Re: Living together before marriage

My friend Jaime had an interesting post about couples living together before marriage.

(Before I continue, as part of disclosure, I'm married and have been married for a little less than a year, and my wife and I didn't live together before we were married.)

Jaime hit on a couple of really logical thoughts on this. Living together before marriage is absolutely a new phenomenon, since 1960 the number of unwed couples living together has increased 9 fold. However, if you look at the way marriage has evolved culturally in the United States, it makes sense that this has become popular. And when I say popular, I mean really popular. The below image is courtesy of a study by the University of Queensland, Australia. Though this isn't a U.S. statistic, the exponential trend is similar for many western countries.


However, just because this is a new phenomenon, doesn't mean that people didn't see the writing on the wall, like this 1987 article from the New York Times, "Divorce May Be the Price of Living Together First"

Dating and marriage in the United States has traditionally been three parts:
1. Dating for a period of time and then discussing and proposing the idea of marriage
2. Getting engaged for a period of time to plan the wedding
3. Committing to marriage as long as both husband and wife live.

The major problem we have now is that the commitment part has left. Divorce rates in this country are astonishingly high. As someone who has been married for only a year, (and don't take this as a testimony of marital dissatisfaction, quite the opposite actually) I can see how some people get divorced - marriage is hard sometimes and it takes a lot of effort to work through problems! As our culture has rapidly placed greater and greater value on the individual, other values, like commitment, get squeezed out.

To take this a step further, when divorce isn't an option, you have two options if your marriage has problems:

1. Be miserable (extreme example)
2. Work it out

The problem today is that a socially acceptable third option has crept in:

3. Leave ("Upgrade" / "Get what YOU deserve")

since option 2 has become less valuable and being personal happiness has become the pinnacle of American cultural goals.

To circle back to cohabitation, because the option of leaving a marriage has become more acceptable, most people chose to cohabitate to "test out marriage" and to "reduce the odds of failure".

My thesis is that cohabitation has only risen because divorce has tranformed from taboo to a realistic option in American culture. If divorce was not an option, couples wouldn't need to "test it out" or give it a "trial run."

Though on the surface cohabitation might sounds like a logical trial period to improve marital satisfaction, study after study has shown just the opposite occurs. Couple who live together before marriage are twice as likely to get divorced as those who live separate before marriage. Michael McManus, below, states quite clearly that a "trial marriage" (cohabitation) is more likely a "trial divorce".

While my friend Jaime admittedly she hadn't done any research about cohabitation (fair enough, she's honest) and wasn't aware of data supporting or refuting the odds of cohabitation relative to a successful marriage, I'll quote this recent article from the National Review:

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What’s so bad about living together?

Michael McManus: Couples who live together are gambling and losing in 85 percent of the cases. Many believe the myth that they are in a “trial marriage.” Actually it is more like a “trial divorce,” in which more than eight out of ten couples will break up either before the wedding or afterwards in divorce. First, about 45 percent of those who begin cohabiting, do not marry. Those who undergo “premarital divorce” often discover it is as painful as the real thing. Another 5-10 percent continue living together and do not marry. These two trends are the major reason the marriage rate has plunged 50 percent since 1970. Couples who cohabit are likely to find that it is a paultry substitute for the real thing, marriage.

Of the 45 percent or so who do marry after living together, they are 50 percent more likely to divorce than those who remained separate before the wedding. So instead of 22 of the 45 couples divorcing (the 50 percent divorce rate) about 33 will divorce. That leaves just 12 couples who have begun their relationship with cohabitation who end up with a marriage lasting 10 years.

I think what's important to note is that relationships are much more than odds. I'm completely convinced that marriage isn't merely a roll of the dice (more statistically correct today might be, "flip of a coin") in terms off success or failure. Things like age, length of dating, and education of both parties also have a substantial impact on the "odds of success" for a given marriage.

All this aside, in my mind success in marriage wholly lies on the commitment of the husband and wife to make it work, even when it's extremely inconvenient, messy or otherwise difficult.

The National Review article above also mentioned something about divorce reform, though I haven't done enough research or thought about it enough to have an opinion.

However, I do have an opinion that among the most important qualities desirable in a spouse is their ability and commitment to work through difficult problems.

I'll probably write more about marriage later, but Jaime inspired me to express an opinion. (Hopefully she takes that as a compliment!)