Living together before marriage

[psaddict]

Date: 12/10/2006 11:57:07 PM
Author: TravelingGal

Date: 12/10/2006 11:53:45 PM
Author: poptart
I agree completely. It''s just the actual thought of finding a career that has me scared beyond belief!

*M*

Don''t blame you. When I got out of school, I need a job and found part time work at ''The Gap''. Back then, SNL had Gap Girl skits and there was this funny image of the sales people. I remember when someone I knew walked in, I was so embarrassed I, a college educated woman, was working at the Gap that I went back to hide in the stockroom!

Off to watch my movie...yay!

Same happened to me! Before college, I worked at JC Penney''s during high school one summer. Right after college, I couldn''t find a job at first and ended up working at Nordstrom''s for over 4 months

Four years of college got me behind a classier cash register I guess!

 

[Trelala]

Haha, I majored in English too, then went on to "corrupt" the minds of high school kiddies before ruining my health and burning out. Trying to figure out a new career now!

 

[musey]

Oh goodness! This thread certainly took a turn while I was out shopping

Sorry to steer the conversation back to this oh-so-painful discussion, but I just have to get this out!!

Biblio, when I said to research academic sources, come back, and then be allowed to disagree with cold, hard academic sources... I really did mean academic sources. To recap, you provided research from:

AD2000 - "a journal of religious opinion" (non-academic and religiously biased)
Discovery Health (non-academic)
The National Marriage Project - Link sourced from Rutgers University (non-academic... it being from a University's website does nothing for its reputablity)
Albert Mohler.com - Christian Radio Personality (non-academic and religiously biased)
eMediaWire.com - self identified as a consumer media-resource (non-academic)
CNN.com - loosely based around a Center for Disease Control study (both non-academic... and no, the government is NOT an academic source)
Yahoo!News/Reuters Health (non-academic)
The Good News Magazine - a Christian resource to help bring understanding of today's world in "bible terms" (non-academic and religiously biased)
CitizenLink/Focus on the Family - a Christian family resource page (non-academic and religiously biased)
USA Today (non-academic)
Yahoo!Health (non-academic)
About.com (non-academic)

.................none of my undergraduate professors would have accepted any of these resources as reputable (believe me, I've had to deal with that for long enough that I know what is acceptable and what is not--and NOTHING academic is published online for mass availability, you have to access such resources through a University network such as JStor)... and neither would I.


AND to clarify, you mis-quoted David Popenoe and Alan Booth. Their study showed that couples who live together before marriage are 48% more likely to divorce OR break up before marrying than those who do not. (We studied Popenoe in class and spent an entire 2 hours dissecting his research.) The problem with using that to support your standpoint is that it also lumps in people who live together with absolutely no intention of marrying (or staying together at ALL long term, for that matter). Therefore, they are comparing the relationship longevity of those non-comitted couples to married couples who, obviously, are in it for the long haul. They are not comparable, in my opinion, and one doesn't prove anything about the other. It's exactly the same as arguing that a college couple that's been dating for one year is 48% more likely to break up than a married couple is to divorce.

~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~

I think the bottom line (and what everyone else has been saying in different ways) is that what works for you doesn't necessarily work for Person A, which doesn't necessarily work for Person X. Your opinion that living together pre-marriage will damage the relationship's chance for success later on is just that--your opinion--and you have yet to provide adequate evidence to support that point.

I personally believe that either choice can lead to a fantastically successful marriage... and both choices have an equivalent chance of ending in divorce. I have seen both work and both not work.

HOWEVER, I myself have not been married, so I DON'T have the right to enforce my opinion as fact. The only thing that I have a right to share here on the board is the knowledge I have gained throughout my undergraduate career (at one of the top-rated Universities in the country for Sociology), and nothing more. All of my education on this subject has emphasized over and over that contrary to popular belief, the process of living together prior to marriage does not have any detrimental effect on the success of future marriages among those couples. I can regurgitate this over and over but it will not make anyone believe it any more, unless they themselves take control of their own education--and not by referencing christian websites and Yahoo.

 

[biblobaggins23]

musey,

those sites i listed like USA today and ABOUT.com and others that i listed CITED research studies and scholarly academic articles and journals at the bottom of the web page regarding cohabitation and divorce....so yes, i did list the scholarly sources. they are at the bottom of the pages.

most of them are unbiased, like the yahoo health article from a CDC (center for disease control) study. besides, if there is maybe 1 or 2 religiously biased ones, who is to say that those studies in support of cohabitation before marriage aren't biased? just because a study says its not good to live together before marriage does not make it religiously biased either. a study is a study is a study. that cannot be disputed. cdc is very accurate.

are you saying that just because it comes from the cdc means its unvalid? i don't think so.

 

[musey]

You did not list the scholarly resources. They did, and they only very loosely quoted from the original articles (which I did look up--and very few of them DID support your argument, which you would have noticed had you looked at the actual academic source instead a source that cited a source that cited a source).

ETA: Sorry, hit submit before I saw your unmarked edit. I keep trying to respond to what you are writing but you keep changing it.

Anyway, I'm sure there are several biased studies in favor of pre-marriage cohabitation. However, none of the sources I cited are permitted to be biased, as they are all published in academic journals which, as anyone who's been subjected to academic research paper-writing knows, have numerous checks and balances and are the only non-biased reputable sources for research and statistics. So no, a not all research studies are created equally. I could go ask 6 of my parents' friends if they like peanut butter and then go post my "research study" on an extension of my University's website stating that 66% of people like peanut butter. Would it be accurate? Maybe, but it would be complete luck if it were.

And yes, coming from the CDC does make it invalid. Besides the fact that it comes from a government agency and therefore is inherently non-objective, the current administration is in the middle of a marriage-promotion campaign which is headed by Christian leaders, who obviously will be anti-cohabitation.

 

[biblobaggins23]

yes, i did not list them, they did. that was my point, to show you the scholarly sources that are out there without me having to cut and paste every single one.

first of all, you are obviously biased. i don't care whether people live together before marriage or not. i don't agree with it personally, my goal was to show you that there are studies out there that suggest its not healthy.

those articles i listed are not scholarly obviously and i knew that when i posted them. my point was to show you that they CITED studies listed at the bottom of their articles show studies against pre-martial cohabitation and the results of the studies.

can you not see that every article and every study shows that its not healthy or are you trying not to see it?

yes, and they wrote their article by using those sources for their main source of information. their articles summarize what those articles are saying. i listed those websites to show you that there is research saying its not good, which are listed at the bottom of the page like on the about.com article.

again, a research study is a research study. those findings if conducted in a valid way for scientific results are valid....ie the cdc, any university academic study is almost always valid as well as the psychology today magazine which is accurate as well. the about.com article even sited a national institute of child health and human development study.

just because those studies don't support pre-martial living arrangements does not make them unvalid. that goes the same for pro-cohabitation studies. so i guess what your saying is, that if its amy study that supports cohabitation is valid, but any study that disagrees is not?

i don't find that the cdc study was loosely based in my opinion. i live near the cdc and my dad knows that the cdc is made up of RESEARCHERS whose main goal is to do RESEARCH on human behavior. so yes, it is valid.

and there are sources that i listed like the cdc and serveral academia studies that have been published in journals like the ones from penn state as well as the university of michigan which are academic publications that are not permitted to be biased either.

i'm sorry, but just because a cdc has a study that goes against pre-martial cohabitation does not mean the cdc is conservative. its researchers are not appointed by the bush administration. and many of the scientific researchers are not conservative. so your argument there is completely invalid.

just cause a research study goes against cohabitation does not mean all researchers finding that cohabitation is wrong are conservative christians. thats crazy.

 

[musey]

Date: 12/11/2006 2:09:36 AM
Author: biblobaggins23
just because those studies don't support pre-martial living arrangements does not make them unvalid. that goes the same for pro-cohabitation studies. so i guess what your saying is, that if its amy study that supports cohabitation is valid, but any study that disagrees is not?


i don't find that the cdc study was loosely based in my opinion. i live near the cdc and my dad knows that the cdc is made up of RESEARCHERS whose main goal is to do RESEARCH on human behavior. so yes, it is valid.

No, I do not think that any study showing that cohabitation before marriage is "bad" is invalid. I have seen several. Although, most of them are from 1975 or so. I just know that every source that you have cited is invalid. NO one is 100% correct. I am still not forcing my opinion as fact, I am ONLY citing reputable, believable sources (ETA: read: PEER-REVIEWED. This is the important distinction that lovely BF reminded me to include) to support what I have learned over the last 3 months to be true.

That's like saying that some research studies show that doing pilates shortens your life span (and yes, there is one) so therefore it must.

I cannot emphasize enough that your sources are not trustable. PLEASE log on to JStor to find ones that are.

The real issue is that the research saying that it doesn't make a difference far outweighs the research that says that it does, and even the majority of the studies that have shown it causes a negative effect admit that it is most likely to do with the types of people who choose to cohabitate than the process of cohabitation itself (I said this in my first or second post but I think you must have missed it).

And by the way, it's "you're" not "your."

 

[biblobaggins23]

you are wrong. most of the articles i listed are from the 90s and from 2000 on....

the facts are facts. the studies the articles cited at the bottom of the page are valid just as much as yours. although, i could easily say yours are not 100% trustworthy either and done by left-wing liberals.

besides, where are the studies you are talking about????? what page on the thread are they on?

 

[decodelighted]

Date: 12/10/2006 5:43:28 PM
Author: biblobaggins23
i know that if i lived with my fiance before we got married, and he saw how i lived, he would not want to marry me.

If what you say above is true, no WONDER you''re clinging to ANY source that seems to vaguely indicate living together before wedding is "not good"/"the kiss of death" or any other of your colorful descriptions.

Doesn''t really matter about anybody else and our crazy living together, playing house, sin-parties! You''re pretty sure if he got a pre=hitchin'' inkling of who you really are or, sorry, "how you live" you''d never make it down the aisle to begin with. Whereas afterwards ... ya got him all locked in ... in God''s eyes & everything. No matter WHAT you do ... or HOW you live or WHO you are.

Personally, I''m glad that my DH & I moved in together about a couple months before we became engaged ... and just over a year before the "big day". I went down that aisle confident that he''d seen me EXACTLY as I am AT MY WORST ... and I him. The fact that we *still* wanted to get married ... priceless.

p.s. -- They say you marry one person and divorce another ... at least if you live together first you get a sneak peek at that "other" person, before you commit! HEE!

 

[musey]

you are wrong. most of the articles i listed are from the 90s and from 2000 on....

Oh I am? WELL then!! I have seen the error of my ways.

The articles were, the vast majority of the "sources" for your articles were older, and all those which I was exposed to in my class were older.


Anyway, NONE (as in zero percent) of the studies I've cited promote pre-marital cohabitation as "good" or "right" or "better," they have ONLY found that it simply does not matter which you choose.

I am not pro-living together. I am pro-everyone-choosing-what's-right-for-them, and that is in no way the same thing.

 

[musey]

Date: 12/11/2006 2:29:05 AM
Author: decodelighted

Date: 12/10/2006 5:43:28 PM

Author: biblobaggins23

i know that if i lived with my fiance before we got married, and he saw how i lived, he would not want to marry me.

If what you say above is true, no WONDER you''re clinging to ANY source that seems to vaguely indicate living together before wedding is ''not good''/''the kiss of death'' or any other of your colorful descriptions.

Haha, good catch Deco!! I didn''t remember that... pages later...

 

[TravelingGal]

Date: 12/11/2006 2:29:05 AM
Author: decodelighted

Date: 12/10/2006 5:43:28 PM
Author: biblobaggins23
i know that if i lived with my fiance before we got married, and he saw how i lived, he would not want to marry me.

If what you say above is true, no WONDER you're clinging to ANY source that seems to vaguely indicate living together before wedding is 'not good'/'the kiss of death' or any other of your colorful descriptions.

Doesn't really matter about anybody else and our crazy living together, playing house, sin-parties! You're pretty sure if he got a pre=hitchin' inkling of who you really are or, sorry, 'how you live' you'd never make it down the aisle to begin with. Whereas afterwards ... ya got him all locked in ... in God's eyes & everything. No matter WHAT you do ... or HOW you live or WHO you are.

Personally, I'm glad that my DH & I moved in together about a couple months before we became engaged ... and just over a year before the 'big day'. I went down that aisle confident that he'd seen me EXACTLY as I am AT MY WORST ... and I him. The fact that we *still* wanted to get married ... priceless.

p.s. -- They say you marry one person and divorce another ... at least if you live together first you get a sneak peek at that 'other' person, before you commit! HEE!

Deco girl! Where ya been? I saved a slice of kiwi pie for ya.

 

[decodelighted]

Date: 12/11/2006 2:30:59 AM
Author: TravelingGal
Deco girl! Where ya been? I saved a slice of kiwi pie for ya.

HA! I''m holding out for your soon-to-sweep-the-nation Crust-Stuffed Pie.

*hacking up a crust ball*

 

[TravelingGal]

Date: 12/11/2006 2:35:26 AM
Author: decodelighted

Date: 12/11/2006 2:30:59 AM
Author: TravelingGal
Deco girl! Where ya been? I saved a slice of kiwi pie for ya.

HA! I''m holding out for your soon-to-sweep-the-nation Crust-Stuffed Pie.

*hacking up a crust ball*

you laugh now, but when Galateia and I are posting our 5 carat diamonds on the SMTR forum with the profits from our crusty-goodness pie, you''ll see.

 

[musey]

Well, ladies, I must retire my knowledge-spreading efforts as I'm off to be sinful with my sinfully live-in boyfriend.

TMI? I just couldn't resist. Thanks to those of you who made this a productive conversation!

ETA: However, I'm curious... biblo, where did you do your undergrad and what program of study?

 

[mia15]

Back from editing, and this thread still goes on...

Bilbo, I finally have to ask you--what constitutes an unbiased study for you? Is the Center for Disease Control unbiased because you perceive them as not having an agenda or because your Dad says so? I mean, no one disputes that you and a lot of other people think cohabitation before marriage is wrong, but what is your purpose in pulling up all this "research"?

Why do you accuse Musey of being biased? Because she disagrees with you, or because she''s said over and over again (unlike some, I may add) that she does is neither pro nor anti-cohabitation? Or is it because you just don''t like the conclusion of the studies she cites?

 

[biblobaggins23]

decodelighted and musy,

i have said before, that my fiance and i do not want to live together before marriage. we don't think that we would marry each other had we lived together before marriage because we are marrying for love and we don't want our bad qualities to hinder us from marrying each other because that is not what marriage is about. marriages aren't supposed to be easy and everyone has flaws. no partner is perfect. we get along great. we don't need to live together to prove that to each other because we are secure in our relationship. (i'm not saying that those who live together beforehand are not secure).

marriage is hard. to us, marriage is about accepting differences and LEARING and TRYING to love another person unconditionally. thats what we learned in our pre-martial counseling and its what we have been doing since the day we started dating. for us, personally, we don't want to take the easy way out of a potentially great marriage by living together before hand. we have the communication skills to work out our problems and we want to work together and we are not having a pre-trial marriage just to find out who is good in bed or who can make the bed properly and what is or what is not annoying about each other.

...we are in love and we are entering our marriage with love and accepting our differences and we will love each other unconditionally. to us, we think that because we know this and are very dedicated to each other despite our flaws, we will go far. personally, we do not feel that we have to live with each other to learn more about each other. we learned more about each other in 4 years of dating and know each other inside out. i am not throwing my marriage away based on something i don't like about a person while living with them pre-marriage because no one is perfect. for us, pre-martial cohabitation was not for us and was never an option.


i have seen people live together before hand and get divorced more than i have seen couples live together and stay together. maybe your experience is different.

i am just showing you that there are studies out there government or not that are valid suggesting that it may not be good to live together before marriage just like there are studies that show it doesn't matter one way or the other.

i have said all along, i don't care what people decide, i am not judging anyone.

musey accused me of having biased studies, so i said that hers could be potentially biased too. we don't know those researchers. i felt that she thought, from her posts, that every study showing pre-martial cohabitation is not good for a marriage to be conservatively biased, which is absolutely not the case. musey said, "the current administration is in the middle of a marriage-promotion campaign which is headed by Christian leaders, who obviously will be anti-cohabitation."
that there, shows that she is BIASED personally one way or another and does care about the importance of living together and thats whay she is saying all these articles are invalid.


i do not think the cdc has an agenda because its researchers are not appointed by white-house adminstrators. i thought that her attitude towards a cdc study was inaccurate because she ASSUMED that it was done by pro-bush researchers, which she does not know. how does she know those researchers were not liberals or communists or libertarians? my father knows researchers at the cdc with one goal in mind: research, not politics. are you going to say now that every positive aids research study from the national institute of health or the CDC is biased politically?


i'm tired and its 3 am and i'm going to bed. night. i've said my share.

 

[galeteia]

Date: 12/11/2006 2:39:22 AM
Author: TravelingGal

Date: 12/11/2006 2:35:26 AM

Author: decodelighted

Date: 12/11/2006 2:30:59 AM

Author: TravelingGal

Deco girl! Where ya been? I saved a slice of kiwi pie for ya.

HA! I'm holding out for your soon-to-sweep-the-nation Crust-Stuffed Pie.

*hacking up a crust ball*

you laugh now, but when Galateia and I are posting our 5 carat diamonds on the SMTR forum with the profits from our crusty-goodness pie, you'll see.

Clearly we need to round up some PS gals for some 'market testing'. After all, who knows how many prototypes we'll have to dispose of before we find the right combination of flavours? We could branch out into a whole line... I'm thinking springform pans are the way to go.

Or even better: pre-made frozen versions where you separate the ice cream and pie layers, toss the pies in the oven and the ice cream disks in the freezer, and when the pies are ready to go, you stack 'em together and bob's your uncle. Whaddya think?

 

[decodelighted]

Date: 12/11/2006 2:47:25 AM
Author: biblobaggins23
we don''t want our bad qualities to hinder us from marrying each other because that is not what marriage is about.

we have the communication skills to work out our problems and we want to work together and we are not having a pre-trial marriage just to find out who is good in bed or who can make the bed properly and what is or what is not annoying about each other.

i am not throwing my marriage away based on something i don''t like about a person while living with them pre-marriage because no one is perfect.

Aside from the research matters ... I simply don''t follow your internal logic. If you have strong communication skills to work out all possible future problems & the ability to love each other unconditionally ... why would your or his "bad qualities" hinder you from marrying before or after living together ...or why would you be temped to "throw away your marraige" based on something you don''t like about (your future husband)" EVER?? Married or not?

I *am* married. Newly. And I can say *honestly* - not much changed. No magic lighting bold of godliness that made me more patient or loving or self-less or whatever. I''m still regular old me & he''s regular old him. And it *is* work. But we''re together cause we wanna be - not because we *have* to be. Not because God is watching us.

And I''m not saying people should "give up" the love of their life over a couple awkward sexual exchanges or non-made-beds or messiness ... but there are certain INCOMPATIBILITIES (not annoyances) that can lead to a long misery-filled life if not revealed pre-wedding. You just might not have the life experience to even know these types of issues exist, or how well-hidden they can be until it''s too late.

 

[mia15]

Galateia, count me in!

 

[biblobaggins23]

Date: 12/11/2006 3:11:22 AM
Author: decodelighted

Date: 12/11/2006 2:47:25 AM
Author: biblobaggins23
we don't want our bad qualities to hinder us from marrying each other because that is not what marriage is about.

we have the communication skills to work out our problems and we want to work together and we are not having a pre-trial marriage just to find out who is good in bed or who can make the bed properly and what is or what is not annoying about each other.

i am not throwing my marriage away based on something i don't like about a person while living with them pre-marriage because no one is perfect.

Aside from the research matters ... I simply don't follow your internal logic. If you have strong communication skills to work out all possible future problems & the ability to love each other unconditionally ... why would your or his 'bad qualities' hinder you from marrying before or after living together ...or why would you be temped to 'throw away your marraige' based on something you don't like about (your future husband)' EVER?? Married or not?

I *am* married. Newly. And I can say *honestly* - not much changed. No magic lighting bold of godliness that made me more patient or loving or self-less or whatever. I'm still regular old me & he's regular old him. And it *is* work. But we're together cause we wanna be - not because we *have* to be. Not because God is watching us.

And I'm not saying people should 'give up' the love of their life over a couple awkward sexual exchanges or non-made-beds or messiness ... but there are certain INCOMPATIBILITIES (not annoyances) that can lead to a long misery-filled life if not revealed pre-wedding. You just might not have the life experience to even know these types of issues exist, or how well-hidden they can be until it's too late.

i am saying that our bad qualities will NOT hinder us from getting married. what i am saying is that we would not want to live together before hand because we would not want all our negative traits/incompatabilities to hinder us and to potentially ruin something that we built up and worked on to be a great, loving, christ-centered relationship. we would not want to get married before hand because we feel that since everyone has negative traits, why hold that against someone pre-marriage and decide to end it if marriage is supposed to be about working and trying and continually learning and loving a person unconditionally regardless of your differences????? to be honest with you, i feel our marriage would be stronger in the beginning knowing that we would have to obstacles to overcome in learning to understand how to the best of our ability to be comptabile for the sake of our love, which is our number #1 priority and reason why are and should be together. and, i think that will give us the tools for a lifelong, successful marriage. then, itwould be an advantage to our relationship and making it stronger because we did not spend time living together before hand. that is what we think and what our pastor reaffirmed to us. marriage is founded on love and working through incompatibilities and traits.

to be honest, thats why i don't follow trial-marriage logic and cohabitation before marriage. we are not tempted to throw our marriage away and we don't want to live together just to see the bad instead of the good. we love each other for good and bad traits. i do have life experience, we have been in 3 serious relationships since we began dating. i'm 26 and he is 31.

i'm confused. i'm trying to put this in an eloquent way, knowing that people are sensitive on this board, but i am wondering if you are implying that people who don't live together before marriage don't have the experience to know that problems arise in marriages? my grandmother has been married for 56 years and did not live with her spouse before marriage. my sister has been married 8 without living with her spouse pre-marriage. my aunt has been married 30 years without pre-martial cohabitation. my fiance's mother and father have been married 28 without pre-marital cohabitation. to me, if you put love first, marriages do work without living together before hand and can be just as strong.

 

[TravelingGal]

Date: 12/11/2006 3:34:04 AM
Author: biblobaggins23

i am saying that our bad qualities will NOT hinder us from getting married. what i am saying is that we would not want to live together before hand because we would not want all our negative traits to potentially ruin something that we built up and worked on to be a great, loving, christ-centered relationship. we would not want to get married before hand because we feel that since everyone has negative traits, why hold that against someone pre-marriage and decide to end it if marriage is supposed to be about working and trying and continually learning and loving a person unconditionally regardless of your differences????? to be honest with you, i feel our marriage would be stronger in the beginning knowing that we would have to obstacles to overcome in learning to understand how to the best of our ability to be comptabile for the sake of our love, which is our number #1 priority and reason why are and should be together. and, i think that will give us the tools for a lifelong, successful marriage. then, itwould be an advantage to our relationship and making it stronger because we did not spend time living together before hand. that is what we think and what our pastor reaffirmed to us.

to be honest, thats why i don't follow trial-marriage logic and cohabitation before marriage. we are not tempted to throw our marriage away and we don't want to live together just to see the bad instead of the good. we love each other for good and bad traits. i do have life experience, we have been in 3 serious relationships since we began dating. i'm 26 and he is 31.

i'm confused. i'm trying to put this in an eloquent way, knowing that people are sensitive on this board, but i am wondering if you are implying that people who don't live together before marriage don't have the experience to know that problems arise in marriages? my grandmother has been married for 56 years and did not live with her spouse before marriage. my sister has been married 8 without living with her spouse pre-marriage. my aunt has been married 30 years without pre-martial cohabitation. my fiance's mother and father have been married 28 without pre-marital cohabitation. to me, if you put love first, marriages do work without living together before hand and can be just as strong.

Yes, they most certainly can. And if you put love and commitment first, marriages can work if you lived together too. Your previous posts seemed to negate that.

I won't even tackle the rest of what you said...don't have the energy now and just came off of watching a stupid movie when we should be going to bed!

 

[biblobaggins23]

um no, i don't believe that living together before marriage doesn't mean that your marriage will be unsuccesful. i'm sure people do have good communication in these cases and can have successful marriages as a result, but from what i've learned and read throught these studies, in numerous cases, pre-martial living arrangments are not equivalent to successful marriages despite what pop culture is trying to tell you and maybe just as detrimental. in those cases where it does work, its rare.

 

[Blenheim]

Date: 12/11/2006 2:09:36 AM
Author: biblobaggins23
my point was to show you that they CITED studies listed at the bottom of their articles show studies against pre-martial cohabitation and the results of the studies.


can you not see that every article and every study shows that its not healthy or are you trying not to see it?

Umm, I feel like my relationship is perfectly healthy, complete with our living in sin. But I guess we might be in that extremely small minority or something.

You might want to review the differences between causation and correlation.


PS -- Can I be part of the market studies!?

 

[JCJD]

Oh boy... didn''t read the whole thing but here''s my $0.02.

Thousands of factors contribute towards whether or not an experiment can be causally interpreted, i.e. whether we can say that variable A CAUSES variable B. For example, during the 1980''s or so the rate of divorce and the rate of apple imports increased in Sweden. Does this statistical relationship between apple import rate and divorce rate mean that apples cause divorce or that divorce makes people want to eat apples? No, this study did not manipulate either of these variables, they just counted rates and found that as one rises, the other rises as well. There may be other factors contributing towards both of these rates that wasn''t measured (income, for example).

Another study found that young boys become more aggressive than young girls after they have been shown video of a violent cartoon, but when shown a non-violent cartoon, boys and girls have similar aggression. However, even though the experiment manipulated what type of video they were shown, we STILL cannot say that maleness CAUSES aggression after violent cartoons because there are so many other factors that contribute towards maleness that were not controlled in the study. The very fact that these boys were raised boys means certain aggressive behaviors may have been tolerated while they were not tolerated in girls who were brought up as girls. And since people get all up in a tizzy about raising boys as girls and raising girls as boys, we cannot conduct the true experiment (in which we can assign people to a particular gender just for the study) for ethical (and realistic) reasons.

However, a study in which lab rats are injected with drug A or drug B or a control finds that rats with drug A have 1% incidence of cancer, rats with drug b have 30% cancer, and control rats have 75% cancer rates. In this study, assuming all the rats were properly assigned into each condition such that there are no differences between the rats in each of the three conditions (no age differences, no gender differences, no genetic differences, no food differences, yadda yadda yadda), and assuming that all rats were treated exactly the same (on average) regardless of what condition they were in except for the different drugs that they were given, AND there are no alternative explanations that could explain the results (perhaps they gave 1cc of drug A but only 0.02cc of drug B?) then we can say that Drug A causes this cancer rate and Drug B causes this cancer rate. This study is properly controlled (we assume for the purposes of this exercise) and we are (finally) able to say that X CAUSES Y.

The point is experimental design is key to assessing an experiment''s applicability to the "outside" world, and since *most* of these marriage/cohabiting studies are conducted by collecting data and mining for statistical relationships rather than randomly assigning people to religious beliefs, moral grounds, financial status, relationship length, age at first marriage, incidence of previous divorce, number of children, money management skills, geographical location, occupation, gender, kissing ability, eating habits, social status, celebrity status, quality of marriage models (parents, grandparents...), health, you get the picture, all of these researchers have the unenviable task of sorting through all of this correlational data and trying to piece some sense out of it.

All these studies can *really* tell us is that living together is not the same as marriage. Why is up to interpretation, hence this thread and others like it. Maybe it IS because of that piece of paper. Maybe it''s because of attitude changes. Maybe it''s just a different group of people who cohabit and don''t. Maybe it''s the pre-marital experience that shapes your ideas about what marriage is like and "should be" like. Who really knows until we either model human relationships perfectly or we start randomly assigning people to different categories.

My husband and I did not live together before marriage. Our transition to married life and intimacy was incredibly easy. I also know couples who did live together before marriage whose transition was also incredibly easy. I know couples whose transition to married life was very difficult, both couples who did and did not live together before marriage. I know a couple from church who was living together but were not intimate before they got married (financial stuff, and yes, I trust their words). My father-in-law is legally not remarried, but he and his "wife" had a religious wedding ceremony (financial stuff). I have seen it all happen, and time will tell whether there is a difference between marriages/divorces in my friends and family. But I will say this: I believe that the downfall to all marriages is unsaid and unmet expectations.


And because a good scientist discloses all outside interests, I''m a young, newly married Christian female PhD student in biological sciences who did not live with her husband before marriage. Also, both of our parents divorced when we were in 8th grade or so, so we have seen marriages fail first-hand. And I should be studying for my statistical analysis and research design final exam.

 

[DonaBella]

I, too, did not read the entire amount of posts to this subject, but here is my opinion on the subject matter...

Personally, I would not and could not fathom living with someone without being married to them first. But that''s me. I was brought up a certain way---whether it was religious or not is not important---and that was just not the way things were done. All of us have our issues and flaws and I knew that when I married my DH several years ago. I was willing to work through whatever life threw at us because we were committed to one another, and still are. He is far from perfect in alot of ways, but so am I. He loves and tolerates my imperfections and I do the same with him. With the approach we and several others in this world have taken, to be married and stay married even when life and things get extremely challenging, that is all that matters in the end.

I would not have ruined the newness of the adapting process that we had because we chose not to cohabitate. It was really fun at times and really informative. Of course, it wasn''t always easy, but it was part of the journey and I cherish every second of it. If I had chose to live with my DH before marriage, I would have lost a part of this exciting chapter in our lives. Again, this is what I chose and am thrilled with my decision. I am teaching my 9 kids this way of thinking, but also doesn''t mean they will do as I did, but I am damn well hoping they will. So far, so good.

There will always be those who feel one way or another, but seriously people, it is pointless to argue it back and forth cuz each side will point out reasons to validate their choice...just as I did here.

Truly, leave it alone. Celebrate and respect each other''s view instead of dissing it...enough already.

 

[KimberlyH]

Date: 12/10/2006 11:46:59 PM
Author: poptart

Date: 12/10/2006 11:45:31 PM
Author: emeraldlover
Umm..that''s exactly what I was thinking! I was an English major and now I''m back in school.

I dream of finding a job that will indeed let me off at a decent hour to go home to movies, wine, and my lovely (future) husband, but I''ve almost given up. I''ve had very rewarding jobs but that 1. lets me out at dinnertime 2. pays a living wage.

Stop! You are shattering my dreams! I can''t do this school thing again...

*M*

From one English major to another (although I am back in school earning my M.A. in Education) think public affairs, lobbyist, public relations, etc. Lots of writing and creativity involved.

TG, I know, I know, it''s sacrelig to not like pie. I can enjoy a good piece of apple ala mode in the winter and coconut cream in the summer but it''s just never been something I love. Now ice cream, brownies, chocolate chip cookies there are some foods I can get excited about!

 

[pricescope]

Dear biblobaggins23, please revisit Policies you just have signed and yet recently violated # 9 and did not reply to moderator''s e-mail about it.

Now another one - # 29.

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