have gone wrong (even relative to the possibility of that in any relationship), but that was in 2005, so it seems to be working out so far.
*Including before we got together
One thing that I’m curious about is what is the biggest fight that you two have had and how did you get over it? It isn’t uncommon to be able to maintain a nice, smooth relationship for several months, but until you two have some sort of dispute (and learn how each handles it) you won’t really know how compatible you are.
My friend moved in with a guy and she thought he was wonderful… they NEVER fought. Well, finally something caused them to actually fight. And, boy, did he turn out to be a horrible hateful person. She would never have imagined he could be so awful because he’d kept it hidden until they were living together and he thought the deal was ‘locked on’.
Mind you he wasn’t abusive (in a way that law enforcement would be concerned), he just turned out to be a mean, spiteful, childish SOB that had to have his own way. After that fight, she definitely viewed him in a different light and was no longer infatuated with him.
My wife and I are still on our first date. We got to feeling guilty and married for the sake of our son (not mine geneticly) about three months in but we have never lived seperate since we went out thirty years ago.
