I have a big post on premarital cohabitation coming up, but I thought I would share this first:
Nation’s Girlfriends Unveil New Economic Plan: ‘Let’s Move In Together’
The Boyfriend representative in this video totally blows it. Clearly, the better argument is this:
Of all the sectors of our economy, it’s housing that started this mess. There is, among other things, a supply excess that is driving home investments into the ground. If Boyfriends all moved in with Girlfriends, this would exacerbate the problem considerably. In cases where there are no roommates, it would lead to a contraction in the number of renters by half and leave rental property owners hurting. Further, even in cases where there are roommates, it’s not like Chad is ever going to get a job and be able to pay his own rent so he’s going to have to move back in with his parents which in addition to being a major bummer, is another contraction. So if you look at it objectively, it’s pretty hard not to see that the current economy demands that I be given some space.
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5 Responses to Nation’s Girlfriends: Let’s Move In Together
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I thought it was kind of funny, when the female anchor and the girlfriend ganged up on the hapless boyfriend. However, I have to ask: why would girlfriends want to move in with their boyfriends? Do they think it will bring about marriage?
It does seem to be a way to ramp up intimacy without appreciably changing the amount of physicality. So I can see women pushing for it more than men.
Well, the stereotype is that women are seeking all sorts of commitment which they have to wrestle from reluctant men. To the extent that women do push men to move in with them, I think that’s a fair assessment of the motivation. Moving in is a form of commitment. Somewhere after exclusivity and before engagement (assuming that cohabitation is its own step rather than a part of the engagement/marriage).
Men sometimes propose cohabitation, though it seems as often as not his motivation is either practical (which, to be fair, the woman’s motivation sometimes is to) or an effect to actually prevent a greater commitment. For instance, if she wants to get married, he might propose moving in together as an alternative.
Could it be that girlfriends just want to supervise their boyfriends? If you think about it, there’s no other way to make sure they’re not sleeping around.
I suspect that a great many people, both men and women, want to move in with their romantic partners because they are looking for benefits: economic benefits, social benefits, emotional/relationship benefits. They enjoy the high points of the relationship and think there will be more high points, or maybe better high points, if they live together.
But what it takes in a relationship is not the ability to mutually enjoy something good — it takes the ability to get through something bad. When I moved in with my girlfriend, I had marriage on my mind. I figured that after several months of cohabitation, inevitably life would happen and bring with it its various unpleasantries and annoyances. And inevitably, one of us would do something that irritated the other — how would she deal with it when I pissed her off? How would I deal with it when she did?
What I was interested in finding out through experimentation was not whether we’d be able to jointly handle those kinds of challenges. I wasn’t looking for good highs, I was looking for endurable lows. Since I found that she and I were able to deal with one another’s crap and to work together to meet common challenges, that’s why I figured marriage would work, and I haven’t regretted that decision since.