LIW''s and cohabitation statistics

[Independent Gal]

Did anyone else see this article in The Economist magazine last week about statistical trends in marriage in America? The whole thing is interesting but there was a part that I thought might be particularly interesting to LIW''s. Stastics don''t describe every relationship of course! They just speak to probabilities.

Here is the URL from which this text is taken:

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9218127

And here is the part I thought you''d find interesting:

"...on average the children of co-habiting couples do worse by nearly every measure. One reason is that such relationships are less stable than marriages. In America, they last about two years on average. About half end in marriage. But those who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce.

...Two-thirds of American children born to co-habiting parents who later marry will see their parents split up by the time they are ten. Those born within wedlock face only half that risk.

The likeliest explanation is inertia, says Scott Stanley of the Centre for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, Colorado. Couples start living together because it is more fun (and cheaper) than living apart. One partner may see this as a prelude to marriage. The other—usually the man—may see it as something more temporary. Since no explicit commitment is made, it is easier to drift into living together than it is to drift into a marriage. But once a couple is living together, it is harder to split up than if they were merely dating. So “many of these men end up married to women they would not have married if they hadn''t been living together,” says Mr Stanley, co-author of a paper called “Sliding versus deciding”. "

 

[rockzilla]

I think these statistics are interesting but, you have to remember, they are all backwards-looking. That is, a lot of the data dates back from the 70s or even the 80s.

Since society has evolved a lot since then, the profile of your average cohabiting couple 30 years ago would likely be quite different from one today. Thus, it is difficult to use this data to predict, going forward, what will happen to these marriages/families.

One thing I think that is fairly consistent though, is education. The most highly educated people have the most stable families, generally speaking.

just my .02

RZ

 

[neatfreak]

These stats are very misleading if you look at the more recent research that has come out on this topic. I love the Economist, but when I saw this article, I felt like they really didn''t do their research.

There''s a lot more to explaining some of these stats, which aren''t wrong per se, but are often misconstrued as they have been here.

 

[Pandora II]

It's a very interesting topic.

As someone who has lived with 4 different people I think that it does make it much harder to leave a relationship that isn't quite right. You have a lot more tied up in each other's lives and general laziness doesn't help. I stayed with people much longer than I should have because I couldn't face the thought of having to find a new apartment

I think this affects a lot of people - also the fact that you become accustomed to the other person and that forms a bond that is more to do with habit than love.

Before I met FI I swore that I was going to get to know someone well as a friend before I went out with them, and not move in till I was sure. Well, we started dating within hours of meeting and I moved in after 4 months - I was sure he was the one from the beginning. I made it very clear from the day we met that I was looking for a serious relationship and that marriage and children were non negotiables.

I just asked FI if he would have asked me to marry him if I hadn't made this very clear. He said No, he would have been quite happy just living with me. He's very happy he's marrying me, but it's not something he would have initiated because he doesn't really see that he needs some piece of paper to say that he loves me.

I was very influenced by "Why Men Marry Some Women and Not Others". They made it clear that women who marry do so because they insist in the majority of cases. The first couple of times I laid the ground rules out - ie I was not getting younger, I was not giving an ultimatum, but he should be very clear that I had a mental timeline and I would leave because I would not be happy without children and I would not have children outside of marriage - I was shaking inside. Afterwards I felt really proud as I had managed to articulate my needs and the world had not come to an end.

I know a lot of women feel that it should all be super-romantic and the man should just be dying to propose - but it's just not the case for most people, and that's okay, it doesn't make your relationship bad. 99% of the guys I know who have been somewhat coerced into the proposal suddenly become superkeen and romantic once it's a done deed.

I think the statistics are superskewed by the "well, we may as well get hitched" or the "oh well, now we've got a kid we'd better make it legal" groups. I'd be interested to know what the statistics are like for those who co-habit with the intention of getting married from the start.

My personal take on co-habiting is that it's good to know if you are compatible before the wedding. FI and I are both obsessive introverts with serious needs for time for projects, reading and playing with computers - we give each other that space willingly. My BIL is the same as us, but sadly my sister is a needy extrovert with no hobbies or interests who likes to go out a lot - she feels constantly ignored, bored and rejected and her husband is always stressed because he gets no peace or downtime. They are deeply incompatible and frankly very unhappily married.

 

[Independent Gal]

Neatfreak: That wouldn't surprise me, since statistics are so often abused. However, the article from which they are taking the data is from last year:

Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Markman, H. J. (2006). Sliding vs. Deciding: Inertia and the premarital cohabitation effect. Family Relations, 55, 499 - 509.

But that article might, in turn, be based on old or badly analysed data. I'll see if I can find it. (Can you tell I'm procrastinating?)

Pandora: If these data are in fact correct, then I would bet a LOT that they are skewed in the way you suggest. That's how the author was casting it too. If a couple is clear that marriage is what they are looking for before they move in, I bet there's no effect on divorce rates. Maybe it even improves a couple's chances. That wouldn't surprise me. The article is about 'sliders' vs. 'deciders', so if there is deciding going on beforehand, i bet it has no effect, or a good effect.

 

[Independent Gal]

Here's the link to an early draft of the authors' original paper (2005):

http://www.prepinc.com/main/docs/inertia%20theory.pdf

I'm going to poke through it...

 

[Independent Gal]

That's a really interesting article (the sliding vs. deciding one I attached the pdf link for). Highly recommended. I've no expertise in this area, so I can't judge how sound his analysis is, but it's certainly chock full of interesting ideas. Kind of makes me want to learn more about research on marriage in general.

One interesting fact: apparently, there's no statistical difference in relationship quality measures between those who move in together AFTER getting engaged but before actually getting married and those who move in together only after actually getting married. So it's not a pre-marital issue per se.

The article suggests strongly that mismatched expectations about what moving in together 'means' is a huge factor, which would seem to support what Pandora was saying. If both know they are heading for marriage OR splitsville, that helps a lot.

Also: "“For premarital cohabitation, the difference in the interpersonal commitment level of the males, but not the females of the couples who did live together prior to marriage and those who did not was striking. This suggested the probability of a subgroup of couples who cohabited prior to marriage where the males were always less dedicated to their female partners, with this difference continuing on into marriage” pp. 22-23.

 

[Kit]

FWIW, all this research is what the US Govt based its 1996 welfare reform on. They now devote federal dollars--that''s right, your taxes--to promoting marriage among very poor, mostly African American, single moms. The thought is, well if "these people" could just get married, then we would see positive outcomes for them and their kids. Great idea!

A fine example of questionable research driving bad public policy.

 

[Independent Gal]

Just to preface this: as I said, I don't have the expertise or familarity with his data to give an informed evaluation, but the data he is using is overwhelmingly gathered in the past 5 or so years and is peer reviewed, based on both longitudinal studies and focus groups. So, this is not the research the federal government was using. Mind you, a recent study of studies (haha!) in Nature (I think) found that about half of studies are wrong.

I agree that it is extremely foolish to suggest that all of America's social problems would magically be solved if only people would get married, but that is not at all what this article is about! The question the author asks is: why does the data overwhelmingly suggest that statistically, people who live together and THEN get married have a lot more trouble STAYING married and being happy and treating each other well? So, this isn't 'hey! everyone would be happier if they got married!' but 'hey! how come this particularly group seems to be (stastically) LESS happy when they finally do get married?'

That's something I happen to be curious about, given I'm about to move in with my FF when we get engaged. And it sounds like his hypothesis is a good one. In a much oversimplified nutshell:

When a couple moves in together without a mutual understanding of what 'moving in together' means (e.g., he enjoys being around her and thinks 'whatever', but she thinks this is a step toward marriage), they end up in a situation where 'moving out' has costs which are much higher than simply breaking up. Hence, they are more likely to drift into marriage in cases where the guy probably wouldn't have married the girl if they hadn't already been living together. In those situations, the guy is often much less committed to the relationship in the first place and hence much less willing to make sacrifices, work through problems, etc. Interestingly, girls are statistically more willing to make sacrifices even when they are NOT completely committed to the relationship (which he says is perhaps a matter of socialization). As a result, these situations end up being very dangerous for women.

But couples that go into pre-marital cohabitation with a strong, verbalized commitment to each other, all else being equal, do much better.

He spends a lot of time looking at a variety of other explanations too, in case people are interested.

 

[hikerchick]

I wonder about unaccounted for variables that are inherent in the "Types" of people who make certain "types" of decisions.
For examples, how likely is someone who wouldn''t live together before marriage to actually make the decision to get out of an uphappy marriage? Maybe the kinds of people who would live together before marraige would also be more likely to get out of an unhappy marriage rather than stay in it? I say this because these same sort of stats are thrown around to justify arranged marraige in my culture. The overwhelming stats show that people who have traditional arranged marraiges are HUGELY more likely to stay married than those of us who "fall" in love and choose our own mates. But my argument is that those people I see getting arranbged marriages are more traditional, wouldn''t ever admit to being unhappy and wouldn''t be as likely to get a divorce . . .

I hope my point is coming across . . .
Data can be manipulated to fit ANY conclusion and in social "experiments" particularly those extrapolated from epidemiological numbers, there are just too many other variables to make a strong and reproducilble conclusion.

Age, religon, socio-economic class, and individual personalities will skew these conclusions and not just for individual cases but across the board.

 

[Independent Gal]

So TRUE! That's partly why I wanted to look at the actual research, instead of just the Economist article. It's very easy to 'lie with statistics' in a sentence or a paragraph. A little more difficult (though certainly not impossible!) in a 44 page, peer reviewed scholarly article on the question.

The scholarly article discusses the chief variables (socio-economic class, religiosity, history of family divorce, race e.g.) and points out where in their various data sets these variables were controlled for. And the whole first section of the article deals with the dominant hypothesis that the effect is caused by who chooses to cohabit in the first place. Part of the aim of the article is to show the limits of this approach. Not that it has no effect, but that it doesn't explain all the variance.

There are often errors in data analysis in scholarly work, but these variables are fairly basic and I'm guessing it would be hard to get past peer reviewers (or to pass stats class!) without taking them into account.

That said, there may well be a tonne of other stuff he hasn't taken into account, and he makes clear he's at the stage of theorizing / hypothesizing, with further testing required.

It seems intuitively plausible to me, and rather comforting as I prepare to cohabit! Which makes me wonder if I'm more inclined to be convinced because of that. Because when you understand WHY something happens, it's much easier to avoid it. The take home lesson seems to be: "Before you move in, make sure you're on the same page about where you're at with each other and where you're going, what moving in MEANS: don't drift, but decide."

That seems sensible.

 

[firebirdgold]

I''ve always felt that there are three different ''types'' of living together.

type 1) It''s easier and cheaper and there''s been no clear communication about it leading to marriage.

type 2) Trial period before committing to marriage.

type 3) Are already committed to marriage and are currently planning the wedding.

My personal opinion on the statistics of people who cohabit before marriage are more likely to get a divorce is that it only applies to the first two types. So you have nothing to worry about.

Like you and your fiance, DH and I were of type 3. He moved in after we were engaged and while we were planning our wedding. It was partly because we were really looking forward to living in the same house together and partly for practical reasons. We wanted to get the stress of moving, fixing up his house, and selling his house well out of the way before our wedding.

DH and I both agreed early on that if one thinks they need a trial period to be sure then one shouldn''t ever get married to that person anyway. (If that made sense). Having lived together for six months before our wedding and being married for three months (almost), I now have a different perspective on the issue:
People act differently once they''re married. You stop worrying about driving the other person off and relax, without even realizing the difference. So if a person cohabits with someone to see if they''re compatible and then makes the commitment based on that, that person could be making a rather big mistake.

Pandora, I''m not really sure how your BIL and his wife managed to get married without realizing the rather major difference in habits and needs. You''d think that would be obvious just from hanging out together while dating!

 

[anchor31]

Date: 6/4/2007 12:40:43 AM
Author: IndieJones
I''ve always felt that there are three different ''types'' of living together.

type 1) It''s easier and cheaper and there''s been no clear communication about it leading to marriage.

type 2) Trial period before committing to marriage.

type 3) Are already committed to marriage and are currently planning the wedding.

My personal opinion on the statistics of people who cohabit before marriage are more likely to get a divorce is that it only applies to the first two types. So you have nothing to worry about.

Like you and your fiance, DH and I were of type 3. He moved in after we were engaged and while we were planning our wedding. It was partly because we were really looking forward to living in the same house together and partly for practical reasons. We wanted to get the stress of moving, fixing up his house, and selling his house well out of the way before our wedding.

DH and I both agreed early on that if one thinks they need a trial period to be sure then one shouldn''t ever get married to that person anyway. (If that made sense). Having lived together for six months before our wedding and being married for three months (almost), I now have a different perspective on the issue:
People act differently once they''re married. You stop worrying about driving the other person off and relax, without even realizing the difference. So if a person cohabits with someone to see if they''re compatible and then makes the commitment based on that, that person could be making a rather big mistake.

Pandora, I''m not really sure how your BIL and his wife managed to get married without realizing the rather major difference in habits and needs. You''d think that would be obvious just from hanging out together while dating!

I agree with this 100%. I refused to move in with a man until he was 100% committed to me, our relationship and marriage. After seeing my peers move in with one SO to the next... It''s not something I wanted to do.

Of course, this debate has been done over and over again... And it usually tends to become heated. For personal decisions like cohabitation, sex, kids, etc., I firmly believe that there is no right or wrong (not that anyone was saying that here). I''ve been told I was crazy to wait 4 years and 1 year of engagement before moving in with my FI... Well, sooner than 3 years would have been impossible, and moving in together then, directly after 2 years LD... Yikes. People have different situations and values, so not everyone can be expected to do the same thing. Everyone has a choice that is best for them, and I think it''s important that people remember that.

 

[neatfreak]

Date: 6/3/2007 9:33:41 PM
Author: Independent Gal
So TRUE! That's partly why I wanted to look at the actual research, instead of just the Economist article. It's very easy to 'lie with statistics' in a sentence or a paragraph. A little more difficult (though certainly not impossible!) in a 44 page, peer reviewed scholarly article on the question.


The scholarly article discusses the chief variables (socio-economic class, religiosity, history of family divorce, race e.g.) and points out where in their various data sets these variables were controlled for. And the whole first section of the article deals with the dominant hypothesis that the effect is caused by who chooses to cohabit in the first place. Part of the aim of the article is to show the limits of this approach. Not that it has no effect, but that it doesn't explain all the variance.


There are often errors in data analysis in scholarly work, but these variables are fairly basic and I'm guessing it would be hard to get past peer reviewers (or to pass stats class!) without taking them into account.


That said, there may well be a tonne of other stuff he hasn't taken into account, and he makes clear he's at the stage of theorizing / hypothesizing, with further testing required.

You're very trusting IG! As someone who works for a journal (Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory) you wouldn't BELIEVE how easy it can be to get your stuff published and how lax certain journals (not mine) are on publishing.

There is a lot of back story to this guy's article, I'll try and find it if I can. I work in family policy, so I've read it, but marriage isn't my direct area. But he is WAY oversimplifying things. What he is saying isn't false per se, but it implies that everyone who cohabitates has a higher chance of divorce, which just isn't true. Cohabitating couples with certain characteristics (like the kind of people who read the economist!

) actually have a better chance of not getting divorced if they cohabitate first. Now, I know he mentions this on the side, but I don't like how the wording implies a broad statement like "cohabitating couples and their children do worse". It's just not true. For certain people, yes it's true, and exactly because of what this guy suggested. People who move in together just "because" and move in with multiple partners, yes, do worse if they make it to the altar. But people who move in together with the intent of marrying actually do better and I would assume that many of us here fall into the latter group. It also does have something to do with socioeconomic status and education and just because he controlled for those things doesn't mean he controlled correctly for it.

Anyway, my suggestion for the day is not to take something as true just because it's in a peer reviewed journal. A LOT of crap gets published in peer reviewed journals all the time.

 

[Independent Gal]

Hey! I hope I made clear I was aware he could be wrong and that I wasn't taking it as just plain true, even if it sounds plausible. As when I said I don't have expertise in the area so can't be a great judge, that he could well be making errors in analysis, that I might be inclined to believe him for the wrong reasons, that errors do end up getting published, that he could be leaving out variables, etc.

ETA: Not to mention my pointing out that half the articles in the very best peer-reviewed scientific journal turned out to have mistakes in data or analysis.

He may well be wrong, but what he's saying, when taken in it's entirety (not in soundbites) makes intuitive sense.

That said, I'm eager to hear more about the back story and to be convinced he's wrong! Academic politics are fasincating and occasionally hilarious.

 

[Pandora II]

Date: 6/4/2007 12:40:43 AM
Author: IndieJones
Pandora, I''m not really sure how your BIL and his wife managed to get married without realizing the rather major difference in habits and needs. You''d think that would be obvious just from hanging out together while dating!

They were both based overseas and saw each other for 2 days every 3 weeks - when they managed to get on! But everytime they went on holiday they fought like mad.

It was all a bit odd - he got back to the UK 6 months before her and asked her to marry him at the airport. My mother was unhappy about it because my sister had only been seeing a small group of expats for 2 years most of whom were not eligible. She wanted them to live together for a year and then see. BIL said no way so they got married having spent 7 months of engagement rowing like crazy.

My sister was deperate to get married before me - she''s 2 years younger and always wanted to be the eldest.

Now she resents my life and my relationship!

-----------------------------------
I think there are a lot of difference depending on where you live - for example in Italy almost no-one lives together before marriage because it''s normal to live at home - there just aren''t flats to rent available. Here in the UK it''s very normal - you start of flat sharing at University and then house-sharing (London is too expensive to live on your own) and then people just drift into living together. FI and I are probably quite unusual in that I knew that I wanted to marry him after 4 months (when I moved in) and I knew he was on the right page even if he didn''t.

I quite like the trial period which many others don''t because I think issues can come up which you might not spot earlier. For example, I dated a man for a while where we each had our own apartment, things were getting more serious after a year and he wanted to marry me. I wasn''t sure and agreed to try living together. He turned out to have a violent temper and I left after he attacked me one evening. There had been no real sign of this before despite spending weekends and holidays together. It was only when we had to be in the same place whilst he was stressed and unable to get away from the situation that it came out. I had a lucky escape - in retrospect there were clues and I found that helpful to avoid similar types.

I just went to a wedding of a couple who lived together for 3 years as flatmates before they started dating - wasn''t much they didn''t know about each other - as we discovered in the bride''s speech!

 

[Independent Gal]

I''m really glad that FF and I will live together before we get married, but also glad it will be after we get engaged. For me (and this is just what works for me!) I wouldn''t want to live with someone if we weren''t committed to each other. But I also wouldn''t want to get married without living together first. Our living-together-while-engaged will not be a test of our relationship, a ''well, let''s just wait and see how it works'', but it will be an opportunity for things to ''out'' that might be disastrous, like what Pandora describes.

Kind of like how I am committed to staying married... unless my FH were to become abusive or develops an alcohol/drug/gambling problem he refuses for years to kick. So moving in together, engaged, would be ''I am committed to marrying this person, unless it turns out he has a truly horrible character flaw I didn''t know about''. So it''s not so much ''let''s see how this goes'' but ''we''re getting married unless I learn something truly horrible about you''. But I do like the extra opportunity to find those things out before we''re married!

And honestly, I''d be truly shocked, SHOCKED! if there was anything horrible about FF''s character!

 

[Pandora II]

Date: 6/4/2007 6:33:33 PM
Author: Independent Gal
Our living-together-while-engaged will not be a test of our relationship, a ''well, let''s just wait and see how it works'', but it will be an opportunity for things to ''out'' that might be disastrous, like what Pandora describes.

You''ve nailed what I was trying to explain! Now that I am with FI it is so easy to see what a good, healthy relationship is like, but before I was endlessly with men who were bad for me - I really couldn''t pick them (to the extent my father was considering an arranged marriage for me

)

Subconsiously I knew it wasn''t right - but I needed the endless, in your faceness of living with what didn''t make me happy to make me get out!

I have a nasty feeling lots of people are in those kind of relationships - and do get married. There are lots of great men out there - and lots of awful ones too!

 

[Independent Gal]

Oh, I totally hear ya! When I think about the guys I dated before FF! I never lived with any of them, but maybe would have got out faster if I had? OR had that 'drift' thing and ended up married! Scary! And I actually tried to talk myself into marrying the last guy when it was so wrong. SO WRONG! Thank heavens I wasn't foolish enough to actually do it. OK, he was 'nice', bright enough, VERY comfortable (both emotionally - if you never talk about anything, you can't fight! - and financially). But gee whiz. Definitely had that 'dodged that bullet' feeling when we broke up.

Now that I have my sweety who is deeply good, very brilliant, and very comfortable emotionally (but not financially

)because we communicate SO WELL and make each other so happy and take such good and loving care of each other, it's amazing to me that I ever contemplated 'settling' for anything less! He's perfect for me. Even his flaws (and lordy knows he's got 'em! just like I do) are perfect for me!

I can't wait to see him when he gets back. He's been abroad for weeks now.

 

[princesss]

I always find this topic interesting, mostly because most of my friends find my position....surprising.

BF and I are 21 with a year of school left. We''ve decided that after graduation, should things keep going the way they are now, we''re going to try to move to the same city (or within 2 hours of each other) but NOT live together. A lot of my friends are shocked because both of us are pretty liberal and it surprises them that either of us would take such a "traditional" stance. But what it comes down to is this: At 21-22-23ish you''re still getting to know yourself. If you immediately begin to compromise, how do you find your quirks (or your Secret Single Behaviour, a la Sex and the City)? How do you prove to yourself that you are independent and a grown-up and capable of running your own life, thankyouverymuch? I''m not saying this can''t be done while cohabitating or married at the same ago...but for both of us, these were major issues. We are both very independent and have a LOT of pride, and for us to sacrifice the answers to those questions would leave us with a lot of problems down the road. We need to develop ourselves and our interests/likes/living styles and prove to ourselves that we can, in fact, be completely independent, and that marriage (and living together) wouldn''t mean we''re leaning on each other and relying on the other person to make life work.

That said, I generally believe that it is better to wait for a firm commitment to marriage (or just a whole life together, if marriage isn''t your thing) than to just jump in an decide to live together without a goal in mind. But then, I''m big on goals. I worry that to just jump into living together without talking about what it would mean, and the changes it can bring to your life can lead to disaster.

I worked in retail for a while, and we had a wonderfully opinionated woman (I''ll call her E) that worked with us. One day a girl that knew one of the managers came in with her boyfriend, excitedly talking about how they were looking at apartments, and wasn''t that wonderful? E smiled and asked, "So where''s the ring?" The boyfriend looked at all of us (more scared than I''ve seen anybody in my life), said, "Well, I''ll just wait outside for you," and ran out of the store. The girl looked heartbroken...I hated to see it happen then, and I''d hate to ever have to watch somebody live through that again. So maybe I''m a little more traditional than people expect, but it''s just part of my charm, dagnabbit!

 

[princesss]

We need to develop ourselves and our interests/likes/living styles and prove to ourselves that we can, in fact, be completely independent, and that marriage (and living together) wouldn''t mean we''re leaning on each other and relying on the other person to make life work.

Ok, that wasn''t well articulated. What I was trying to say was that when we get married, we want to know that we could do anything we wanted on our own, and that we''re marrying each other because we WANT to, not because we need to. Of course you lean on your SO at times, but I don''t want to spend my life leaning only to find out too late that I can''t stand up on my own.

Ok, I''ll end my novel here.

 

[Pandora II]

I think that is a really good way of looking at it.

At your ages, I think it''s a good decision not to live together - because you think he is the ONE. In my cases I generally knew that they were not the ONE at which point living together is more about convenience.

 

[princesss]

Holy cow, you made it through my semi-incoherent novel?

Bravo!

 

[anchor31]

princesss - I agree with you. FI and I (25/22) waited until we were engaged and planning our wedding to move in together, and before that we''ve been LD for a time, on our own, and then living in the same town and being together for months at a time, and then apart again for work... We''ve done a lot of growing up and self-discovery in the last 4 years, and we''ve also discovered tons about each other. We''ve survived all that (not to mention the insane family blow-outs), even though so many people predicted doom to our relationship.

So, when people tell me our marriage will fail because we didn''t move together before commitiing to marriage and we "don''t know each other", I answer: "Didn''t you say LD/family feuds/business trips/whatever was going to break us up before?"

I''ve also notice how so many of the nay-sayers have not reached 4 years with an SO so far. Maybe because when they move in together, they enter something serious without taking it seriously? Yes, living together is "fun and convenient", but for me my relationship isn''t for fun or convenience, it''s for life. I wouldn''t share my everyday life with someone not committed to spend the rest of it with me.

I know so many girls like the one you told us about... With a boyfriend who is more than happy to move in with them, but won''t commit to them... What''s so sad about it is that the girls will go along with it, hoping that they''ll change their mind and marry them someday... But more often than not they don''t.

 

[allycat0303]

I think this one is ALWAYS a hot topic. I don''t buy into statistics that much, what I really believe is that people should do whatever feels right for them. I don''t *live* with my guy, but I do own half the house, and I spent about 70-80% of my time there, so I''m in this grey area. It all comes down to the individual couple.

I only think it''s bad if it''s a trial period for the guy to decide if he should marry you (I don''t have a single friend that came out the happy winner on this kind of deal).

I think living together is wonderful if it''s what you BOTH want. I truly believe that the level of committement can be just as high. I think some people are unconventional, or don''t believe in marriage. I don''t think it necessarily makes their union more likely to fail.

Although living together, is definitely NOT a pre-requisite to a happy marriage either

 

[Fancy605]

Date: 6/3/2007 9:15:54 PM
Author: hikerchick

Data can be manipulated to fit ANY conclusion and in social 'experiments' particularly those extrapolated from epidemiological numbers, there are just too many other variables to make a strong and reproducilble conclusion.


Age, religon, socio-economic class, and individual personalities will skew these conclusions and not just for individual cases but across the board.

I agree with this. I teach in an area where many of the families are not well off socio-economically. I am talking, we have 17 y/os moving in together because they have no place else to go either because they have severed ties with their gaurdians or because they are pregnant or have babies together (or at least pass the baby off as belonging to the guy they want to live with). This cycle was passed on to them from their parents (many of whom have had several live in sig. others turn spouses turn exes). I am sure that these sort of situations skew the avereages of cohabitants having successful marriages later a bit.

I am sure that as you look at higher and higher SE levels, and more appropriate age levels, you'll find the divorce rate among couples who cohabbitate before marriage declines.

I have had several friends live together before marriage, and they seem quite happy. In fact, I think that marriage is easier for them simply because they knew everything about the other person's habbits. On the flip side, I have friends who lived together AND ended the relationship before marriage, and THANK GOODNESS they lived together and realized what a mistake it would be to continue on, or they may have ended up getting married and being VERY unhappy. My fiance and I chose not to live together during our relationship, but I do not at all look down on anyone who makes the decision to try it out.

 

[phoenixgirl]

I too like and receive The Economist, but I think there are other things to consider.

People who have children while cohabitating and then marry later are more likely to divorce . . . don't you think whether or not having children was planned makes a difference? If the couple was content just to live together and never marry, like Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, then why would they marry after having children? Why wouldn't they just remain an unwed couple? So if they do marry, it's probably for the children, and their relationship is less likely to be stable because they didn't choose to be together forever, they sort of fell into it.

 

[Cehrabehra]

My thoughts on this changed recently... I''m *very* liberal about this sort of thing and have no *moral* issues with living together outside of marriage etc. I still very much thing "to each their own" and that everyone needs to make this choice for themselves, preferrably without anyone judging them........... BUT............ My SIL got a place with a guy and his two kids and her 3 and a fourth she was adopting (her best friend left an orphan) and everything was *great* for about a year until he was cheating on her. She never was the type to let it fly but she DID until she just really couldn''t anymore. And so he moved out (easy for him to do, he only had weekend custody and a high paying job) and she was left with a rented house she couldn''t afford and it was a huge financial blow to her.

I know husbands can royally screw over their wives, but there was just no financial burden for this guy, no legal responsibility. She was 100% self sufficient prior to moving in together and she was left unable to support herself because of choices she made to live with him.

So I still don''t have a problem with people living together (though with kids it brings in another whole host of issues that I''m not even gonna touch) but there IS something to be said for not giving up your financial independence without a legal partnership.

 

[partgypsy]

I''ve always felt that there are three different ''types'' of living together.

type 1) It''s easier and cheaper and there''s been no clear communication about it leading to marriage.

type 2) Trial period before committing to marriage.

type 3) Are already committed to marriage and are currently planning the wedding.


and type 4) are committed to each other but don''t feel strongly about marriage.

It''s the relationship that''s important, not the piece of paper.