It's knowing that your door is always open and your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind your couch...-Bill Anderson
I am going to go back a bit here and talk about the modern tendency to “try it, you’ll like it” approach to marriage. It would be difficult to pinpoint a place in time where we could say, THIS IS IT…this is the time and place where it became commonplace and acceptable for couples to move in together without being married.
Over the years it’s been variously characterized as POSSLQ (pronounced pos-ul-kew) I believe that was a census designation for Persons of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters, and later, LTA’s (Living Together Arrangements), Trial Marriages and sometimes just as Shacking Up.
The old Bill Anderson song about keeping your sleeping bag rolled up behind the couch captures the essence of cohabitation…just in case this arrangement doesn’t work out, as though there was something magic about this arrangement that has a life of its own and to which the players are somehow captive victims.
Bill Anderson Gentle on my Mind Lyrics:
It's knowing that your door is always open and
your path is free to walk That makes me tend to
leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind
your couch (red italics mine).
And it's knowing I'm not shackled by forgotten words and bonds, And the ink stains that have dried upon some line that keeps you in the back roads by the rivers of my mem'ry that keeps you ever gentle on my mind
It's not clinging to the rocks and ivy planted on their columns now that binds me, Or something that somebody said because they thought we fit together walking
It's just knowing that the world will not be cursing or forgiving, when I walk along some railroad track and find that you're moving on the back roads by the rivers of my mem'ry for hours you're just gentle on my mind
Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines and the junk yards and the highways come between us and some other woman crying to her mother cause she turned and I was gone
I still might run in silence tears of joy might stain my face and a summer sun might burn me till I'm blind
But not to where I cannot see you walking on the back roads by the rivers flowing gentle on my mind
I dip my cup of soup back from a gurgling crackling cauldron in some train yard my beard a roughening coal pile and a dirty hat pulled low across my face
Through cupped hands around a tin can I pretend to hold you to my breast and find that you're waving from the back roads by the rivers of my mem'ry ver smiling ever gentle on my mind
http://www.mp3lyrics.org/b/bill-anderson/gentle/
…and so it has become commonplace to leave the door open to leave when the going gets tough. The 24k Gold Wedding in all its splendor devolves into the Styrofoam Marriage that is easily discardable.
In numerous citings, the Bible frowns on unmarried people living together without the benefit of matrimony. So, if you have the Christian worldview as I do, listening to the encouragements and prohibitions of Scripture is important.
Regardless of how you treat Genesis 19 about Sodom and Gomorrah, there were several sorts of sexual activity with which God was not happy. I’m not getting wrapped around the axle of the same sex stuff that is recorded there, because this treatise is all about relationships between a man and a woman, regardless of what the Supreme Court of the United States says is “the LAW.”
The most telling passage for me is John 4:16-17 in the discourse between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, · Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." The woman answered and said, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You have well said, 'I have no husband,' "for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly."
In Proverbs 14:12, Solomon writes that There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
It’s not a difficult search to discover that God intended for one man and one woman be together in a marriage relationship…one man/one woman together forever with commitment and permanence. I’ll come back to the Scriptural stuff later in this chapter.
So where did we get off that notion and start believing that it was OK as Dave Gudgel, former pastor of Bethany Bible Church in Phoenix was quoted in a speech before a Messianic Jewish organization in 2009, that the path of many of today’s young people is to:
Meet Up You come here often, sailor?
Hook Up (What are you doing the rest of your life…OK, how about the rest of the night…lie down, I think I love you…let’s just be friends with benefits…)
Shack Up Let’s move in together 70-80% of young people are doing this
Walk Up Here comes the bride until divorce do us part… 50% of them marry and then divorce
Split Up This just isn’t fun any more, let’s quit…NEXT! 65% of them divorce a second time
The slide toward acceptability of open sex began in the hippie revolution of the 1960s free love movement…tune in, turn on, drop out.
Today it is commonly accepted practice for people to Hook Up for casual sex in the same way we might shake hands when I was young. It’s as though kids today are afraid that relationships might fail, so if they keep them only on the visceral level they may not get hurt as badly when they fail. Thus, the press toward limited commitment and involvement that cohabitation encourages.
This is an all-too-common occurrence:
· Fred meets Wilma and there is instant spark. Bells and whistles.
· They arrange a first date
· It’s fantastic, both are on the top of their best-behavior game
· No question about a good night kiss – are you kidding me! The only question is whether or not they will have sex that night or not.
· Dates come in bunches after that and regardless of the first night sex question, there is no question now…whenever, wherever and however that it will come. The oxytocin euphoria express is at warp speed.
· Fred is at Wilma’s almost every night until late into the wee hours.
· He starts leaving a change of clothes and a razor and toothbrush just so he doesn’t have to go home to clean up before they go out
· Wilma’s roommate moves out at mid-term and Fred is getting a little strapped for cash and doesn’t have a roommate this semester so they begin discussing the idea of moving in together.
· It will be so much cheaper on us both and think how much fun it will be to wake up next to each other every day.
· There is a small nag in the back of their minds that this is not something their parents would approve, but they quickly push it aside as they begin unloading boxes and deciding who gets what shelves, closet rods and drawers for their stuff.
· Next thing you know, Wilma’s cell phone contract is up and she just got back from the AT&T store where they really sold her on rollover minutes and benefits of a family plan, so they decide to get a joint cell phone account.
· By the time that gets done, Fred has changed the address and phone on his checks at the bank and notified all his bills and friends of his new address at Wilma’s.
· Next thing they decide to do is work out together, so they buy a gym membership together at a discounted rate since there are two of them.
· It just keeps on getting better and better.
· They were going to church, but that spring there was a guest speaker talking about the dangers of cohabitation and they felt like everybody was looking at them. They decided not to go back. After all, they were unique. Nobody understood them and besides they would probably be married one day, right?
· After about six months, Wilma stopped being as interested in what had been such hot sex in the beginning. In fact, according to Fred, she became downright bitchy about it.
· Wilma began telling her girlfriends that Fred never did anything around the apartment. She had to do all the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and that all Fred wanted was sex. Whatever in the world prompted her to ask him to move in became a mystery.
How do you suppose this tale ends? Write your own ending and it won’t be far from the truth somewhere over and over again.
· Did Fred start having an affair with that new girl who just transferred in from Community College?
· Did he disguise his absence by telling Wilma he needed to work late?
· Did Fred think he was trapped? Not enough money to move again and change all his numbers since they just had one address between them?
· Did he adopt a drinking habit or a drug habit or an internet porn habit?
· Did Wilma begin plotting how she was going to evict Fred?
· Did she have thoughts about having to stay in the mess because of the embarrassment it might bring her if the failure of the relationship became common knowledge.
· Perhaps Wilma would not care and just give Fred the boot, changing the locks on the door and tossing all his stuff on the front sidewalk.
This is not an isolated story, and I just made this one up out of a composite of couples we have coached over the years.
In my prior book Boiling the Frog, I suggest that we have made this slide so gradually that we don’t even recognize how far we have come. Not unlike the frog in lukewarm water that can be turned into frog soup by gradually increasing the temperature of the water. His nerve endings become so desensitized that he does not even know he’s getting warm.
There’s an analogy in there somewhere.
Interestingly, according to Gudgel, 30-50% of evangelical believers live together in a cohabitation relationship at some point in their relationships. Frequently we hear, It seemed like the right thing to do. In addition to the 50% of them who do ultimately marry, the prevailing sentiment is that the decision to do so was based on performance-results…how good were you in bed??
It’s like trying out for a team or cheerleading squad…a conditions-based relationship. If you please me enough, I’ll consider marrying you.
This pattern of living does not take into consideration the requirement for two people to make an unconditional commitment from one imperfect person to another imperfect person.
Wrapped around the current practices are some of the prevailing reasons why men and women decide to cohabit.
Generally, women have sex hoping to fall in love. Men have sex as a proof of their love. Neither tends to have sex as a fulfillment of their mutual and lifelong commitment to one another and to God in a relationship from which either can only escape when one lays the other in the arms of God. Then the way they have good sex is by learning how to love and serve each other to MAKE it good on purpose…not by trying more and more partners until they finally find one that wins the competition. Parenthetically, does it ever occur to anybody that when the new wears off, the grass always starts looking greener on the other side of the fence unless…?
Sampling of Research Findings
Now, let’s look a bit at the research findings on this topic that run counter to popular notion and culture. Even in the face of wide acceptance, the evidence is against cohabitation with all the preludes we have talked about.
In a 2007 edition of the New Oxford Review, www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=0907-schneider Dr. A. Patrick Schneider II, who holds boards in family and geriatric medicine and runs a private practice in Lexington, Kentucky, did a statistical analysis of cohabitation in America, based on the findings of a number of academic resources. Here are ten conclusions Schneider draws from his studies:
1. Relationships are unstable in cohabitation. One-sixth of cohabiting couples stay together for only three years; one in ten survives five or more years.
2. Cohabiting women often end up with the responsibilities of marriage—particularly when it comes to caring for children—without the legal protection. Research has also found that cohabiting women contribute more than 70 percent of the relationship's income.
3. Cohabitation brings a greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases, because cohabiting men are four times more likely to be unfaithful than husbands.
4. Poverty rates are higher among cohabiters. Those who share a home but never marry have 78 percent less wealth than the continuously married.
5. Those who suffer most from cohabitation are the children. The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is fivefold greater than the rate among children in married-couple households. Children ages 12–17 with cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems and 122% more likely to be expelled from school.
6. Greater risk of substance abuse and psychiatric problems: A UCLA survey of 130 published studies found that marriages preceded by cohabitation were more prone to drug and alcohol problems (Coombs, R.H., "Marital Status and Personal Well-Being: A Literature Review," Family Relations, Jan. 1991). Depression is three times more likely in cohabiting couples than among married couples (Robbins, L., Rieger, D., Psychiatric Disorders in America, 1990).
7. Higher poverty rates: Cohabiters who never marry have 78% less wealth than the continuously married; cohabiters who have been divorced or widowed once have 68% less wealth (Cohabitation Facts website).
8. Children suffer: The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is fivefold greater than the rate among children in married-couple households (Bennett, op. cit.). Compared to children of married biological parents, children age 12-17 with cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems (Booth, A., Crouter, A.C., eds., Just Living Together: Implications of Cohabitation on Families, Children and Social Policy, 2002). Likewise, adolescents from cohabiting households are 122% more likely to be expelled from school and 90% more likely to have a low GPA (Manning, W.D., Lamb, K.A., "Adolescent Well-Being in Cohabiting, Married and Single-Parent Families," Journal of Marriage and Family, Nov. 2003). Children find themselves without grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins; the family tree is pruned (Bennett, op. cit.).
9. Society pays: The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with two million souls in federal and state prisons and local jails. In 1980 the figure was just over 500,000 (Bennett, op. cit.). Seventy percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions are from fatherless homes (Drake, T., "The Father Factor: Crime on Increase in ‘Dad Free' Zones," National Catholic Register, Jan. 2007). Three-fourths of children involved in criminal activity were from cohabiting households (Crouse, op. cit.).
10. Cohabitation breeds abuse, violence, and murder: Abuse of children: Rates of serious abuse are lowest in intact families; six times higher in stepfamilies; 14 times higher in always-single-mother families; 20 times higher in cohabiting biological-parent families; and 33 times higher when the mother is cohabiting with a boyfriend who is not the biological father (Crouse, op. cit.). Abuse of women: Compared to a married woman, a cohabiting woman is three times more likely to experience physical aggression (Salari, S.M., Baldwin, B.M., "Verbal, Physical, and Injurious Aggression Among Intimate Couples Over Time," Journal of Family Issues, May 2002), and nine times more likely to be murdered (Shackelford, T.K., "Cohabitation, Marriage, and Murder: Woman-Killing by Male Romantic Partners," Aggressive Behavior, vol. 27, 2001). This data is consistent with similar data on children.
Cohabitation is bad for men, worse for women, and horrible for children. It is a deadly toxin to marriage, family, and culture. With great insight and wisdom Pope Benedict XVI has wrote in Sacramentum Caritatis (March 13, 2007) that among the four "fundamental values" that are "not negotiable," second only to respect for human life is "the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman."
© 2007 New Oxford Review. All Rights Reserved. September 2007, Volume LXXIV, Number 8. www.newoxfordreview.org
Baptist Press recorded it this way in an interview with Mike and Harriet McManus of Marriage Savers:
'Living together' before marriage a statistical risk
Posted on Mar 26, 2008 | by Michael Foust
WASHINGTON (BP)--Does living together before marriage increase the chances for a successful marriage? The answer may surprise some.
Between 50 and 60% of all marriages begin with the two partners cohabitating, and many of those couples no doubt believe they are making a wise move up front. But living together before marriage actually increases the chances of divorce in a first marriage – 67% of cohabitating couples who marry eventually divorce, compared to 45% of all first marriages.
That and other myth-busting facts form the core of a book by Mike and Harriet McManus, Living Together: Myths, Risks & Answers (Howard Books), with a foreword by Chuck Colson. Co-founders of the organization Marriage Savers, the couple has invested much of their lives trying to help strengthen marriages and push down the divorce rate.
The biblical warnings against cohabitation, the book says, are affirmed by statistics showing it's a bad idea.
"Men and woman cohabitate for different reasons," Mike McManus said in a conference call discussing the book. "Women see it as a step toward marriage. They think they can audition for this job. Men do it because they like to have the ready availability of sex and having someone share their living expenses. Women should heed their mother's advice -- if you give away the milk, he won't buy the cow."
The number of cohabitating couples has soared in recent decades, from about 439,000 in 1960 to more than 5,000,000. About 10% of couples who married between 1965 and 1974 lived together before marriage. Today, that number is far more than 50%.
Couples who live together not only are significantly more likely to divorce after marriage, but about 45% of them will break up before marriage, studies show. Cohabitation, McManus said, has a high failure rate because it's based on selfishness.
"'If you make me feel loved, then I might marry you. If you make me happy, then I might marry you,'" McManus said. Love and marriage is an investment, and cohabitation is a gamble. Cohabitation is conditional; marriage is based on permanence. (emphasis added) These are radically different psychological premises. True love is selfless -- seeking to serve the other person. Cohabitation is based on selfishness -- 'How will this relationship satisfy me?'"
He added that no studies have ever shown cohabitation to benefit relationships.
Harriet McManus discounted the notion that couples can go through a "trial marriage."
"It’s really more like a trial divorce," she said at a press conference at the Family Research Council. "The only question is whether you break up before the wedding or after the wedding in a legal divorce. As one of our marriage educator friends says, you can’t practice permanence. Of 100 cohabiting couples, 85 break up before or after the wedding, leaving only 15 couples in a lasting marriage after 10 years, and who knows how many more divorce after 10 years."
Women who cohabitate are more likely to be abused and to be depressed than women in a marriage, studies cited by the McManuses say. Additionally, men and women in a live-together arrangement are more likely to cheat on one another. But perhaps most concerning, couples who cohabitate are nearly just as likely as married couples to have children -- meaning that the failed relationship has an impact beyond the man and woman.
"The children feel abandoned when one parent moves out," Harriet McManus said. "That causes a great deal of trauma for the children, tripling the odds that the child will be expelled from school [compared to] those raised in an intact family."
Couples who believe they can save money by cohabitating must weigh not only the biblical commandment against it but also the likely negative consequences of their decision, the McManuses say. Such couples should instead look for same-sex roommates as a money-saver, they added.
Often, couples cohabitate because they rarely have seen a successful marriage up close, Mike McManus said.
"The major underlying reason for soaring cohabitation is that these are couples in which one or both partners grew up in a divorced home or in a home where there was not a marriage," he said. "These young couples fear marriage because they fear divorce."
Churches should mentor engaged couples as a way to strengthen relationships, stop cohabitation and prevent divorces, the McManuses believe. Statistics back them up. Of 288 couples who were mentored at their church between 1992 and 2000, only seven divorced or separated. Fifty-five of the couples (19 percent) broke up before marrying.
"That's a huge percentage -- that's 19 percent," Mike McManus said of the break-ups. "You need to have the (mentoring) process be rigorous enough that the weak relationships either break up on their own or get better and get stronger."
Cohabitation, Mike McManus believes, is a subject too often avoided by pastors.
"I think if sermons were preached on this subject and if churches offered an alternative -- a better way to test the relationship -- the country would be better off."
With reporting by Katherine Kipp, an intern with the Washington bureau of Baptist Press.
OK, some of these findings are not current with 2023 practices, but they do indicate trends that are worthy of our attention…and the trends are not getting better on their own.
Hey, I didn’t write this stuff, I just work here.
One more word here on a Biblical worldview about cohabitation and then some conclusions and recommendations.
Cohabitation: Biblical and Ethical Concerns
Aspects of the Biblical View of Marriage
Let’s just see if there is any compatibility between cohabitation and a Biblical worldview.
Clearly, the things we can glean from Scripture about marriage are clear.
Instituted by God: The commonly held Christian belief is that marriage was instituted by God Himself and that the only thing God ever said about creation that was not good was that it was not good that Man live alone. (Gen 1:31; 2:22-24). After creating Adam and Eve God brought them together and defined the way they were to be in relationship (Gen 3:24). So, from my perspective as an evangelical Christian marriage educator and coach, marriage should be a reflection of the original relationship that God established between woman and man, and He created them for marriage. Any claim for independence from the divine intention for marriage just won’t wash, or as they say where I’m from, that dog won’t hunt.
Community of Witnesses: Marriage was never an arrangement made between two individuals apart from God and other human beings. The Bible is clear that marriage is something that takes place in the sight of God and other persons to introduce into the relationship the element of mutual responsibility, accountability and legitimacy. Not sure where they got their marriage license, but Adam and Eve were united in the presence of God Himself. Since then, the union of two persons in matrimony has been a community event (witness the story of Jesus’ first publicly recorded miracle at a wedding feast in John 2:1ff). Establishing a family was not considered something a couple of individuals decided to do in the dark, it was an event that had an impact on society at large. You won’t get a rousing cheer for this position in today’s culture that praises individualism and ‘anything goes’ but it is important in a society that is serious about preserving its values and integrity.
Till Death: The union created in marriage establishes a relationship of permanency. One of us has to die to get out of this. Biblical concepts of marriage were not experiments during which it was to be determined whether or not the couple would hang in there to the end. Rather, Biblical marriage is the expression of a love that is so pure and so deep that is willing to express itself in a life-long commitment to the other. (Eph 5:22-30). In this new relationship the leaving and cleaving gets done (recall the epoxy glue analogy earlier) where people leave mother and father in order to be united (epoxied) to the object of that love (Gen 2:24; Matt 19:6). This is where the unity of mutual self-respect, commitment and permanency makes it possible for two totally committed people to find ultimate sexual satisfaction…not in experimentation with a variety of partners, but it finds its best expression in the almost "sacramental" expression of the existential unity of the couple. That is where lives are united, served and fulfilled and not just bodies joined. My two cents worth.
Marriage and Cohabitation: An Evaluation
Incompatibility: I always heard that incompatibility was when a man lost his income and a woman lost her patability! However, when we look at the Biblical concept of marriage cohabitation is simply a practice that is incompatible with it. Cohabitation is basically a union of two persons without seeking the blessing of God and without any formal approval of the community. Hence, somebody has to explain it to me how cohabitation has any concern for the future of the relationship. It’s all about ME and right now.
Special Case of the Elderly: As I write this, I am past my 84th birthday. Where did the time go? I still get up in the morning and when I first see this face in the mirror, I wonder what my Dad is doing in my bathroom.
I have a little more trouble dealing with the societal bumpers that have been put around senior adults who have fallen in love, but who have chosen to live in cohabitation in order not to lose some financial benefits. At times it is suggested that they are not sexually active and that all they are seeking is companionship. The implication is that under certain circumstances cohabitation may be acceptable. This line of argumentation tends to overlook the fact that we are sexual beings until we die and there are some Olympic examples of sexual activity well past my age, a testimony for which I am grateful.
The couple is the one who has to establish the moment when the relationship becomes intimate, moving it from level of friendship to cohabitation. If that happens it is important for them to keep in mind several things that, in addition to those mentioned above, point to the undesirability of the relationship.
First, there is always the prospect that cohabitation devalues the quality of the relationship by giving priority to their financial needs over against their love for each other. The commitment might not be total but rather limited. Talking to estate planners, children, creating pre-nups, or in cases like the State of Texas, simply forming a Common Law marriage are all possibilities for maintaining the quality of the relationship without sacrificing their livelihoods.
Second, I am a bit out on a limb here with mainstream Christianity, but I have been willing to celebrate decisions by some of my relatives who have lived into their 70s and 80s who desired to spend their lives together after their original spouses had died. In all cases, they could not afford to lose their retirement benefits and marry, so we agreed as a family to gather around with their friends and our family and provide them a recognition of their commitments to live in love and harmony until God called one of them home. There was no marriage license, but there was God’s blessings, a sense of community and accountability that lasted them in a loving relationship until the end of their lives. Somehow the symmetry of that appeals to me.
Finally, I would like to see more work done to eliminate the penalties older persons have to face when they choose to marry in their twilight years when they have lost their original mates. Those laws need to be modified. Society should show sincere concern for the well-being of its old people like I’m gonna be in about 10 years…enacting laws that will facilitate my emotional and financial security. With 75,000,000 Baby Boomers, this is going to continue to be a serious issue. I promised to live at least one day longer than TGR and then who knows…
What is the word I’d give to the Church
Churches must not fall into the trap of withdrawing from cohabiters. They need what we have more than ever. We should do everything in our power to help couples living in cohabitation to be united in Christian marriage or separate their living arrangements. We should love and care for them in spite of the fact that we cannot find a Biblical basis their life-style. Most of them simply do not know yet the beauty of a true Christian home. Look, Christian homes often encounter difficult challenges and, more often than any of us like, some of them end in divorce…even as did those of TGR and of mine did in younger and stupider days. Maybe that’s why we are so passionate about helping people get it right…sometime… anytime. As badly as churches do their jobs of helping create strong and healthy families, they still are the best venue for family formation and nurturing.
I dare to speculate, although I don’t have empirical studies to back this up, in most cases cohabitation is an expression of some spiritual problem. Then, what is needed is a re-commitment to Jesus that would make it possible for the individual to commit himself or herself to another person.
What couples who cohabit need…IMHO:
· Strong Spiritual Connection. Did you know that on the popular TV reality show The Bachelor as of the end of season 14, none of the bachelors has married the woman to whom he presented the final rose? In the 13th season bachelor (Jason) did ultimately marry his season's runner-up in February 2010. On the Bachelorette, only one has married in 6 seasons and another is planning a wedding.
The fraudulent notion that if you’ll try it, you’ll like it and that you can do test-drives to determine future success is made into the sham it is when even the contrived trial marriages don’t work very well or at all.
Couples are better served if they hear the call for strong spiritual connections that chase diligently after God’s highest and best. The prophet Hosea 10:12-13 encourages us to take the high road and do the hard work of getting it right. Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the Lord, till He comes and rains righteousness on you. You have plowed wickedness; you have reaped iniquity. You have eaten the fruit of lies, because you trusted in your own way, In the multitude of your mighty men.
· Growing emotional connections. Couples do best where their efforts are focused on creating servants’ hearts and a deep-seated commitment to their partners than they do where they are focused on What’s In It For Me!
· Neo-virgin Relationships. I have a friend who suggests that cohabiting couples who intensely desire to do what God wants them to do to recycle their virginity.
There is no way for them to unscramble the egg of prior sexual activity and excitement, and it is the Gospel truth that once they have been to Paris it’s hard to keep ‘em down on the farm. However, we believe that couples have a better chance of having God’s blessings on them if they find a way to stop having sex before they marry and plan for an orderly end to their cohabiting either by becoming married or unraveling the economic issues that frequently got them together in the first place.
When couples ask us to perform their marriages and are known to be cohabiting, we ask them if they would be willing to forego sexual activity with each other completely for at least four months prior to their wedding date. We simply believe that it is healthier for a marriage to have something wonderful to anticipate on the wedding night.
If they have become so enmeshed financially and otherwise that it is not possible for one of them to move out of the shared living arrangement, then we suggest moving into separate beds and exercise the kinds of modesty around each other that are appropriate.
That works fairly well and we have had rave reviews about the outcomes as well as considerable surprise at how exciting sex became on their wedding night by hitting the virginity recycle button at least a few months prior to the wedding.
Try it…you’ll like it.
