Will You Move In With Me?

These days is is generally accepted that a couple should live together before they swap vows. How else can they know if they are compatible? It's part of the stages of a relationship: flirting, dating, spending time at each other's place, moving in, engaged, and finally marriage. But doesn't splitting a relationship into stages ruin a relationship? Perhaps it gets too predictable, too mathematical. You lose that spontaneous spark that drew you together in the first place. 

Now the main problem that people have in these stages is shacking up with your partner. It is debated whether you should wait until you are married before living together, or whether you should gradually move in together rather than leaping into unknown waters all at once.  But what is best?

Of course there are pros to living together, most significantly the ability to get to know each other's quirks, habits and lazy behaviors. If you find that you're constantly nagging your boyfriend to pick his socks up off the floor, you might find you don't want to live with someone who keeps your room a mess. Equally if your girlfriend is too lazy to wipe the milk off the side when she spills it, you might want to look elsewhere. It's all good practice for your life together after marriage, not to mention the financial relief from renting one home rather than two. After all, you don't buy a car without test driving it first, right?

You might be reading this thinking "that sounds brilliant" - an excellent compatibility test. Or you might be reflecting on your own habits and wondering whether the magic will still be there after three months under the same roof. Because that is the real problem. It's not about the compatibility of a couple, or about money, or even about convenience. It's about making or breaking a relationship. 

It is different after marriage. Yes it's true that divorce means less now than it did fifty years ago, but it still ties two people together in a strong (legal) bond. People are more willing to fight for their love when they are married over simply living together. If the spark is gone, most couples will try to bring it back or create a new one. On the other hand, two housemates who disagree or lose their sense of romance can simply pack up and walk out. It is easier to forget the reason why you started the relationship in the first place when stuff starts to piss you off. After all, you could have loads of girlfriends; there are plenty more fish in the sea. 

Because of this, some people, and increasingly in young adults, are less willing to move in first. They would rather keep it a surprise for later on, when they're all loved up in the honeymoon period. It's a huge step to co-sign a lease or a mortgage, and in legal essence could mimic a marriage contract. After all its a bit of paper and a signature... 

A 26 year old friend of mine who has just broken up from a ten year relationship was chatting to me about this. He had been living with his girlfriend since university, and she had just given him an ultimatum: put a ring on it or get lost. It wasn't that he didn't want too marry her. On the contrary he would have married her for sure, but he just wasn't ready yet. And it dawned on him that after living with her for so long, he felt as if he had indeed been married for ten years. 

So in the end living together can be great for some couples, those who are on the same page in their relationship, those who are ready to get married. But for some people, it ruins the relationship completely. Personally, I feel that each relationship has its own unique algorithm, its own stages to a happily ever after, and for some that doesn't include moving in before marriage. You just need to decide what works best for yours. 

Is Sense Experience Really Objective?

A table is a table. A chair is a chair. A banana is yellow and a pear is green. Or is everything completely jumbled up? Does someone else see a banana like a table and a chair like a pear? Do we hear what we want to hear and see only what we already know? 

There is a difference between experiencing the world as we know it and understanding the world objectively. It is an interesting idea that we can only observe our surroundings through the filter of our senses such as smell, color perception and touch. Everything that you or I have smelled, seen and touched has been filtered through hundreds of thousands of cognitive processes in the brain. Therefore, the subjective experience of the world around us is unique to each person. 

When you really think about it, do you see the same color as your friend? The subjective appreciation of the color red for example may vary from person to person. But how could you possibly know? The only way would be to somehow observe the universe through the conscious lens of another person. Unfortunately technology is not yet, if ever, advanced enough to project the sense experience of one person into the mind of another. 

In other words, the world we experience can only be sensed through the brain, and therefore can only be interpreted subjectively. Perhaps then the world does not exist at all, but only exists on an imaginary plane in the mind. But since the universe appears to be coherent and intelligent beyond ourselves, can we just assume that it is impossible to learn of the true objective quality of the universe?

This question of an ideal to strive to learn links to Plato's world of the forms. Plato suggested that there were two planes of existence. The first is the Material world wherein sensory perception and material forms exist, and the second is the Noumenal world, wherein abstract ideas such as love and hatred as well as the perfect ideals of material forms exist. Plato said that there is a journey that one must walk, learning the forms of mathematics, justice and beauty, to finally learn the form of the Good, that which he said was the most true ideal. 

This leads one to wonder if these ideas are somehow linked; if we can learn the objectivity of maths and scope beyond our subjective reasoning to find the ideal forms of justice and true beauty, then perhaps then the form of the good and the true objective quality of the universe become one. 

Can Spirituality be Non-Denominational?

This is a prominent question in today's life with all the different things going on in the world at the moment. So many people would love to know if the troubles that we as one people face, such as the threats of Libya, North Korea and Al Quaeda, might be easier and perhaps non-existent if the human sense of spirituality was totally non-denominational. That is to say that all faith was not centered around a religion but an individual core belief. 

But is it possible for human nature to drop ties with religious denominations and follow their own faith? And how similar would people's core beliefs be in comparison with each other?

In theory, yes. Spirituality can be non-denominational. After all, these denominations and religions are man-made, and are created through spirituality. They cannot trap spirituality in a inescapable bond, or they themselves would be bound in return. Spirituality is the very essence of religion, faith, belief. And people experience this in different ways. 

However, the question must be asked whether humanity as a whole is able to forget about the man-made denominations and work individually each to his own belief. Why did man create denominations to begin with? Denominational laws divide the masses between good and bad behavior according to a perceived identical faith, and to begin with this seems simple enough. But what about when you reach further within and find anomalies within a denomination? 

For example, the Catholic Church is against gay marriage, saying the act of sodomy is against the will of God. Therefore any gay Roman Catholics must remain chaste their entire lives if they are to follow their denomination of choice. One might argue that those people would simply leave the Catholic Church and follow a different denomination of Christianity which is more accepting of their sexual orientation. This leads me on to another point which I have to hold for a second. 

What about those who have no choice to be in a religion, those who are born within some fundamental denomination who cannot leave it? They may not agree with the rules upheld by other members of their denomination but there is nothing they can do to change it. Therefore these anomalies in a denomination show that the identical faith spoken of cannot be real. Everyone's ideal of spirituality is different and shows that under the right circumstances spirituality can and possibly needs to be non-denominational. 

And I can now return to my point. Why should the gay Catholic go to follow a different Christian denomination if they feel that overall they are more in tune with the traditional teachings of the catholic church? Why must they follow any denomination at all if they understand which moral rules and teachings they believe in? It should be simple for people to march alone following their own unique concept of spirituality, but for some reason most people just cannot.

Let's take a closer look at human behavior then. School is the perfect example. When a student arrives at a school they are categorized into a group according to their interests, fashion sense, looks, and intelligence. Therefore a pretty, sporty, sociable girl will quickly be shoved into the popular group. Her main topics of conversation with her friends will likely be fashion, films and boys. But what if she secretly loves watching Battlestar Galactica? If her friends knew, she would be tossed from the group because after all a sci-fi loving nerd doesn't belong with the popular kids. So what does the girl do? What would most insecure teenagers do? Keep it a secret. She would rather be in a group of people who share other similar interests with her rather than brave it and take on High School on her own, free to follow all of her interests without judgement. 

Do you see the pattern here? 

Spirituality can be and sometimes is non-denominational for people. But the majority of people just aren't brave enough to follow their own instincts with their faith. They're just too insecure that without denominational guidelines they'll stray from their spiritual path and get lost in a tangle of incorrect beliefs. However, in my opinion you just have to risk it. I understand completely that people feel more comfortable part of a community where they share most beliefs or interests with the rest of the denomination, but I have also grown up believing that everyone is unique. Therefore they should not categorize themselves within a group where their whole personality cannot be expressed.