Annie’s Mailbox: Don’t rush into cohabitation

Dear Annie: I’m 23. When I graduated college last May, I decided to take a year off to travel before going to graduate school. I was determined not to date because I knew I’d be moving away soon. Of course, life didn’t go as planned. I fell in love with one of my summer co-workers, “Shawn.” We get along great, have common interests and values, and are very happy together. We’ve been a couple since last August, and we became engaged two weeks ago.

Shawn is 34, but I’ve always found guys my age to be rather immature. I’ve decided where I want to attend graduate school in the fall, and it’s about six hours away from where I live now. Shawn is planning to find a job in the same city.

Shawn and I spend nearly all of our free time together and often sleep over at each other’s places. It doesn’t make sense to us to pay rent for two apartments. However, I’ve read that living together before marriage isn’t good for the marriage, so we are talking about getting married right before we move.

My parents think we should wait a year and live separately during that time. What do you think? Are we moving too fast? Is it bad to live together first? – Anna in Boston

Dear Anna: Living together generally doesn’t create a problem when there already is a firm commitment in place, and you have that. However, we do think you are moving a bit on the quick side. You’ve known Shawn less than a year. Please don’t rush this because you are trying to save money on rent.

Dear Annie: The males in my church are stuck in a 90-year-old farm tradition. At family functions, the men go through the buffet line first, then the women, then the children. It is quite discouraging for the young women to see their passive parents allowing this to continue. We women do all the preparation and cleanup, with the added insult that we eat after the men.

The crazy thing is, away from their peers, these guys work in the home, from changing diapers to food prep and cleanup. How do we young women convince the older ones to lead by example and quit this silly tradition that goes back to the days when the men earned their bread out in the fields? – Hoping for Help in Vancouver

Dear Hoping: Ah, chauvinism, alive and well. You need to discuss this tradition with the older women and with your husbands. Enlist at least one of them to take the initiative and bring some women into the buffet line at the next church event. We’re betting that once it happens, people will wonder why it took so long.