Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome back to the Felix Black Show Podcast. Today,
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I'm talking about living together before marriage. You don't want
to miss this episode. Let's get into it. Thank you
as always for tuning in to the Felix Black Show
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Podcast wherever you listen to your podcast or if you're
on YouTube, watching the full video. Today, I am talking
about living together before marriage. I don't even believe this
is a question that someone asked me. Do I believe
in cohabitation before marriage? Havebbsolutely this. It is not the
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nineteen fifties. Wake up out their people with your relationships.
This is not the nineteen fifties. You should be living
together before marriage. Okay, we are trying to keep these
old school values in a new school age. It's called adaptation.
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It's called changing with the times. There is a different
need now than there was before. What that need is
is open communication. Right. We are talking about not stifling
how someone feels, how someone lives. Part of communication is
learning your partner. What better way to learn someone than
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to live with them? Now? Am I saying you should
be living together day one? No, After you've dated for
a while and you decide that you want to move
to the next level that should be an option. Men
should never, I will repeat men should never move in
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with a woman. Right if she does not want to
move in with you, then y'all should get a joint apartment,
a joint home together. However, ladies, you should be willing
to live with a man that is contemplating marriage. You
all are contemplating marriage, getting engaged, starting a family together.
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What is the issue with moving in with him? If
you do not trust if you do not believe in
the relationship, say that, say that before we start talking
about marriage, that you don't trust me enough to live
with me. We shouldn't even be talking about marriage if
you do not trust me enough for that. Okay, So
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there is no excuse as to why you cannot move
in with a man. If you're willing to take his
last name, if you're willing to have his children, and
you want him to put a ring on it, you
should be willing to move into his home. And men,
if you cannot, If you cannot welcome a woman into
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your home, you should be fixing yourself. You have things
to work on. You shouldn't even be thinking about marriage
at this point. So that is for those who have
something against moving in together. What is the reason you
don't want to There is no good reason. So that's
a rhetorical question. There is no good reason. If we
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are talking about marriage, if we are talking about family,
you should be willing to move into my home. I
should have a home for you to move in too,
whether that's apartment or a house. Men, we are the providers,
and you should be providing shelter. That is the number
one need that we should be providing is shelter. Okay,
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we want to do modern things. We want to have
modern relationships, whether it's fifty to fifty, whether it's women working.
However you choose to run your relationship, you choose to
do that. With that said, we cannot be thinking about
values from the nineteen twenties the nineteen thirties. Okay, we
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have new school relationships and we have new school rules.
One of them is moving in together. I want to
see how it is when you wake up, how it
is when you organize your home, what it is that
you do during the day, How do you carry yourself
throughout the day. That is very important. We need to
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spend quality time together when we're dating and we have
separate households, when we come together. The first thing I'm
going to do when you're coming over to my house
is clean up. I'm going to straighten up because I'm
ready to receive a guest. Once you move into my home,
you're no longer a guest. You are a resident here.
You live now, So you're going to see those dirty
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moments of the home, those unorganized moments that you would
not see if we are dating. Right, there's a level
of comfort we talk about in relationships, people getting comfortable,
and that's a bad thing. No, that is a normal
progression in a relationship. These are things that have already
been happening. However, you have been shielded from seeing these
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things because we're still in the honeymoon phase and I
still want to make a good impression. Am I saying
that a dirty person will now become clean or vice versa. No,
if you are a dirty person, it will eventually come out.
If you are an organized person, it will eventually come out.
And that is why we have the living together arrangements
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to see can we share a space? Okay, I understand
that there is something called love and once you get married,
you've dedicated yourself to someone, absolutely correct, But living together
as a whole another situation. We're now sharing a space
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and how you share that space. Whether a person is clean, dirty,
whether a person is introverted extroverted, whether a person is
generous in their space and time can only be determined
once you live together. Who's gonna get the closet? Are
we going to spit the closet fifty to fifty? Right?
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Who's gonna the bathroom? Who's going to have There are
things on the on the bathroom counter, in the bathroom,
in the shower, in the bathtom how do I want
to decorate? Those are important issues because Number one, my home.
Your home should be your peace. That should be where
you can escape everything and come home and welcome love,
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welcome happiness and peace in your life. If I'm coming
home to a home that is unclean, that smells bad,
that is not decorated the way that I want it to,
I'm not happy. I have to go every day to
a job to provide for my family, and when when
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I come home, I'm still not happy. Right, something has
to give. Either I have to have a good job
and I come home to a home that I don't
necessarily like, or I have a job that I don't like,
but I know that it's paying for the home that
I'm going home to. I am an introvert and there
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are plenty of introverts out there. So what does that mean?
Does that mean we don't like people? Absolutely not. We
love people. But once I come home from work, I
require one hour of transition time, of peaceful time to myself. Now.
Can I take that time in the car, yes, but
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I want to take that time in my home. Okay.
Will you be okay with me walking through the door
and taking that transition time or when I walk through
the door, will you be immediately in my face with
we need this, we need that, this is going on,
that's going on. Okay, So that is something I have
to adjust to. I need to adjust to the fact
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that when I walk through the door, there's a family
on the other end of that door, whether it's children,
whether it's a wife. That is a change from being single.
Right when I walk through the door at this particular moment,
there is nothing on the other side but quiet, Right,
I'm not walking into a family that of rambunctious individuals.
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That takes time to get adjusting to. If you are
dealing with an extrovert, if you are dealing with an introvert.
You have to learn how to share that time and space.
Conflict resolution, that's another one. Once we have an argument,
Relationships will have disagreements. If your thing in your relationship
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will never have a disagreement, you are not in a
real relationship. We are two individuals from two completely different backgrounds.
We are gonna disagree on topics. That's normal. Let's stop
running from conflict and learn how to deal with the
conflict in a mature way. So now we're in separate homes.
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Once you get mad, Once I get mad, I leave
and I go to my own place where it's what quiet,
where it's peace, I can think. Once you give up
your own place and now you move in with me,
you get mad with me, I get mad with you,
there is nowhere to go. You're gonna go to the
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next room. I don't believe in leaving the home and
driving if you're upset. If we're getting to that point
where you must leave the home, we have bigger problems
to talk about, and we'll talk about conflict resolution for now.
We're talking about living together. So we have a conflict,
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we must now share the same space. Whether we're not
talking for an hour or two, a day or two,
we're still in the same space. How we deal with
that conflict and how long that tension lasts is very
apparent and it's very beneficial in the beginning. You do
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not want to learn this four, five, six years down
the line. You need to be learned in this in
the beginning, before you make that lifetime commitment. We're so
quick to want to put on rings and want to
say vals and want to have a wedding. We don't
have those conversations and go through those situations that make
our bond stronger. And that is what it is all about.
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It's all about building a tight bond beforehand, not during,
not after, not feeling like you made a mistake, and
living together provides you with that opportunity to go through
conflict resolution, to see how each person goes throughout their day,
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if a person wants their free time, if a person
is introverted and is okay being in a different room
but still being at home, or whether a person wants
you close to them, whether they're a physical touch, love
language type person and they always want to be near you,
want to be up under you. Those are things that
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people have to learn about each other to see if
I'm able to give you the love that you need
to be happy, and vice versa, if you can give
me the love that I need to be happy. Cleanliness
is next to godliness. Cleanliness should be important to everyone everyone. Now,
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there are levels to organization. There is a level called
OCD obsessive composive disorder to where everything needs to be
in a certain spot and if it's out of if
it's out of that spot, you're now unhappy. I'm not
talking about that level, right, but cleanliness is next to godliness,
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and that means your personal space, the home. You need
to see how people are living. You need to see
how people are taking care of themselves. Again, once we
have a date, once I invite you over, you invite
me over to your house. My assumption is you take
a shower, you take a bath. Now we're living together,
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we're not going on a date. It's normal routine. A
relationship is a routine. So now we're normal Tuesday, normal Wednesday.
You'd be surprised how many people don't shower daily, don't
shower every other day, only shower when they quote unquote
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have to. You need to find out when that have
to is living with someone removes the mask that we
all have that we all have when you start dating someone,
you need to bring that mask down for yourself and
for them as soon as possible, so then you can
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fairly start to assess if this is the person you
want to spend the rest of your life with. There
is nothing that will drop that mask quicker than living
with someone. Everyone is comfortable in their own space. You've
created it, whether it's your apartment, whether it's your home,
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whether it's a room that you rent. You are comfortable there.
It's set up the way you want it, and so
you drop that mask. You're no longer at work. You're
in your personal private space. And so once we start
to occupy that same space as a couple, it now
becomes comfort for both of us. Your comfort level is
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different than my comfort level. I need to see how
your comfort level is. So it's important. So this question
about should you be should you live together before marriage, Yes,
you'd be insane not to do that. You are taking
a chance on it being a one hundred and eighty
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degree change for you. I'm not. I'm in a relationship
with you for a year. We keep separate households, We
decide to get married, we get a place together. Okay,
whose furniture are we gonna keep? How are we gonna decorate?
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Do I get a room in the home? Do you
get a sheeshd? Do you get a man cave in
that home? How often do you deep clean? How often
do you straighten up? What is your idea of straightening up?
What is your idea of deep cleaning? When you go
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to bed at night? Do you leave dishes in the sink?
Do you use a dishwasher? Are you against using a dishwasher?
Do you vacuum? Do you like vacuum? Do you like
doing laundry? How often do you do laundry? Do you
fold your laundry right after you're done or do you wait?
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These are all things that you need to know about someone.
And again you shower? How long? How often do you
use a cloth? Do you just use a soap? Do
you just use water? Do you snore at night? When
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you wake up in the morning? Are you a happy person?
Are you a night out? Do you stay up all night?
Do you wake up early? When you wake up early?
Are you loud in the bed? Do you pull covers?
Are you hot at night? Are you cold at night.
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These may seem like superficial questions. These are very important
to knowing someone. We're very quick to say, oh, you
don't know me. If I don't know you, whose fault
is that? Whose fault is that? I am open to
learning you. You have to be willing to share. I'm
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not going to force information out of you. If you
want to be with me, if we're serious in our relationship,
I won't have to. You will openly share, You will
openly communicate. That is what communication is. Everyone talks about
communication like it's this mystery. Communication is just being open
and honest with how you decide to live your life,
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the decisions that you've made, and owning them, being accountable
for them. That's all. It is what you like to
do and what you don't like to do. So again,
living together, I get to know your habits. I get
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to establish my habits. Do I want to throw my
socks at the door when I walk in? Do I
want to take off my shoes when I walk in?
Am I culturally? Do I believe that walking in a
home with shoes is bad? These things are? Are? These?
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These things we can deal with when it's one day
a week, three days a week because we go back
to what we are comfortable with. But now, when you
have to compromise and someone really feels strongly about something
as simple as shoes in the home, is that a
deal breaker for you? A lot of people are not
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comfortable walking around in a home without shoes on. What's
the process for learning if you can? If you're able
to compromise and do that called living together, So yes,
you should, I recommend, and if you you are not,
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something is completely wrong. You should be living together before marriage.
It is something to get to know your partner in anything,
anything that is beneficial to you learning your significant other.
I am four. I am never against learning as much
as you can about someone. You will never know everything
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about a person, never, It's impossible because you don't know
what you don't know. But every attempt that you can
learn more you should be trying to achieve that. You
should be working for that. And so yes, living together
before marriage is something you should be doing. And if
you're not, something is wrong in that relationship. This has
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been Felix Black for the Feelings Black Podcast. Thank you
all for listening, thank you all for watching, and I
will see you all in the next episode.