Cohabitation before marriage: society seems to tout it as a compatibility litmus test, but what if that's not the whole story? Join Jordan and Kristen as they pull back the curtain on this modern-day relationship rite, sharing personal experiences and societal insights that challenge the perceived wisdom of living together pre-nuptials. We navigate through the complex layers of commitment, contrasting the deep-rooted vows of marriage with the impermanent nature of an unmarried couple's shared domicile. With the aid of intriguing stats and thought-provoking discussion, we aim to present why skipping the home trial might just pave the way for a stronger, more lasting partnership.
As we wrap up this candid episode, we extend a heartfelt thank you to you—our faithful listeners—for journeying with us through these often-taboo topics. Looking ahead, we're preparing to bare our own marital tales of joy and tribulation, an intimate conversation you won't want to miss. Until our paths cross again, remember to seek us out on JordanAndKristen.com, our YouTube channel, and our Spotify offerings for more heartfelt discussions. Keep sending those prayer requests, and as you step into your week, may it brim with grace and the excitement of deepening connections with Jordan and Kristen Ministries.
Cohabitation before marriage: society seems to tout it as a compatibility litmus test, but what if that's not the whole story? Join Jordan and Kristen as they pull back the curtain on this modern-day relationship rite, sharing personal experiences and societal insights that challenge the perceived wisdom of living together pre-nuptials. We navigate through the complex layers of commitment, contrasting the deep-rooted vows of marriage with the impermanent nature of an unmarried couple's shared domicile. With the aid of intriguing stats and thought-provoking discussion, we aim to present why skipping the home trial might just pave the way for a stronger, more lasting partnership.
As we wrap up this candid episode, we extend a heartfelt thank you to you—our faithful listeners—for journeying with us through these often-taboo topics. Looking ahead, we're preparing to bare our own marital tales of joy and tribulation, an intimate conversation you won't want to miss. Until our paths cross again, remember to seek us out on JordanAndKristen.com, our YouTube channel, and our Spotify offerings for more heartfelt discussions. Keep sending those prayer requests, and as you step into your week, may it brim with grace and the excitement of deepening connections with Jordan and Kristen Ministries.
Alright, good evening everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Jordan and Kristen Records show. Tonight we're going to discuss living with your partner before marriage. Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? You can probably figure out where we're going with this, by the way. It's going to be a bad idea and it's a topic that most churches or many churches anyway, I think are really afraid to discuss because they're afraid of offending people and they're afraid of losing their audience. But you know what? We only have like 30 followers on YouTube anyway. So you know, it's not like we have a whole lot of people lose here, although I guess maybe that means I should value them more. You imagine it took me a long time to get to 30 followers, man.
Speaker 2:Subscribers, whatever it is. We appreciate all of you. Hey, same as plug, like and follow our YouTube page. Yeah, seriously, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Alright. So before we begin Kristen, why don't you open us up in prayer here for everybody?
Speaker 2:Thank you, jesus. Thank you for your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, god, thank you. Thank you that you just envelop us in your love and your kindness, god, and no matter what we've done or straight off the path, whether that was a minute ago or a day ago or a decade ago, god, you are forgiving and loving and you're putting us back on your path to righteousness. Thank you, lord, for new beginnings in this new year. In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:Alright. So why are we doing this topic? Why are we talking about living with your partner before marriage? Well, I actually don't know if you know this, Kristen.
Speaker 1:The other day I was in court I was prosecuting and I was just hanging out my little office there talking to some of the cops by the way, shout out to the great police officers all over the world, but in particular my friends over in the Clinton Police Department and we were just talking and one of them was talking about living with his girlfriend and I happened to mention because I wanted to interject that you and I did not live with each other before we got married. And the guy looked at me like you know, I had three heads or something, which, by the way, I think is a lot of the reason that people do live with their partners ahead of time, because it's that's like the socially acceptable thing to do now. Now, if you don't do that, people look at you like you're some kind of freak. But he said well, you know, how did you know then you were going to be compatible? I mean, you know, shouldn't you live to get live with somebody ahead of time, to know if you can live with that person? And I said listen, man, you don't get it.
Speaker 1:Living with somebody is in no way like a marriage. Okay, they're not analogous. There's a big difference between being married to somebody when you're in something for the long term, when you're in something permanently and you have issues and you can't leave and you got to work through them, versus you're in this kind of half-hearted boyfriend-girlfriend thing where you're basically just roommates who sleep with each other, All right, and you know, if anybody better happens to come along while the two of you are together, then you know you're out the door and you're on to the next person, All right. So that was my response to him, and some of the guys like, yeah, I think that's right. And other guys were like, well, it's really strange. I want to get your thoughts on it though, Kristen. Go ahead Well.
Speaker 2:I just thought of something real quick when you were talking about that. To me the analogy would be like saying it's the same thing Having a child is the same thing as having a nephew and watching the next nephew over the weekend or, you know, overnight, or something like that. It is not. You're right about the commitment level being in this or something mentally different about being in it. And I'll just say from a woman's perspective. Women, ladies, don't devalue yourself, you know.
Speaker 2:I think about another analogy. I'm just full of analogies tonight. Like if you go to and listen I love shopping at like Marshall's and TJ Maxx you can get like on-brand stuff for a lot less. It's a great thing, but in terms of the value of it, it's like if something is returned like a high price item, it becomes devalued and devalued and then it's sold at Marshall's or someplace so you can get it a lot cheaper, right? Well, you don't want to be that item at Marshall's. You are that priceless pearl, you are that jewel. But I also want to interject before we go any further and say we're not being like self-righteous here and like pointing the finger at all the people right now who are living together and being like we're so much better than you. That's not our attitude. We want to, you know, help in this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm deliberately going out of my way not to couch it in terms of sin, because I'm not here to tell you that if you're doing that you're a bad person. I'm here to tell you that if you're doing that, you're putting yourself at a severe disadvantage and you're cheaping yourself. I mean, look, the proof is in the pudding, right? If living with your partner ahead of time was more likely to lead to a successful marriage, and we would expect people who do that to have lower divorce rates, I mean, it's there's a, there's a simple causality there, right? Instead, what we see is that the divorce rates of people who live together ahead of time Are eighty percent higher than people who don't.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's not an accident, that's not like you, within standard deviation, and I think part of the problem is what you're saying, christen, is you're cheapening yourself, but also you're cheapening the very concept of your relationship. You know you're cheapening your devaluing the concept of marriage. How many times do you hear and we it's constant where you hear people say, well, marriage, what is that? That's just a piece of paper, right? You see, these people who've been together for a long time, when you get married, who cares? We're basically married.
Speaker 2:I don't really understand the whole get engaged and then we're just engaged indefinitely thing. If someone can explain that to me, I don't really understand.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, there should definitely be like a we're kind of off topic, but like a statute of limitations on how long you can say age for like twenty years yeah right, there should be a rule like Once you propose you have like ninety days tops to like set a reasonable date after which you can't call yourself engaged more. But that's a different topic, that's just frivolous talk. But I mean, I see what you're saying, but I think there's something to also the level of commitment, like if you, if you take all like available Single men right divide into two groups people who believe in living together ahead of time and people who don't well guess what. The people who don't, as a group are in general, just gonna be much more Commitment oriented, much more responsible.
Speaker 1:Those are the people who are saying I wanna go from dating to getting married, not people who say, well, I kinda wanna do like you know the semi adult thing you hear the term now adulting. Let's live together, but not with, not what will pretend we're married but without the commitment, which is, you know, basically saying we have this water here, but it's not what the marriage without the commitment is. The is the antithesis of marriage, because marriage is the commitment right to constantly to becoming One being. And when you're just living with somebody like that and you're lacking the commitment, you're giving yourself a false sense of what the marriage is, while at the same time you're cheaping the very concept of it yeah, it's such a special thing.
Speaker 2:it's kinda it's funny because you and I were not totally long distance, but we were an hour and fifteen minutes away from each other when we dated, which meant we only saw each other on weekends and then face time the rest of the week I'm in. The reason I'm giving that much detail is the people I had dated before you. I saw a lot of them like every single day, and with you I saw you probably the least of anybody I had dated, and yet I knew god you were the one for me and that god had put in my path and I.
Speaker 1:Could there be any doubt compared to the guys you did? Of course, you dated half the east coast, so hey, now, you were too slow, I'm glad you were too. You wanted me to be selected.
Speaker 2:I prayed. I prayed. God answers prayers like lord. Please help him to stay single.
Speaker 1:I didn't mean that single, but that's very single for a very long time.
Speaker 2:I was like, why didn't you do it? No, but seriously, like I knew that was what was so special. We went from just seeing each other on weekends but I knew you're the one for me. And then when we got married and we were together twenty four, seven, it was. It's just not only just felt right, it was right, but it was. We got to grow into this intimacy beyond physical intimacy through living together. There's another level. It takes a special as you live with somebody and you have what is the wedding ceremony then? For you know, it's just like it's.
Speaker 1:You're already not just that, but if you think about our relationship, from the moment we met we were entirely marriage oriented, okay, whereas I think so many people today they kind of. It's one thing to tip toe into a relationship, but it's quite something else to keep it on a really kind of superficial level where you just you know You're not really moving the ball forward to getting married. And what a lot of people I think are doing just by living with each other is they're trying to enjoy the benefits of marriage or what they think the benefits of marriage are. They don't know what it is. The real benefit of marriage is waking up every morning knowing that the person next to you is gonna be there the next morning to, okay, but you're pretending to be married, alright, without really getting the benefits of it.
Speaker 1:And look, it's if, if you just one of these people who just you know what to go from, you know half hearted, totally vacuous medium term relationships one to the next, that's fine, and we know people like that and you know I'm in my forties now and so I've seen the people who refuse to grow up and they get in this pattern of living with this person, with that person, with the next person right, all ostensibly because you're trying them on for size or whatever, and before you know what your forty, five years old, your peter pan, you just never growing up or your older than that, and so, yeah, it's just. It's just this product of this culture that basically is is prolonging maturity. You know it used to be. People got nothing. We should do this. But you speak to, people got married, twenty, other getting married closer to thirty, and now fewer and fewer people are getting married. The marriage rate has been cut in half.
Speaker 1:And you wonder why. You know, we have all of these very superficial relationships and people don't know how to love each other, even even love themselves. Well, it's because we're not, really we're not treating this, you know, like we're not accepting the responsibility that comes with a relationship. Okay, it's not just fun, it's not just your love with this person. You're having a good time, it's accepting the responsibility of it. That's the great Benefit to it, not the cost. It's the great benefit to is the responsibility. So it's not something we should be afraid of, it's something that we need to embrace.
Speaker 2:And I think it's like going through the trenches with someone, going through seasons of life with someone, and when you're dating, that would, just because you're living with someone, they can put their best foot forward. They can still hide things if you're, don't kid yourself. If you're living with someone, you're not, they can change, you know, when you get married. So it's not like, oh, it's such an advantage that way, but that's not it's to say when you are married, yes, you can just, off course, barrier entire soul to that person and be vulnerable, but you always want, as a woman, ladies, you always want the man to want to pursue, you always want to keep the romance in your relationship, man or woman. You always want to not take that person for granted.
Speaker 1:You know yeah, it also. I think and I'll give you the last word Part of the problem is by having these sort of pseudo marriages, these quasi marriages, it brings you to sort of level of intimacy with somebody that you really can't share with that many people. I mean, I hate to state the obvious, I'm not talking about dating somebody, okay, but it's like if you're in like a quasi marriage with this person and the next person, the third, person.
Speaker 2:The fourth person.
Speaker 1:Well, you think that by the time you find the person you're supposed to be with and maybe you already had you missed it that you know you're gonna be able to have the same kind of relationship with. With that one person, you're something to be able to hit the gas and turn on and those other relationships won't be brought with you into that, I mean, you're compromising your ability have a meaningful, profound relationship with the person you're supposed to that is right.
Speaker 2:So the bottom line, the moral the story is don't look. If you're thinking about living with someone before marriage, don't do it. And if you have done it, or if you feel like, oh no, I've wasted, god can restore what was broken and you are beautiful and you are a priceless pearl and that you are valuable in his sight. So I want to just let end on that note. Well, dear Jesus, thank you, lord, that we are so valuable to you, thank you that you, we, are that priceless pearl. God and and I know I said because I'm a woman, I'm talking to the ladies, but to the men, to. They need to know that they are valued and loved. And God, we just, we just honor you and thank you for who, who we are in you and and what you enable us to do through your spirit and God. We look to you for everything we need, in Jesus name.
Speaker 1:Alright, guys, thanks for joining us, will be back again next week. We're gonna start talking about mistakes we made in our marriage and also things we definitely got right in our marriage. I hope you join us next week and send.
Speaker 2:Send us prayer request.
Speaker 1:Check out the website Jordan and christencom sorry, jordan and christencom or check out our YouTube page Jordan and christen ministries on YouTube, and also you can check us out in Spotify. Ok, guys, alright, have a great week.