As they continued their journey,
he entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
[who] sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”
-Luke 10:38-42
My wife and I did not live together before we were married. In fact, we went through quite the geographical evolution.
We started dating while in college at the University of Notre Dame, where we saw each other frequently and where our dorms were but an 8-minute, half-mile walk apart. When I graduated, I moved overseas to Ireland, for a year of volunteer ministry in Wexford, Ireland; we now had an ocean, a five-hour time difference, and 3,637 miles between us. After my year in Ireland, I took a job in southern California at a high school while Katherine was a senior at Notre Dame, shrinking the time zone gap to three hours (the other way) and the crow-fly distance to 1,728 miles.
Finally, when Katherine graduated, we both headed to Chicago. Our apartments were now just a half mile away, and we definitely enjoyed and appreciated the proximity and convenience that we had gone without for so long. We could see each other semi-daily, cook together, lounge around together, and do the druthers and mundanity of daily life together.1
After I proposed and we inched ever closer to our wedding, it was clear to us that we didn’t want to live together before marriage. We valued the learning moments of communicating and deciding how to meet up, what to do, and how to spend time together, and we appreciated the continued opportunity to grow up, mature, and solidify our adult habits and disciplines as individuals. On weekends and when traveling, we would share a bed, but we were intentional about that nighttime privilege being about the intimacy and closeness of literally sleeping together, and nothing else.
So we ran into a problem when her lease ran out on June 1, and our wedding wasn’t until July 18. Suddenly, our plan to move into my apartment around the time of the wedding wasn’t so cut and dry. So here’s how it unfolded… My roommate had moved out early to snag a new apartment with his brother and cousin, so I had an extra room, which he would be on the hook for. My best friend, who had been sleeping on our couch occasionally and job-hunting, now had a job and wanted to sublet from us for a bit to get himself started. So, I vacated my bedroom for Katherine, packed a small amount of luggage, and moved myself 20 minutes south to a dorm room in the residence tower at my graduate school for one month.2 I’d cover June in the dorm and then crash on an air mattress for two weeks in my best friend’s new apartment, for which he took the lease on July 1.3
It was definitely odd doing my work commute to and from a different place. It was a bit odd to go “home” to hang out, cook, eat, etc. and then leave at the end of the night and drive down to an empty, strange dorm room - it was definitely frustrating to look for parking around there! It somehow just worked to let my best friend and fiancee share my apartment, and it wasn’t odd to reserve that total and complete combination of our lives - our finances, our daily schedules, our furniture and stuff - until we had vowed before God and the Church that we intended that totally and completely with the full good of our hearts for the rest of our lives.
For us, there was deep value in reserving the privileges of marriage for marriage, and in intentionally talking about and practicing in constrained doses the trappings of that impending family life. I think the progression of our relationship helped prepare us in a grounded way to openly, calmly, and humbly handle the disputes and challenges that arise within an ever deepening and serious relationship.
I have to say, I have not always thought this way. Among the many spirited discussions I had on my Camino pilgrimage with friends, I combatively wondered about why cohabitation is frowned upon. We concluded that, especially socially, there’s deep value in sustaining the fullness of one’s individual life - from social life to personal habits to adult responsibility - and having something personal to bring into the joint relationship, leading toward the full combination in marriage.
It’s interesting to point out that, as best as I can tell, there is no specific articulation in Church teaching saying that cohabitation is in and of itself explicitly wrong. The Catechism covers the breadth of marriage but does not directly forbid cohabitation. Various guides that I found certainly dissuade couples from living together, but they point out that cohabitation is not a canonical impediment to marriage. Rather, the teaching is a secondary application that follows from the primary immorality of premarital sex; the Church instructs us not to put ourselves in a position where the temptation to sin is significantly heightened, i.e. living with and sharing a bed with someone with whom you would be romantically and sexually involved.4
There are certainly appeals to living together before marriage - splitting the rent and bills, gaining ease in seeing each other, testing out the routines of daily life, learning the home habits of your significant other, etc. Each of these has a kernel of truth and healthy interest in them, but my impression is that cohabiting just adds an extra, unnecessary step in the development of a relationship that doesn’t need to be there.
For those that work with young people, perhaps you’ve heard of “talking”? It’s a new step in which two people who are romantically interested in each other communicate with each other, flirt, and maybe even hook up to explore the possibilities. This comes before dating and relationship-defining. The problem is that no group of young people has ever been able to explain why this step exists, what the parameters of it are, or, most importantly, whether or not it is exclusive (a much debated topic!).5 As a result, this new step creates new drama and new uncertainty that adds to an already harrowing social issue. It reminds me of the idea of a “promise ring” from past generations, which serious boyfriends would give to their girlfriend as a pledge of their future engagement and wedding; this idea of being engaged to be engaged doesn’t really make sense to me either.6
I don’t mean to poo-poo cohabitation altogether, but I think the corrective that is needed is greater caution and fuller awareness of the murkiness of this “step.” Younger couples, especially those in college or fresh out of it, would do better to live apart, sustain their own independent lives, and build their adulthood in parallel as they move toward the deeper waters of their serious relationship. However, I have to admit that with older adults, either by age or by maturity, there is a more comfortable context with which they can enter into this.
For adults that have established careers, stable finances, years of experience living on their own or with adult roommates, I think it’s possible to consider cohabitation responsibly. I think it needs to come with serious, extended discernment. I think it needs to come only with serious consideration of marriage and the intent to continue that discernment earnestly. And I think it comes best in the context of premarital counseling, where a couple continues to openly and intentionally reflect upon the growth of their relationship toward the intention of marriage.
Overall, I pray that people would approach their relationships and the deepening magnitude of them with greater caution and thoughtfulness. I feel that Mary and Martha, the great pair from Scripture, give us a gentle insight here. Mary is comfortable to sit at the feet of her friend and listen while Martha is preoccupied with the logistics of hosting and busies herself with tasks. Martha comes to Jesus to appeal for help with her “burdens,” and Jesus feels her busy-ness is anxiety and worry while Mary’s calm listening is “the better part.”
We would be well suited to recognize the times when action is needed, especially in a relationship, when a change is welcome, when logistics and structure can support us. We would also do well to recognize the times when action can wait and when we’d be better off slowing down, resting more easily, and listening more attentively. Most of the time, relationships would benefit from restrained urgency, from diligent dialogue, and from intentional discernment. I don’t know that cohabitation is a fundamentally, inherently sinful option, and there seems to be some limited contexts in which it can work. However, I do believe that living apart and dedicating a couple’s intentionality to the wider relationship and to individual growth that can be shared as the two move toward marriage is indeed the better part.
We started dating while in college at the University of Notre Dame, where we saw each other frequently and where our dorms were but an 8-minute, half-mile walk apart. When I graduated, I moved overseas to Ireland, for a year of volunteer ministry in Wexford, Ireland; we now had an ocean, a five-hour time difference, and 3,637 miles between us. After my year in Ireland, I took a job in southern California at a high school while Katherine was a senior at Notre Dame, shrinking the time zone gap to three hours (the other way) and the crow-fly distance to 1,728 miles.
Finally, when Katherine graduated, we both headed to Chicago. Our apartments were now just a half mile away, and we definitely enjoyed and appreciated the proximity and convenience that we had gone without for so long. We could see each other semi-daily, cook together, lounge around together, and do the druthers and mundanity of daily life together.1
After I proposed and we inched ever closer to our wedding, it was clear to us that we didn’t want to live together before marriage. We valued the learning moments of communicating and deciding how to meet up, what to do, and how to spend time together, and we appreciated the continued opportunity to grow up, mature, and solidify our adult habits and disciplines as individuals. On weekends and when traveling, we would share a bed, but we were intentional about that nighttime privilege being about the intimacy and closeness of literally sleeping together, and nothing else.
So we ran into a problem when her lease ran out on June 1, and our wedding wasn’t until July 18. Suddenly, our plan to move into my apartment around the time of the wedding wasn’t so cut and dry. So here’s how it unfolded… My roommate had moved out early to snag a new apartment with his brother and cousin, so I had an extra room, which he would be on the hook for. My best friend, who had been sleeping on our couch occasionally and job-hunting, now had a job and wanted to sublet from us for a bit to get himself started. So, I vacated my bedroom for Katherine, packed a small amount of luggage, and moved myself 20 minutes south to a dorm room in the residence tower at my graduate school for one month.2 I’d cover June in the dorm and then crash on an air mattress for two weeks in my best friend’s new apartment, for which he took the lease on July 1.3
It was definitely odd doing my work commute to and from a different place. It was a bit odd to go “home” to hang out, cook, eat, etc. and then leave at the end of the night and drive down to an empty, strange dorm room - it was definitely frustrating to look for parking around there! It somehow just worked to let my best friend and fiancee share my apartment, and it wasn’t odd to reserve that total and complete combination of our lives - our finances, our daily schedules, our furniture and stuff - until we had vowed before God and the Church that we intended that totally and completely with the full good of our hearts for the rest of our lives.
For us, there was deep value in reserving the privileges of marriage for marriage, and in intentionally talking about and practicing in constrained doses the trappings of that impending family life. I think the progression of our relationship helped prepare us in a grounded way to openly, calmly, and humbly handle the disputes and challenges that arise within an ever deepening and serious relationship.
I have to say, I have not always thought this way. Among the many spirited discussions I had on my Camino pilgrimage with friends, I combatively wondered about why cohabitation is frowned upon. We concluded that, especially socially, there’s deep value in sustaining the fullness of one’s individual life - from social life to personal habits to adult responsibility - and having something personal to bring into the joint relationship, leading toward the full combination in marriage.
It’s interesting to point out that, as best as I can tell, there is no specific articulation in Church teaching saying that cohabitation is in and of itself explicitly wrong. The Catechism covers the breadth of marriage but does not directly forbid cohabitation. Various guides that I found certainly dissuade couples from living together, but they point out that cohabitation is not a canonical impediment to marriage. Rather, the teaching is a secondary application that follows from the primary immorality of premarital sex; the Church instructs us not to put ourselves in a position where the temptation to sin is significantly heightened, i.e. living with and sharing a bed with someone with whom you would be romantically and sexually involved.4
There are certainly appeals to living together before marriage - splitting the rent and bills, gaining ease in seeing each other, testing out the routines of daily life, learning the home habits of your significant other, etc. Each of these has a kernel of truth and healthy interest in them, but my impression is that cohabiting just adds an extra, unnecessary step in the development of a relationship that doesn’t need to be there.
For those that work with young people, perhaps you’ve heard of “talking”? It’s a new step in which two people who are romantically interested in each other communicate with each other, flirt, and maybe even hook up to explore the possibilities. This comes before dating and relationship-defining. The problem is that no group of young people has ever been able to explain why this step exists, what the parameters of it are, or, most importantly, whether or not it is exclusive (a much debated topic!).5 As a result, this new step creates new drama and new uncertainty that adds to an already harrowing social issue. It reminds me of the idea of a “promise ring” from past generations, which serious boyfriends would give to their girlfriend as a pledge of their future engagement and wedding; this idea of being engaged to be engaged doesn’t really make sense to me either.6
I don’t mean to poo-poo cohabitation altogether, but I think the corrective that is needed is greater caution and fuller awareness of the murkiness of this “step.” Younger couples, especially those in college or fresh out of it, would do better to live apart, sustain their own independent lives, and build their adulthood in parallel as they move toward the deeper waters of their serious relationship. However, I have to admit that with older adults, either by age or by maturity, there is a more comfortable context with which they can enter into this.
For adults that have established careers, stable finances, years of experience living on their own or with adult roommates, I think it’s possible to consider cohabitation responsibly. I think it needs to come with serious, extended discernment. I think it needs to come only with serious consideration of marriage and the intent to continue that discernment earnestly. And I think it comes best in the context of premarital counseling, where a couple continues to openly and intentionally reflect upon the growth of their relationship toward the intention of marriage.
Overall, I pray that people would approach their relationships and the deepening magnitude of them with greater caution and thoughtfulness. I feel that Mary and Martha, the great pair from Scripture, give us a gentle insight here. Mary is comfortable to sit at the feet of her friend and listen while Martha is preoccupied with the logistics of hosting and busies herself with tasks. Martha comes to Jesus to appeal for help with her “burdens,” and Jesus feels her busy-ness is anxiety and worry while Mary’s calm listening is “the better part.”
We would be well suited to recognize the times when action is needed, especially in a relationship, when a change is welcome, when logistics and structure can support us. We would also do well to recognize the times when action can wait and when we’d be better off slowing down, resting more easily, and listening more attentively. Most of the time, relationships would benefit from restrained urgency, from diligent dialogue, and from intentional discernment. I don’t know that cohabitation is a fundamentally, inherently sinful option, and there seems to be some limited contexts in which it can work. However, I do believe that living apart and dedicating a couple’s intentionality to the wider relationship and to individual growth that can be shared as the two move toward marriage is indeed the better part.
1 We would see each other every 2-3 months during our years apart, and we made sure to do some cool, neat things together in those travels. However, we often missed most the simple joy of doing nothing together. We even pioneered the idea of “solidarity Skype,” where we would video chat for an extended period of time but not necessarily converse. We would do our own things, but relish this version of simply hanging out remotely.↩
2 Props to my grad school, Catholic Theological Union, for having the flexibility and understanding to let me be resident for just a month. It isn’t abnormal for summer students to come in and out for short periods, and I appreciated their hospitality to me, especially for the week when I was there for class anyway and my school commute shrunk to 2 minutes!↩
3 There was something deeply challenging that really steeled me during those six weeks. For all the pain-in-the-butt of going back and forth and driving and moving around, I felt like it was a welcome final test to my single manhood that helped me acknowledge the full reality of becoming a husband and eventually a father. Maybe I’m a bit masochistic then.↩
4 On a similar but different note, I did once live with a close female friend, and I don’t think there was anything morally wrong about that. We are good friends without any romantic subtext, and we were very functional and happy as roommates.↩
5 The kids fully admit that it’s an ambiguous, nebulous concept, yet they perpetuate it anyway. It’s the great teenage enigma of hating but loving drama.↩
6 I remember an arc in the great That 70’s Show involving Eric’s idea to give Donna a promise ring. For a show heavily based on smoking weed in your parents’ basement and trying to have sex with each other, it was actually a fairly wholesome and intelligent show.↩
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