From a perspective of lasting marriage, it is not a good idea. This is the consensus of marriage researchers. I know that there are many of those who feel that premarital cohabitation is a great idea, but the facts do not bear this out. Here are the facts along with sources:
http://divorce.lovetoknow.com/Divorce_Statistics_and_Living_Together
According to statistics gathered by US Attorney Legal Services, living together before getting married doesn't accomplish the goal that couples think that it will. A couple who does not live together prior to getting married has a 20 percent chance of being divorced within five years. If the couple has lived together beforehand, that number jumps to 49 percent.
http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/blogs/testing-testing-how-does-living-together-affect-marriage
Contrary to popular wisdom, though, cohabiting relationships tend to be less stable than marriages, and marriages in which people cohabited together prior to the wedding tend to be less stable than those in which the partners did not cohabit. How could it be that spending more time with your partner is detrimental to the relationship? As you might imagine, it depends on who is doing the spending and how that time is being spent.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/201407/should-you-move-in-together-or-not
Concerns about pre-marital cohabitation may be legit. Substantial evidence associates cohabitation with negative relationship outcomes. Pre-marital cohabitation is viewed as a risk factor for divorce as it predicts later marital instability, poorer marriage quality, and less relationship satisfaction (Kamp, Dush, Cohan, & Amato, 2003; Stanley et al., 2004).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2157371/Does-living-marriage-make-likely-divorce.html
No surprise then that an American survey conducted in 2001 found that around two-thirds of twentysomethings believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.
Except that, according to psychologists, it doesn’t necessarily work like that. On the contrary, several studies show that couples who live together before marriage are actually more rather than less likely to split up once they do tie the knot.
On top of that, couples who lived together before they married report lower levels of satisfaction afterwards. So what’s going wrong?
