Cohabiting has become the norm in modern society. Around some
80% of Americans prepare for marriage by cohabitating. Logically there are some
reasons that cohabiting may sound appealing. Many believe that
1 1. It is a “test run”
to marriage. You can have a trial before the risks are too high
2 2. It is a test of commitment
3 3. If it fails, it is less painful because there
was less invested emotionally and financially
4 4.You can get to know the person better
5 5. It is convenient to live together
The belief that
cohabitation is a good way to see how committed a person is and to see if a
marriage would work out is a myth!! There is no research done to support either
of those ideas. Cohabiting is not an accurate test run for marriage because
the level of commitment is simply not the same. When a couple is married, they
bring together all of their resources and it becomes both of theirs. When a
couple cohabits, they often have separate bank accounts, separate cars and
their own personal items that are “your” and “mine”. When a couple cohabitates
they commit physically to each to each other and spend more time together but
they DO NOT commit to changing their identity to “us”. It is still very much a
“yours” and “mine” relationship. In contrast of this, when a couple gets
married, the woman gives up her last name signifying that they are coming
together as one. They also become financially responsible for each other and
learn how to spend and save their money. They must work together and form
common goals such as buying a house, finding job opportunities or having children.
The man and his family and the women and her family come together with the marriage
union. This kind of unity does not occur with cohabitation. One of the reasons
people cohabitate as listed above is because if it fails, they can easily get
out of the relationship. The level of commitment is just not the same as a
marriage. It is true that cohabitation might be more convenient for a couple
and that you might get to know a person better, but you do not accurately get
to see how life would be if you were married to that person. In fact those who
cohabitate before marriage “are at higher risk for problems and breakups. In
spite of the logic of the arrangement, there is nothing to suggest that
cohabitation yields the benefits that people expect from it” (Lauer and Lauer
Marriage and Family: The Quest For Intimacy 2012). Let’s take a look at the
facts.
- · Married couples report greater happiness, less depression, higher levels of commitment to the relationship, and better relationships with parents (Kurdek 1991; Nock 1995; Skinner et al. 2002).
- · Married couples have a better-quality relationship than do cohabiting couples, particularly than those cohabitating couples who do not plan on marrying (Brown and Booth 1996; Dush. Cohan, and Amato 2003).
- · A women is 9 times more likely to be killed by a partner in a cohabitating than a married relationship (Shackelford and Mouzos 2005; Brown and Bulanda 2008).
- · Those who cohabit have more health problems and poorer health behavior than those who are married (Fuller 2010).
- · Married couples report more sex and more satisfying sex (Popenoe and Whitehead 1999)
- · Marital unions are more stable and durable than cohabiting unions (Binstock and
- · A study in the Journal of Family Psychology found that about 19 percent of those who cohabited before getting engaged had later suggested divorce compared with just 12 percent of those who moved in together only after getting engaged and 10 percent of participants who did not cohabit prior to getting married.
- · Children born to cohabiting parents are 5 times more likely that those born to married parents to experience parental separation; the instability is higher for whites than for black or Hispanic children (Osborn, Manning, and Smock 2007).
- · Cohabiting-parent families spend more than married-parent families on alcohol and tobacco but less on education (DeLeire and Kalil 2005).
- · Those who cohabit before marriage exhibit poorer marital problem-solving skills and are less supportive of each other than those who did not cohabit (Cohan and Klienbaum 2002).
- · The rate of infidelity is higher among couples who cohabited before marriage than those who did not (Forste and Tanfer 1996).
- · National surveys conclude that those who cohabit before marriage have a marriage of lesser quality and are far more likely to perceive the possibility of divorce than those who do not cohabit (Dush, Cophan, and Amato 2003; Jose, O’Leary, and Moyer 2010).
- · The divorce rate is particularly high among serial cohabiters; women who have multiple cohabitations before they marry are twice as likely to divorce as those who cohabit once with eventual husbands (Lichter and Qian 2008)
The research is clear, although majority of Americans are cohabiting, it is NOT an effective way to test out a marriage nor will it lead to a happy and healthy marriage. It may seem only logical to cohabit, but the studies have shown that they do not bring the benefits that people expect them to. The most successful marriages come when a couple waits until marriage to move in together.
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