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writes:I'm separated, soon to be divorced after a long term marriage and am just beginning to date again. A lot seems to have changed since I was last single. One of the things I don't understand is that at lest where I live, it seems that everyone wants to live together before or even without ever getting married. This seems to be true for first time as well as later marriages. If I find someone, I really don't want to go through a second divorce so I've read a lot of studies of couples who have married without living together first and those who have lived together first. Everything I see says that couples end in divorce more often if they live together first. While the percentage of successful marriages is still not real high, those couples who do not cohabit before getting married have longer lasting marriages. Most people seem to want to live together first because they seem to think that they stand a better chance that way. But, the records don't show this. Those who live together without ever marrying seem certain to eventually break up so never marrying doesn't seem to be the way to go eather. It seems that you are more likely to stay together if you get married before moving in together. I'm curious what others think about this and why you might have chosen to live together first when it looks like it hurts your chances for a lasting marriage in the long run.
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reader, goldiegirl +, writes (24 March 2011):
I recently moved in with my boyfriend because I felt like I should. Nowadays, living together before marriage seems like the natural progression of things. Unfortunately, I totally understand why this messes up relationships. Living with another person takes a lot of the spark out of things, and if you are not married to them, you feel less inclined to deal with their annoying habits.
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reader, anonymous, writes (8 February 2011): Some times when couples live togehter for a long time and the relationship isn't that great they still continue to live together because it's easier than breaking up and moving out. If they didn't live together and the relationship wasn't great, breaking up would be easier so they probably would break up and move on to find happier relationships. But because they live together, they postpone breaking up since it's too much of a hassle so people tend to keep the bad relationship going, thinking no big deal they can still leave any time they want....
until one day they wake up and find that years have passed and they're now at the age where one or both of them are desperate to be married and have kids and all that, and feel they don't have time to start over. So that's why they get married to each other. Even though their relationship isn't great. so eventually a divorce occurs under the subsequent strains of marriage and family.
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female
reader, k_c100  +, writes (7 February 2011):
 Well I have not actually heard of these findings before - I guess over here in the UK these studies have not really been discussed!
However even if I had heard this before I moved in with my boyfriend (we have lived together for 7 months, together for 18 months) - it would not have influenced my decision.
While obviously this study shows some interesting findings, there are also many other studies that look into the other factors of marriage failures - length of time together before marriage, age etc and I think these factors have a bigger impact than living together before hand. So many couples these days rush into marriages, they date for 6 months, a year etc and then think that is enough time and should get married, but this is ridiculous when you think about how much you know a person in 6-12 months, and taking into account the 'honeymoon' phase you are in for the early part of a relationship. I think not living together would make this issue worse - you would be so excited about being with that person all the time you would get married asap, only so you can live together. Not saying this is true for everyone - but I know most couples who dont live together cant wait to do so (naturally) so if the only way to do this was to get married first, then people would rush into marriages much sooner.
My person opinion on living together before marriage is that mainly it allows you to see what a person is really like before you make a massive committment and get married. For example, my ex boyfriend was wonderful, we were so happy and then after dating a while, decided to move in together. Pretty much as soon as we were in the door he had a complete personality change, he became lazy, abusive, selfish and completely uninterested in me and the relationship. Thankfully we broke up! But I look back and think if we had got married before we had moved in together, and then he had changed in this way - I would either be stuck in an abusive marriage where I would have been hugely unhappy, or divorced. So I am so thankful that we lived together rather than getting married first - it was a lucky escape for me!
Marriage is a huge thing to me, I personally dont believe in being engaged more than once (once you have agreed to marry a person that is it, that is the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with). And I also believe that marriage is a wonderful thing, mainly because it makes you work so much harder at a relationship when normally you might just give up. It is something that I take very seriously and dont want to go into it without all the information - if I can do my research so to speak beforehand and be 100% certain that this is the right thing for me to do, then I absoultely will do it. I know personally I could not marry anyone I have not lived with, it would be like marrying a stranger! You dont really know a person until you have lived with them, when you are dating you only get to see the best bits of them - but when you live together you get to see the whole picture. I dont want to marry a person if I dont know what their best bits and their worst bits are.
And now I am living with a great guy and we are very happy, and planning on getting married as soon as we can afford it. You have to keep in mind that many younger people in their 20's cannot afford to get married, mortgages are nearly impossible to get hold of at the moment without a massive deposit so we are basically presented with the choice - get married or buy a house. We simply cannot have both, and in my current case - we cant have either! Even saving for a wedding will take a couple of years, my parents are not in a position to help because of sending my sister and I to University. Even if living together may be one small factor in divorce rates - I am not willing to wait something like 5 years just to be with my boyfriend.
So I guess maybe in an ideal world, getting married first would be the right thing to do (even though I am skeptical - I think other factors have a bigger part to play in divorce rates). But for the majority of the younger generation in their 20's, the change in the economy has meant that living together is really the only feasible option for us all right now. So when presented with the choice of being together, or waiting for years and years just to sign a piece of paper (I know marriage is more than that but at the end of the day, it is just a piece of paper) - then I will always choose being with the person I love.
I hope this helps and good luck!
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A
male
reader, Odds +, writes (7 February 2011):
 Stanford did a study on this a few years back, saying that yes, cohabitation significantly increases the chance of divorce - not that the chances are exactly low anyway, as you point out.
Of course, marriage isn't even a commitment anyway - as you've probably seen, "no-fault" divorce means marriage vows are meaningless, anyway.
If I were to find a girl worth marrying? Definitely would not live together beforehand. Not just because of the increased chance of divorce, but because I like that phase of the relationship where you go to each others' houses all the time.
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female
reader, chocoholicforever +, writes (7 February 2011):
I've read that too about how cohabiting supposedly increases the likelihood of divorce, and I never understood why.I wonder if it's the case that correlation does not equal causation. In other words maybe cohabiting before marriage is not what directly causes an eventual divorce, but couples who are likely to cohabitate before marriage also tend to have other traits that make them more likely to divorce once married??for example, couples who are religious or socially conservative are less likely to live together before marrying. They are also less likely to get divorced (even if very unhappy in their marriages). Thus, not living together before marriage gets correlated with staying married forever.Another reason could be that when couples cohabitate they get used to living with a romantic partner without seeing the relationship as a life sentence. Then when they eventually marry it's hard to change this attitude because nothing on the outside has visibly changed. So if things go sour they are more mentally prepared to divorce than people who are used to seeing their relationship as a life sentence.with these statistics on number of people who divorce versus stay married, implicit is the assumption that those who aren't divorced must therefore be happily married. But what about all those people who are unhappily married and just forcing themselves to stay in their marriages while enduring misery?
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (7 February 2011): I don't know where that data comes from, but if that's true then I think it must be different kinds of people who choose to live together before marriage compared to those who get married first. For a lot of people, there are religious reasons and conventions which make it difficult if not impossible to live together before marriage. These same convictions make them less likely to divorce, regardless of how happy the marriage is. Just a theory.Personally I would never marry someone I hadn't lived with for at least a couple of years first. It just makes sense to me - if you can live happily together for that long and still want to get married, then your married life would have a much better chance of being long and happy compared to a couple who got married, moved in together and discovered a million little things they do around the home that drive the other person nuts.
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