I'm thinking about it this way. You have two people with low class incomes, not enough money to save, they are in the hole every month and it's unsustainable for them to live by themselves indefinitely. They can both get their heads above water slowly if they pool their resources and room up, but that's sinful. They don't want to marry because they think it's too soon but they really like each other.
So basically, these people either have to get married before either one of them are comfortable with the idea, or shack up and be labeled as sinners. They have no other choice right? There's no other way for people in more complicated situations to deal? It's either get married, or your sinning. Marriage might not work because you both didn't take enough time to see how compatible you were, so now your divorcing and that's a sin too. Just couldn't get along under the same roof though things were great when they first met. So people like that are screwed if they do and screwed if they don't.
That's an entirely hypothetical scenario there, I've never known anyone personally in that situation. But I'm sure it's an issue someone has went through in recent history. I'm a philosophical thinker
So basically, these people either have to get married before either one of them are comfortable with the idea, or shack up and be labeled as sinners. They have no other choice right? There's no other way for people in more complicated situations to deal? It's either get married, or your sinning. Marriage might not work because you both didn't take enough time to see how compatible you were, so now your divorcing and that's a sin too. Just couldn't get along under the same roof though things were great when they first met. So people like that are screwed if they do and screwed if they don't.
That's an entirely hypothetical scenario there, I've never known anyone personally in that situation. But I'm sure it's an issue someone has went through in recent history. I'm a philosophical thinker
But I would consider that a completely different situation from the OP's situation of moving to a new town and moving in with her boyfriend. I used to work with a non-Christian gal who moved and got a job so she could live with her boyfriend. He never proposed and she finally had the guts to kick him out after he missed her final deadline for proposing. Still had to divide up all their stuff and deal with each other for a bit after that just like a divorce. Pretend all you want, but if you relationship is practically a marriage then the break up is practically a divorce regardless of vows said or unsaid (practically = in practice and experience but not in an actual legitimate or recognized way). The main difference is you never had the security of vows to begin with so you spend more of your time in that relationship wondering if that person will ever leave you.
I think the issue behind your scenario Donkeyfish (and you make some good points) is that our consumer culture has made us much more selfish and caused us to see marriage as just another avenue to self-fulfillment. This means that instead of marriage for life we think of marriage as long as I'm happy and we want to be very sure we will be happy before making it harder to get out of the relationship by marrying. Marriages of convenience used to be if not common then certainly acceptable. I used to work with an old lady who had had one after her first husband died and left her with a bunch of kids. Two people would decide to marry and build a life together mainly because they needed each other and could get along with each other. They were wise enough to realize that if they were going to come together to enjoy some of the benefits of the partnership of marriage (primarily financial), they should go ahead and marry and make it work. Most people would consider such an idea extremely foolish nowadays, just like the idea that a marriage doesn't work out so much as you make it work is foreign to many. Though in all fairness the opportunities Western women have now have also alleviated a lot of the need for such marriages of necessity.
And that would be the position I would take in advising someone in a need to move in together situation. If you really have no friends of the same sex you can have as roommates, and you cannot manage to make ends meet on your own (this is another big one since many people in consumer culture have a hard time separating wants and luxuries from needs) then maybe you should consider actually marrying the person and making it work instead of a temporary marriage like living situation that will probably end in heartbreak. I know for myself, if I were living alone with a guy who was even just a friend, the desire for intimacy would develop in that situation. I'd never consider that as a long term arrangement because of that.
