free rommy New York → Kansas City → San Francisco → Stockholm → Berlin

It's one of those Swedish 'not really a noun or a verb but both' words (like fika).  You can be 'sambo' (living with someone) or you can have a 'sambo' (someone with whom you live).

Many in Sweden are sambo.  Often times they're sambo and with child.*  Society doesn't shun those that are sambo, nor do they shun those who are sambo with children.  It's an accepted way of life, and in a very secular part of the country, few flinch at the prospect of finding a sambo life partner and having children with them.

I find this to be a very agreeable lifestyle, as do the Swedes.  Sambos are often like married couples, but often times they seem to me to be so much more in love with each other.  Perhaps it's because most of them are young, or perhaps it's because none have them have been tainted by the outrageous institution of marriage.

I will never understand the institution of marriage; this concept that some higher power (whether it be a deity or a court of law) makes a union between two people sacred; that the sanctity of love is somehow bound to a piece of paper that is further bound to some spiritual connection to some vague omnipotent being.

Whatever happened to faith and trust between two people?  Aren't these two things the very foundation of love, and the strongest and purest bond that two people can have?

It's hardly an idealistic viewpoint. If two people should fall out of love is that a bad thing?  Is it not the case that marriage sites more reasons for needlessly staying in a relationship devoid of love because of some faded promise made years before?  In fact, isn't marriage an overly idealistic and unrealistic concept?  Have people lost such touch with reality that they would sooner stay in an idealistic but misplaced perception of marriage rather than seeking out reason and parting ways?

Where was I going with this?

Oh yeah, I need to find a sambo to help me split rent.

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*I always wanted an opportunity to say 'with child' and I found one.  BOOYA!