It depends on the couple, which doesn’t give any answers lol… but I think it really does depend

Living together before marriage has a way of bringing out everyone’s true habits and true nature, and that is what makes it hard. Any problem that arise before you adjust to living together, such as one being messier than the other and not pulling their weight with the chores, will get sorted out before you get married and won’t put a damper on the newly wedded bliss.

I’ve seen many couples who lived together before marriage break up because the woman always wanted to get married and thought it would happen once they’d been living together for a while but the man never wanted to get married. So before you move in with anyone…you better have a strong foundation.

If only they’d discussed how they felt about marriage before they moved in together, sure they would probably have still broken up, but at least they wouldn’t have spent so much time on a relationship that wasn’t going to last, and wouldn’t have had the added hassle of changing living arrangements when they broke up. So personally I think it’s dangerous to move in together without first discussing your views on marriage.

But if the couple have discussed marriage and agree it’s something you both want and you both want to live together first then I don’t see any problem with it. If both of you already sure you want to get married, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. But I think how good an idea it is depends somewhat on how old you are, whether you’ve both lived away from your parents already or not, and how much time you’ve actually spent together as a couple given it’s an LDR. If you’ve both always lived with your parents and haven’t spent a lot of time together in person then it would be a good idea to live on your own or with friends closer to each other so that you can learn to live on your own and spend more time together before you move in together. But that’s just my personal view.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use living together as a test of your relationship. I think that if you’re not already sure that you’re right for each other and can make it work then there’s too big a chance that it won’t work and you’ll break up and you’d be better off not moving in together (at least until those doubts are gone).

As for myself, I moved in with my gf (That was 10 years ago anyway). Ironically, my reason for doing that was none of the above. I did not think too much (I was young and innocent thenJ) because what I wanted was to save living cost since we both live far from our families then. Fortunately, we did not have any major relationship problem after that and got married 2 years later.