Cohabitation Shmabitation.

Last night I was watching the finale of The Bachelorette (gosh, I'm a sucker for that show), and I really was proud of Ali and the way she talked to Chris before the final rose ceremony and let him know she was in love with someone else before allowing him to go through all the pomp and circumstance of the last ceremony. I appreciated that for Chris, and I appreciated Chris's response.
I do think he would make a great husband, though I hope he's not the next Bachelor because, after this experience, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would benefit from choosing between 25 women. I'm afraid his poor heart would get hurt again.

Anyways, I was happy that Ali picked Roberto, and was happy again when on "The Final Rose", Ali was still beaming, still wearing the ring, and still snuggling up to him during their interview. I really do hope it works out for them.

What bugs me is that Ali and Roberto talked about how they are moving into an apartment together in San Diego.
What bugs me even more is that this moving in together thing seems to be a growing practice amongst people of my generation (the 20 to 30 somethings).

My hubs Daniel and I were talking about this concept the other day. We come from the Bible Belt, where it's common for people to get married soon out of high school or around 20 or 21 and it's no big deal, and to start having babies right after that is no big deal either. However, when Daniel and I went to California, we were "too young to have kids...you're just so young"

We are 26 and 28. Too young to have kids?!

It's a growing trend in the world at large to wait to get married and to wait even longer to have kids. Honestly, I think that's fine. I am not ready to have kids yet, and there are a lot of people who genuinely are not ready to get married until later or do not meet their spouse until later or who are called to be single, and I think that is totally okay.

But I do think our culture promotes this idea of putting off marriage by putting a focus on "self" and a further acceptance of divorce. I hear terms such as "practice husband", and people having sex in order to "sample the goods before I make a commitment" and people moving in together to "see if it works out".

Well, how long to you "sample the goods" before you decide the "goods" aren't for you? And how long do you "see if it works out?" Until the first sign of unhappiness? Until something goes awry?

I call that Practicing Marriage. And I don't think it works. I understand that a lot of people are products and victims of divorce. And I completely understand how it would make someone hesitant to get married. I understand that. But I think practicing marriage further promotes our self-focused culture by giving people an easy way out. It's easy to get out of a relationship where you're living with one another because there's no real commitment there. There's no marriage covenant; you haven't signed any paperwork--easy. If you haven't signed any papers and there's no marriage covenant there, what's left to make you work on the relationship? What's left to make you work on yourself? I just think it's a set-up for a cop-out when the relationship hits a bump in the road.

All that from The Bachelorette...