No, It's Not Wise to Live With Your Boyfriend Before Marriage
There's a famous Dennis Miller rant in the romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas where the actor is playing a judge lecturing Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. Disgusted by their flippant treatment of divorce laws, Miller unleashes: "Gay people aren't destroying the sanctity of marriage. You people are."
He's not wrong. I've long contended that the institution was obliterated well before the LGBT lobby aggressively assaulted all defining moral boundaries for what constitutes marriage.
No fault divorce, cohabitation, serial monogamy ("a spouse for every season") is what has killed marriage in the United States. So-called "gay marriage" just mocks its tattered remains.
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Our failure in defending the sanctity of the marriage has been either our inability or our unwillingness to acknowledge the source of the problem: narcissistic self-obsession. Our selfishness is what has led to the obliteration of society's most significant foundational relationship.
A perfect example of what I mean comes from an article recently forwarded to me by a friend. The piece, entitled "It's Okay to Live with Your Boyfriend Before Marriage," comes from the pop culture site Odyssey Online and was written by a young woman named Kylee Wilson. Since its publication last summer it has been read, shared, and affirmed by hundreds of thousands of people. And it's a moral and intellectual train wreck from beginning to end.
As a general rule, when you are working overtime to justify a behavior ...
1. "I guess I stole that stuff from the office, but if they paid me what they should, I wouldn't have had to."
2. "Yeah I punched him, but did you hear what he said to me?"
3. "Okay so I had a cheat sheet, but I was with my brother at the hospital all night, so I didn't have a chance to study."
... it's usually a pretty good sign that you know you're doing something wrong.
And that is how Kylee's entire article reads — like an immature kid who is desperate to convince the grown-ups of the world that what she's doing is okay. Unsurprisingly, it starts falling apart from the very beginning where she attempts to justify her actions on the basis that her parents "trust her."
She writes:
"[M]y parents trust me. Can you believe it? They raised me well enough to be up front and honest with them. So much so that when I first told my parents I was moving in with him, they took me to dinner to celebrate. They wanted me to have an experience I genuinely needed."
This isn't moral justification. It's merely evidence that her parents lack wisdom. Simply replace the morally questionable behavior to grasp this fairly simple concept. Change the behavior from pre-marital cohabitation to theft and suppose that Kylee bragged that her parents took her out to dinner to celebrate the fact that she was honest with them about stealing. Does that morally justify the theft? No, it means she's got clueless or cowardly parents.
But what really stood out at me in her opening argument was the last word she used: "needed." She "needed" this experience. This obviously begs the question why? Here's her melodramatic answer:
"Before living with my boyfriend, I didn't realize how each paycheck I had would end up going towards gas, food and vet bills. I was so used to my parents handing me everything that it shocked me when I looked down to an empty fridge, an empty wallet ... After a few months of tears, therapy sessions and mental breakdowns in the middle of the night, I realized I wasn't a kid anymore. Even though I knew I would still be relying on my parents in some way, I had to get it through my stubborn mind that it wasn't all about me anymore."
If anything, Kylee's testimony reveals a young woman who has failed to achieve any rational, reasonable standard of social maturity. Her own words betray a young lady who has never achieved a sense of personal autonomy and independence, jumping straight from a concerning parental dependence into a relational dependence. Meaning the last thing Kylee "needed" was to start living with her boyfriend right after living with her parents.
So why did she? Forget all the psychological explanations; you don't need a degree or any practice with case studies to answer that question. She started living with her boyfriend because it's what she wanted to do. Got that? It's what she wanted. Now contrast that with the last line of that passage above where she claims she had to learn it wasn't all about her anymore.
She may have deluded herself into believing that playing house with her boyfriend wasn't a selfish decision, but in actuality that is all it was. It wasn't to help him. It wasn't to help her parents. It wasn't to sacrifice for another. It wasn't about committing to serve her partner in marriage. It was a try-out for him to see whether he was what she wanted. Kylee inadvertently admits this at the end of her piece when she offers what she thinks is the most compelling moral defense of her decision: "And I'm happy!"
That's exactly what cohabitation before marriage is predicated upon. It smacks of a consumerist attitude that humans take towards other humans. In unguarded moments you'll hear this line of defense for the behavior actually offered by seemingly rational people: "Well, you'd test drive a car before you bought it, wouldn't you? How much more important is a spouse?"
You've got to be kidding. If you were wondering what killed marriage in America, there it is. We don't even understand what marriage is supposed to be. Yes, I test drive a car because I am picking out something to serve me. I want to know that the seats are comfortable, that the gear shift doesn't get in my way, that the steering wheel is at the right height, that the car has enough pick-up at the intersection, and a million other personal preferences that I want my car to meet.
That isn't the way marriage is supposed to work. Marrying someone isn't about finding the perfect person who will satisfy you, serve you, make you laugh, cheer you up, entertain you, please you sexually, and put up with you. It's about finding someone that you want to commit to satisfying and serving regardless of circumstance. You don't need a test-run to make that work. You need a mature understanding of love and commitment. If you are defending your desire for the former, you unquestionably lack the latter.
Jesus tells us that, "unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain."
While Jesus is telling us that the secret to happy marriage is dying to self, our nation of Kylees has become enamored with the self-serving temptations of pre-marital cohabitation. The consequences of our choice are self-evident.
