Speech about why should couples live together before marriage
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Answer:
One would like to think that people who live together before marriage have worked their way through the second stage before they say “I do”. But even then, their subconscious – unaware and unexamined – ideas about marriage could revive conflict.
Does one one person expect the other to be present to a far greater extent after marriage than when they were living together? Might one expect the other to take on all the household chores once they are married?
These expectations could be based on each person’s parents’ marriage. Nonetheless, the resulting conflict has to be worked through.
All of this is exacerbated by the existence of a fourth stage which I haven’t mentioned but which comes before two people even move in together. This is the stage of subconscious attraction. We tend to move in with people who are like us – in education, physical attributes, social class and in other ways. We do this without thinking about it or making out a checklist – though reading other people’s declared attributes on Tinder is, I guess, a form of conscious checking.
The point about subconscious attraction is that it can hitch you up to somebody who has the above attributes and whose irritating ways only emerge after the honeymoon period.
In case I seem overly-pessimistic here, could I just say that millions of couples, whether they cohabit before marriage or not, have successfully negotiated the difficult stage in their relationships and have gone on to live happily ever after. Well, within reason.