Cohabitation Before Marriage

Can Cohabitation be Detrimental to a Marriage?

Prepared by: Hillary Pons

Prepared for: Any couple whom are looking to live with their partner

Professor Ramos ENC 1102- U11

Table of Contents

Introduction……………………………...……………………...…………………………3

Background…………………..……………………………………………………………4

Analysis…………………………………………………...………………………………4

Recommendations…………………………………………………………………………7

Works Cited…………………………………………………………….…………………8

Introduction:

All across the world more and more young couples are living together before marrying it has become less taboo. Many young couples desire to ‘test drive' the relationship before fully committing to a law binding union, while other couples take the more traditional route down the aisle. However a couple decides to approach marriage the facts remain the same, in the United States today about 40%-50% of all marriages end in divorce, but has shown trends of dropping in recent years(Rao, 395, 406). However, the question remains what is causing couples to divorce so frequently in this day and age? If previous generations have managed to make it work, despite hard times, why can't married couples today do the same? Is the growing trend of cohabitation to blame? Based on my research, I am of the opinion that cohabitation isn't the reason for 50% of marriages ending in divorce, but the people themselves.

Cohabitation before marriage can be a useful tool in discovering all the little quirks your partner has that can only be revealed while living together. The problem here then becomes how a couple approaches cohabiting. If a couple desires to move in together because they are failing to communicate and they feel this will allow communication to open up, they will ultimately fail in the end. Whereas the couple that moves in together after having taken the time to discuss why they want to move in together, and have an end point (marriage) in mind will have a higher success rate in the end.

Commitment is crucial to any relationship that desires to take things to the ‘next level', whether that be marriage, engagement, cohabitation or even just meeting each others families. No matter what the case may be, commitment allows a couple to be confident that each partner is devoted to making the relationship succeed and isn't just waiting for a way out. Lack of commitment has been a trend in cohabiting couples, some enter living together with the mindset that if things get too hard they have an easy way out of it, they simply have to move out. This mindset unfortunately can follow a couple into marriage, which means a couple may be more likely to settle for a divorce rather than fix their issues. Entering cohabitation with this type of mindset can lead to the failure of a relationship or marriage. Some may confuse this for cohabitation beignet the reason for a failed marriage, but this is not the case. The marriage would have failed due to the partners' lack of commitment, not because they cohabited.

All in all, cohabitation can be either beneficial or detrimental to a relationship or a marriage. It ultimately depends on the couples themselves and the reasons behind their cohabitation.

Background:

Cohabitation has existed since the beginning of time, but more recently it has been used as a stepping-stone towards marriage. This has lead to debate on whether or not cohabitation is to blame for the growing rate of unsuccessful marriages that has plagued this generation. Due to cohabitation becoming more and more common with people of my generation, I desired to dig deeper into this phenomenon to unfold whether cohabitation is the reason for todays divorce rate.

This proposal is meant to bring light to the real reason some cohabited couples do not work out, and to do away with the ‘stigma' cohabiting has been given by our parents generation. Cohabitation doesn't necessarily make or break a relationship, which many people think, living together will only be as successful as the partners allow it to be. In this proposal, I want to enlighten not only the people of my generation who are cohabiting, but everyone, that cohabiting should not be taken lightly and that all couples considering this should be prepared to make a deep commitment.

I conducted several weeks worth of research to find the answer to the ‘problem' of unsuccessful marriages begin linked to cohabited couples. I mainly researched sociological studies conducted at several universities on the topic. I carefully examined the studies conducted by Professors Rao, Lillard and Syltevik. Each had their own conclusions on whether or not cohabitation was to blame, but each took groups of couples a studied their relationships to determine their results. The chart on the left was used in Professor Syltevik's study about cohabitation in European countries specifically. I also interviewed family psychologist, Dr. Tarah Rogowski Martos, who provided her opinion of the issue based on what she had seen in her own practice. Dr. Martos is only age thirty, so I found this beneficial in my research because she has a similar way of thinking of my generation. I found this perspective to offer a fresh look at the issue that the university studies didn't have.

Analysis:

Commitment is a word that has been both revered and dreaded by both men and women for much of the 20th and 21st century. Throughout the years is has come to mean a multitude of different things, most commonly it refers to engagement or marriage. In more recent years, it has begun to also include cohabitation, or at least it should. Many young couples today feel that they aren't quite ready for the amount of commitment marriage requires, so they simply move in with their partner to test out how a marriage with them would fare. This, however, is not the way a couple should be approaching living together because whether they care to admit it or not it is a very big deal. There was a study conducted on 714 women cohabiting with their partners by Professor Duvander. During the study he found that only 30% of the women who participated went on to get married and 50% of the women had broken up with their partners, this can be traced back to the level of commitment that was originally given to cohabiting (Duvander, 698-717). Most of the women who went on to marry reported to already being engaged to their partner, demonstrating a deep level of commitment to the relationship. While the other 50% moved in for other reasons such as, convenience, wanting to work on issues, or thinking it will bring them closer together (Duvander, 698-717).

Many, including Professor Coan, have argued that no matter what cohabited couples do not have any level of commitment whatsoever. He says that in general a cohabited couple only decided to live together to get out of any real commitment; they use cohabitation as a way to feel committed but still have an easy way out of the relationship (Coan, 180-192). Jay in her NY Times article entitled, The Downside of Cohabiting Before Marriage, examined this same theory. She states, "Women are more likely to view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, while men are more likely to see it as a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment, and this gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage" (Jay, The Downside of Cohabiting Before Marriage). She agrees with Coan in the sense that couples who choose to live together before marrying are less likely to truly have that level of commitment to stick by a relationship in times of trouble. While this may be true for some cohabited couples, it does not reflect all of them. Many couples use cohabiting as a way to totally commit to one another with the promise of marriage on the horizon.

Even if some couples may use cohabitation as a test or a way to postpone big commitment, it would be unfair to blame cohabitation for their lack of success; these couples would have ultimately failed no matter what. These types of couples that are unsure of their commitment don't have cohabitation to blame for their unsuccessful relationship, but the way they approached living together. Weather people care to admit it or not, moving in together is a big commitment to the person; there isn't always an easy out, many times finances are so intertwined it may take years to get out (Hillin, New Research Says Living Together Before Marriage Doesn't Lead to Divorce). This is where couples that aren't 100% committed to each other and are just ‘testing out' the relationship run into troubles. Ultimately, couples that are moving in together should take the time to think about their decisions and decide if they are truly ready to commit to the other person. If they are the relationship will be that much stronger and able to endure what life has to throw at them.

When surveyed by Professor Syltevik