How To Figure Out If You Should Marry Your Boyfriend Without Moving In Together

In 2022, a couple moving in together before being married or engaged is relatively common. One study found that 60% of adults in the United States have cohabited with a significant other before. The thought process behind moving in together before saying “I do” isn’t hard to follow. Aside from it being financially beneficial, many couples see living together as a “trial run” for marriage – they see sharing a lease and a bathroom as a test for how strong their relationship is, and if being married would even work out.

With the depressingly high divorce rates, it’s understandable that couples would want to test out the durability of their relationship by cohabitating before signing a marriage certificate and making everything official. And while for some couples, this arrangement works out and leads to a lasting marriage, the reality is that couples who cohabitate before getting married actually have a higher risk of getting divorced down the line.

But still, the desire to make sure we aren’t making a mistake by getting married doesn’t disappear. We still need to know if the guy we’re dating is husband material. So how can we figure out if our boyfriend is the man we want to marry without moving in with him?

Ask Yourself If Your Desires and Values Align

We can get along famously with someone, be attracted to them, and love them – these are all things to look for in a future husband, important aspects for a lasting relationship to have. But even if he checks off these boxes, if we don’t align on our desires and values, a marriage won’t work.

Our desires – what we want out of life, where we see ourselves living, whether or not we want to have children, what kind of work we want to do – have to line up with what he wants too. And our values – the standards and ideals we live by, the beliefs we hold – are perhaps the most important thing to agree on, as they directly affect how we see the world, live each day, and raise our future children. If we don’t share the same basic values, we’ll have a difficult time respecting one another’s point of view or even making some big decisions together.

We need to be able to have healthy conflict that resolves through communication and compromise.

Allow Conflict

We think of conflict as the kiss of death for any relationship; we worry that as soon as we start having disagreements, the veil will be lifted, and we’ll suddenly no longer have fuzzy feelings for one another. So it’s tempting to avoid conflict altogether, but the reality is that conflict is a part of life and marriage.

In order to assess if our boyfriend is someone we could marry, we have to know how he handles conflict and whether we feel we’re able to have healthy conflict with him that resolves through communication and compromise, or if our disagreements with him always devolve into screaming matches. Obviously, testing him by initiating fights isn’t a good course of action, but if we see a disagreement on the horizon, we shouldn’t run away from it. This is a good moment to see what being a married couple would be like.

Introduce Each Other to Your Friends and Families

You can tell a lot about a guy by taking a look at the people in his life – namely, his friends and family. His friends will show us what he values in his company; so whether his friends are immature party boys or kind-hearted good guys, we can gauge what kind of guy he is by how he fills his inner circle. His family will offer us a deeper look at the dynamics he was raised with and how he might treat a future family of his own. Was he raised seeing what a married couple in love looked like, or two people who couldn’t stand each other? Was he raised to be close with his siblings, or can he take them or leave them? Not to mention, once we’re married, his family and his friends will be in our life for good (or bad).

The flip side of this is introducing him to our own family and friend group. How does he treat them? What do they all think of him, as people who aren’t emotionally involved? Could we see him getting along with our loved ones, or do we see there always being conflict?

See If You Like Who You Are with Him

The man we marry should bring out the best of who we are. He should help enhance our best qualities, and challenge us to outgrow our unsavory ones. He should encourage us to be honest with ourselves, and use kind, loving words that don’t demean. We should like who we are when we’re with him.

We have to ask ourselves, before we can think about marrying our boyfriend, if he encourages the best parts of ourselves, or if he hinders them – because if we get married, this will only become more compounded. 

The man we marry should bring out the best of who we are. 

Take a Trip Together

Traveling is relatively stressful for most of us. First, there’s the planning – figuring out where you’re going and when and how you’re going to get there and what you’re going to do can create many opportunities for conflict, voicing your needs and wants, and compromise. Then, there are a million things to keep track of, a schedule to keep, issues that will pop up, and annoying wrenches that can get thrown in the works. This will naturally show us what he’s like under pressure.

A marriage will have countless stressful moments that we have to be able to work through with our spouse, from buying a house together to running into financial issues to handling a toddler or a teenager throwing a tantrum. Seeing how he acts over the course of a trip will give us a good idea of if we can see ourselves handling stresses with him by our side for years to come.

Try Couples Therapy

While this isn’t within everyone’s budget, and it feels like something only engaged or married couples would do, if we’re truly thinking about spending the rest of our life with this man, why wouldn’t we want to cover every base?

Couples therapy isn’t just for couples who are constantly at each other’s throats, either. At its best, it’s an incredibly helpful tool that will improve our communication and understanding of one another, and help to make us feel closer. It can also bring our attention to any underlying issues that would’ve taken us by surprise after getting married.

Closing Thoughts

Moving in together isn’t necessary in order to figure out if we want to marry someone – in fact, it’s not even always the best option. Instead, we can assess whether or not we could see ourselves spending the rest of our life with someone by taking our shared or unshared values into consideration, looking at family dynamics, and experiencing conflict with them.

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