Not long ago, if you were in a committed relationship, you got married. Now, many couples live together for years and never tie the knot. What approach is better?

There’s no one answer, because lots of factors go into making a good decision. Marriage is many different things: your primary emotional and sexual relationship; a legal status with complex financial and practical implications; a religious commitment; and a social indicator. How to weight each factor is up to you and your partner.

Your life stage

If you’re planning to have children, that’s a strong argument for getting married. Parenting is hard; there’ll be times when you’ll be tempted to walk out the door. Having a legal commitment slows down breakups and motivates you to work on your differences. Unless there’s addiction or a lot of conflict between parents, it’s better for kids to have the stability of both parents together in the home. Being married makes that more likely.

Or, one or both of you may have children from previous relationships. How would your new marriage affect them?

If your kids are still children, move slowly. Let them get to know your new partner before moving in together or getting married. Since kids need stability, you want to be as sure as you can that your new relationship will last and your partner will treat them well.

If your kids are grown, it’s a different conversation. How will you balance your kids and your new partner, particularly in your estate planning? Some later-in-life couples opt to live together without marrying in order to keep their estates separate.

How it feels on the inside

Making a commitment to another person involves tradeoffs. When you get married, you sacrifice some of your independence and flexibility, but you gain security, stability and love. This can be complicated emotionally. Some people are terrified of feeling “trapped”; others feel much calmer and safer knowing they and their partner will be together through thick and thin.

What’s true for your partner? What’s true for you?

How you feel about this partly stems from your family of origin. For good or ill, your parents’ marriage gives you an internal template for what marriages are like. That can be comforting or terrifying.

But your relationship won’t necessarily mimic your parents’, especially if you’re willing to learn from their experience. Look closely at what elements of their relationship worked, what didn’t, and the emotional impact all that had on you. Then you’ll have a clearer picture about both your family patterns and how you might need to act differently in order to have a better relationship.

Besides thinking about what marriage means to you in general, envision life with this particular partner. How well suited are the two of you? What are likely to be the friction points in your relationship? Do your life goals align? No two people are a perfect fit, but you should go into marriage confident that the problem areas are small ones.

What does your gut say about all this? Try to explain the feelings in the mix to your partner, and listen thoughtfully when they share theirs.

Out in the world

Being married gives your relationship a status that living together doesn’t. Sure, some marriages are hasty and short-lived, and some living-together relationships are solid for decades. Still, “spouse,” “wife,” and “husband” have different impact than “girlfriend,” “boyfriend,” or even “partner.”

For some people, religious views factor heavily into a marriage decision. If your faith or your partner’s places a lot of emphasis on marriage, that matters. If one of you values marriage for religious reasons and the other doesn’t, be sure to talk about the role faith will have in your married life, especially if you have children. You don’t have to agree about the details of religion, but you should agree on how you’ll handle it as a couple.

Legal and financial

Important as the emotional and social aspects are, marriage is also a legal arrangement with lots of financial implications. On the plus side, getting married may make you eligible for benefits through your spouse’s employer. But there are other factors to consider.

If you’re on the fence about getting legally married, the two of you might talk to an accountant and/or an attorney about financial and legal pros and cons.

As a therapist, I see the legal and financial realities of marriage playing out in two important areas: ongoing money management and what happens when tragedy strikes.

Financial styles. How well do you and your partner agree about money? If the two of you are far apart in your financial styles, you’re likely to have trouble in your relationship. Once you’re married, you have financial responsibility for each other. This person could ruin your credit rating.

Talk with your partner at length about how you’ll handle money once you’re married. Will you pool all or most of your income? Will each of you also keep a personal bank account? If so, what sorts of things will you use it for? Who’ll pay which bills? If one earns more than the other, does that person have more control over the money? (Pro tip: In healthy relationships, both partners have an equal voice.) What if one person loses a job? What if one of you wants to reduce work hours for family reasons? This can be tough to talk about, but it’s super-important.

Illness and death: If one spouse is hospitalized, the other will be able to visit, no questions asked. But if you’re not legally married, the hospital might not let you in. They don’t want to assess how serious or long your relationship has been; they have to follow laws about patient privacy. If you remain unmarried, you’d need to take legal steps to be sure you could be there in a crisis.

Similarly, a spouse is likely to be entitled to at least some of the other spouse’s estate. That’s not true for living-together couples. Consult an attorney about how to include each other in your wills.

Clearly, there are a lot of elements to consider before you head to the altar. But the more you’ve thought them through and discussed them with your partner, the more likely the two of you will have a strong relationship, married or not.

Jill Whitney is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Old Lyme who blogs about relationships at KeepTheTalkGoing.com.