Well, while Amy is away this week she asked me to do this week's post. I'm Andrew Rusbatch and I am the co-author of Save My Marriage Today and regular blogger on www.savemymarriagetoday.com/live. I have worked alongside Amy in dealing with relationship issues for a number of years. Many of you will know me as the guy in the How To Be Irresistible To Men video course, and if you flick up to the "About" tab at the top of the page, you will see a picture of me doing my best to smile and look sexy!

So when I was thinking about something interesting to write, one that came into my mind was thoughts about cohabitation and what sort of effect this has on relationships. Looking at the figures, around 4.9 million adult couples of the opposite sex live together unmarried. Compare this to around 400 000 couples 45 years ago, and we see a social trend that some social scientists believe is going to have significant effects on future marital disruption and spending habits of a major sector in our society. Heady stuff huh?

Let's be honest though, cohabitation is not something new to most people nowadays, though attitudes both for and against cohabitation are still quite strong. Moral rights campaigners indicate it is part of a slippery slope toward a new breed of society with scant regard to commitment, while others say it is a responsible trial-run for marriage, without the associated cost of divorce and asset separation. Is he, or isn't he, the-one?

I like to think of cohabitation as one of the many necessary steps in a relationship, and liken it to marriage with trainer-wheels. The belief that living together before marriage is a useful way to find out whether you are really compatible and avoid a bad marriage or costly divorce is now widespread among most young people. But it still has the capacity to teach us something…

I thought I knew a lot about my partner until I shifted in with them, and I understand they thought the same about me. Gee, was I in for a shock! I have lived with a couple of partners, the first being when I was around 21 years old. I rather foolishly assumed that being a girl she would have the same careful attention to detail around the home that my four older sisters did. I knew how to cook and clean, and there was nothing around the home that I did not know how to do. Living with a partner at that time really opened my eyes to how some people live, and I was horrified at the time to discover how different we really were. After living together for some time we both discovered that we were incompatible, and we parted company soon after. I called it my awakening, when I finally realized how different some of us can be from others. In that relationship a lot of long-held beliefs were shattered. However, I learnt a very valuable lesson.

When you don't live together, your partner only sees the side of you that you want them to see. They don't get to see you when you are grumpy, tired, sick, or your gross habits. I know, you will all say something here, but everyone has at least one gross habit, even if it is something as simple as leaving your long hair to block the sink or not rinsing the shower out after you have shaved your legs. Sometimes the smallest things can drive home the reality that your partner is not perfect and is a person like the rest of us after all.

So if you know so little about your partner, how can you possibly make a considered decision to spend the rest of your life together? Perhaps that's where cohabitation has a role to play.

They say falling in love with someone is a leap of faith. Depending on how well you know your love will determine how far this leap is. So is cohabitation a way of minimizing the risk of divorce, or is it seen as a cheap and easy alternative to marriage?

Well you need to start by going into it with your eyes wide open. Before shifting in with a man, consider why you are doing it. Is it because you want it, is it because it will make it more convenient, or is it the all-crucial "moving it to the next level"? Is this really marriage with trainer wheels? 

Women will analyze a situation and examine possible interpretations of what this move may mean and what implications this is going to have on the state of the relationship, both now and in the future. Most guys simply see it as somewhere pretty to stick your stuff and to be nurtured and don't think too much into the future.

So the question then comes, when is an appropriate time in a relationship for each of you to shed your independence and singledom and entertain the idea of cohabitation? 6 days into the relationship? 6 weeks? 6 months? 6 years even?

And do you think it leads to a stronger marriage?

I have to admit … I'm the giggly happy girl day-dreaming today. 🙂

I had a second date last night.   And my … what a second date it was.  A long walk along the beach, watching the sunset, holding hands, styrofoam cups of coffee finished off by a romantic Indian dinner for two.

It has been all the more fantastic for being unexpected.  I didn't think I would like the fellow at all.  We'd been chatting online for about a month, and when we talked on the phone for the first time last weekend we annoyed one another.  I thought he was arrogant; he thought I was rude.  I was ready to throw the towel in and not meet up, but he thought we should give it a go.  We had been chatting for so long, after all.

Thank goodness for that.

Sometimes the unexpected creates the most beautiful results.  I hadn't been expecting much from him; he hadn't been expecting much from me.  And as a result, what we found was something better than either of our expectations.  A connection.  A shared sense of humor.  Pleasure in one another's company.

I believe that one of the reasons that unexpected encounters yield such wonderful relationships is precisely because we have no expectations.  Neither of us has to live up to anything.  I accept him as he is; he accepts me as I am.  There's no pressure to be perfect or to not slip up.

When there are no expectations, we can simply be ourselves around one another.  We have the choice to like one another as we are or leave without guilt.  He doesn't have to like me any more than I have to like him.

And in this magical climate of no expectations, no pressure, and no pretending to be any better a person than we actually were, we looked at each other and liked what we saw.

Isn't that fantastic?

I've been going on a slew of blind dates from an online dating site recently.  It seems that every profile I put up attracts a different sort of person.  My last profile seemed to attract young, intense, focused entrepreneurs.  My current profile appears to have attracted intelligent artistic men.

It's strange how a online dating profile, like a resume, can highlight different aspects of yourself, each attractive to a different sort of guy.  My early efforts into online dating attracted a lot of immature young partiers.  I wasted hours chatting to men who lived so far away that we would never meet, and I spent ages composing carefully polite responses to men that I knew I'd never want to date.

Although I know much more than I did back then, my online dating efforts seem to follow the same pattern: I put up a profile, chat with a dozen or so guys, meet half of them, then end up with one really cool friend/romantic interest with whom I end up hanging out constantly for the next six months.

I tend to get discouraged with online dating sites.  It's like the old adage: "Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink."  There are so many men online, but finding someone you click with is hit or miss.  The effort involved in answering emails and sorting through "winks" can become too much when coupled with work and social activities.   After a month online, I end up removing my profile and spending more time on me rather than dating.

The great thing with taking a break from online dating is that when you get back into it, you have fresh enthusiasm.  I recreate my profile from scratch every time, with different photos, so that I can meet different sorts of people.  My most successful profile was when I was moving to a new country and men lined up to show me around.

Why was that particular profile so successful?  I think it was because men had a reason to meet me that wasn't to suss out the romantic possibilities.  Even if they weren't particularly attracted to me, they felt a friendly obligation to welcome me to the area and did it with pleasure.

And when romance happened, it struck without warning.  A friendly fellow thought that it would be a laugh to meet this traveler for a drink and a chat, and the attraction was immediate.  We ended up having a wonderful six-month relationship.

So what does that suggest about online dating?  That perhaps a better approach to meeting than the first casual coffee date is to meet one another for a reason.  Maybe he is into kayaking, and you'd like to learn.  Maybe your favorite museum has a new exhibit, and he doesn't know much about art.

When one of you has something to share, and the other one is willing to learn, then a friendly ground is established that promises that the date will be a positive experience with no pressure. 

I am always wary of online profiles that state that Bachelor or Bachelorette X is seeking for their soulmate.  We're ALL looking for our soulmate.  But I don't want to meet a possible online match knowing that I'm going to be immediately rejected if I don't fit his vision of the perfect mate.

I think that men feel this way, too.  Men will want to meet you if they think from your profile that they're going to have a great time chatting with you.  If they sense that your only purpose in being online is to find the guy of your dreams, then they may not want to put themselves up for rejection.

At any rate, I've had a couple of nice chats with lovely men.  No sparks yet, but I don't have any expectations.  I'm simply enjoying the experience of dating.

I didn't recognize him at first.  We walked into the hostel and glanced in the bar on our way up to the room.  There were a couple of guys drinking there.  "Is that your friend?" Daryn asked me.

I looked, but their backs were to us.  "I don't know.  I said I'd meet him at his room."

We went up to the second story of the hostel and knocked, but no one was in the room.  "Maybe they were in the bar," Daryn said.  So we trooped down again.

As we walked into the bar, the first guy in a white striped shirt turned around and smiled.  "Well, hello!"

Yep, it was him.

It's so surreal to meet someone that you had a fling with, years later, in a different country, when both of your lives are so different.  I'd met Ben (not his real name) back when I was working in a winery, sorting grapes for the harvest.  He was full of energy and enthusiasm for the wine industry, and he introduced me to the artsy wine bar scene.  At the time he was living in a fantastic house with a hot tub on the deck and a game room complete with pool table, wine cellar, and wide-screen television, where I watched Sex and the City for the first time.

Even though we only knew each other for a few months, I was always grateful to him for showing me what big city life could be like.  We zipped through Portland in his yellow convertible and browsed organic vegetables, Doc Marten shoes, Nike pedometers.  The city seemed full of possibilities, potential, and fascinating people I had yet to meet.

Meeting him here, so far from home, brought back memories of Portland.  It seemed strange not to remember our relationship as vividly as I remembered the city itself, its feel, its energy.  What I felt wasn't nostalgia for him but rather for the sense of possibility I felt at that time and place: the culture of youth, the celebration of being alive, and the promise of bright careers ahead.

So many of my past relationships have been like that.  When I think back on them with nostalgia, what I remember most isn't him and me, but rather the feelings I had at that point in my life.  For example, when I think of my first love, I remember how excited and aware I felt as I experienced the beauty of those emotions for the first time.  Yet the years have faded his face in my memory.

I realize that my journey through love has not been a journey from lover to lover, but rather a journey through myself.  Each relationship has taught me new ways of appreciating life.  My romantic history is not one of winning and losing but rather of seeing through ever-renewed eyes.

Each relationship expands my sense of who I can be as I learn to enjoy his hobbies, understand his world view, take pleasure in his tastes, respond to his rhythms.  I'm not leaving behind my self: I'm becoming greater than I was before.

If we limit our lives to what we like, to how we think, to what we want, then we're keeping ourselves constricted in a tight cage of identity.  Loving gives us the gift of opening up our cages and allowing us to dissolve our singularity into something greater.

Even when he leaves us, or we leave him, we carry part of him with us: the way he thought, his mannerisms, his favorite books or music or shops.  We can appreciate more of life because he shared his world with us.

Yet, last night, I didn't share these thoughts with Ben.  Instead, we chatted and drank and caught up with stories until it was time to go home.  I promised to give him a call next time I was in Portland, and he promised he'd be back this way again.

And instead of thinking about him on the way home, I simply thought of Portland and how wonderful it will be to experience the city again.