In another thread of mine, a lively side discussion was started about the effects of cohabiting before marriage. I'm not sure if anyone is interested in continuing it, but I thought I'd post a summary here, if they are.
Basically, because of a past live-in relationship of mine that went no-where for 11 years, I have a strong value of not living together before getting engaged. We talked about marriage very seriously, and "unofficially" planned to get married, but there was no date set, and no "official" engagement.I finally got tired of waiting and left. After that, my rule was, no living together until there is a date set.
A few months ago, I read a bunch of articles that summarized
a study by the CDC which essentially validated my viewpoint. In general, the study states that couples who live together prior to a formal commitment (engagement or marriage for the purposes of the study) are at a greater risk for divorce or problematic marriages later on.
Prior to this research, it was thought that the main reason that couples who cohabit are more likely to get divorced is because they were non-traditional to begin with, and more likely to leave an unsatisfactory relationship. While that may be true, this study also revealed that the intention behind the decision to live together is probably the more important factor.
"Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself."
The study doesn't actually suggest that cohabiting CAUSES divorce, but I found research earlier today by Prof. Scott Stanley that has been studying the same phenomena. He does a great job of explaining why they believe this effect is present: "One of the major theories we are testing is what we call the inertia perspective. Here's a quick recap of the idea. Cohabitation may be risky for some people because it makes it harder to break up with someone that they otherwise would have broken up with and never married in the first place. (Or, they never would have stayed together long enough to have a child; a variable that fits all the same logic.) Yes, cohabiters break up all the time. In fact, they break up much more often than people who are married. That is not exactly a news flash. But cohabiters break up much less often than people who are dating. A lot of the time, that's just because cohabiters are more likely to be more deeply involved (entangled). The idea of inertia is that cohabitation makes it harder to break up in comparison to dating without cohabiting. Inertia suggests that some people actually marry someone they would not have married had they not been cohabiting.
This idea of inertia also suggests that, among those who eventually marry, those who were already engaged or mutually planning marriage, when they began to cohabit, will be at lower risk for marital difficulties than those who cohabited before nailing down that big question. It's the latter group that would contain the people adversely affected by inertia. If two people already mutually agree on marriage before cohabiting, it's not very likely cohabitation will be a factor in them getting married. Inertia is not their issue. There may be other factors that matter for such a couple, like what their beliefs and values are about cohabitation, but inertia is not part of equation for them.
Back to the CDC report. What got a lot less attention on Tuesday is the fact that the researchers also found exactly what we have been predicting, testing, and publishing for some years now based on the concept of inertia. They found that those who cohabited prior to engagement were at greater risk for divorce but those cohabiting after engagement were at no greater risk than those who didn't cohabit at all before marriage."
So, all this really resonated with me, because of my own personal experiences. If you want to read more about this topic, here are a few articles you can skim:
Several of you expressed very strong disagreement with these ideas, if you wish to elaborate, I'd welcome the discussion. I apologize if I sounded frustrated in the other thread, I guess I just wasn't expecting so much resistance to this issue! But really enjoy a good debate.