Some time ago I wrote a post highlighting an article I had read titled, “Five Non-Religious Arguments for Marriage over Living Together“.  I found it an interesting article because it so often the whole argument for not living together tends to be focused more on a religious or moral basis and the author posted some more practical reasons as well.

This week I received an email from an individual who contacted me after reading this article with a question of their own and I asked and obtained her permission to post her question here.  I’ll post my response later this week but thought I’d check out how some of my readers might respond.  So where would you draw the line?  What’s your response?

I am not asking you to approve of my situation but I wanted to ask you a question as a religious leader out of curiosity. I was wondering if the biblical stance on living together is primarily based on the fear of a sexual relationship out of wedlock or if living with someone and not having sex was also violating religious text?

My fiance and I have been a couple for 9 years and we are waiting to have sex until marriage. We were not planning to live together before marriage but I was abroad for a year as part of my job and had to return suddenly when the friend I was with fell seriously ill in a different country…. she almost died. When she was well enough to travel we returned home. Physically she made a complete recovery but we were both emotionally drained. I had to leave my job abroad and had no income, my fiance and I knew we were going to get married within the year, we had a date set. It didn’t make a lot of sense economically for me to have my own place and living with my parents again wasn’t an option.

Since living together we have maintained our promise to wait for sex. I am not saying our lifestyle is right. It wouldn’t work for everyone but I felt it was the best option for us. We were not putting off marrage, our long relationship is due to the fact that we got together when we were only 16 and wanted to finish school, travel some and develop the maturity to enter into marriage fully aware of the commitment we were making. As I said I am not defending my lifestyle, just trying to explain where I am coming from. So again is there any biblical passage that goes against living together before marriage without sex being the concern?

[Photo from 10ch]

Another problem with talking about living together before marriage is that (for the most part) we preachers (and many others who disagree with it!) approach the whole subject from a negative direction rather than positive. In other words, we spend more time talking about why living together before marriage is bad instead of emphasizing why getting married first is good. Anyway, I said all that to introduce this article I came across in my reading that is a good approach on the subject. In it Dennis Prager briefly outlines five good non-religious arguments for why marriage is better than living together. Some very wise words are written in this article and I’ll definitely add this to my file of articles I’ll give couples that I counsel in the future!