Living Together Before Marriage

Besides, couples who live together before marriage will have health problems. As mentioned by The New York Times, cohabitation caused negative effects toward women’s health (2006). One such example is women in cohabitation will easily gain to weight (Risen, 2006).This is because women will be influenced by men about the negative eating habit. For example, cohabitating

According to Dalton Conley, cohabitation is the “living together in an intimate relationship without formal, legal, or religious sanctioning”(Conley 458). From this, one can assume that cohabitation happens primarily between two people that are in a relationship. When looking at cohabitation within the United States, it has become more evident that it is slowly increasing in popularity. During the early ages, cohabitation was considered very scandalous and was frowned upon, but as the years progress, more and more couples start living together. Whether it is to experience the lifestyle they would have living together as if they were married or living together in order to save money, more and more people are living with their significant other.

When they cohabitate, they learn each other behaviors in terms of personal characteristics and develop strategies to work together and also respect each other. Many young people plan to stay together to see if they can really put up with each other after marriage. In the process,

Waal (2008) predicts that “there will be 2.93m cohabiting couples by 2021” (p. 47). This would be a 90% increase in the past 25 years. Cohabiting couples have become more common due to the increase in social acceptance. An article in the New York Times (2012) contributes the increase to the sexual revolution and the availability of birth control.

Cohabitating has its pros and cons some of the advantages of it are: Sense of well-being, Delayed marriage, Knowledge about self and partner, and Safety. The disadvantages are: Feeling used or tricked, Problems with parents, Economic disadvantages, Effects on children, and other issues.

It is said that every two marriages end in divorce. Even though this estimate seems to be pretty high, there is no question that in today’s society the biggest cause of divorce is people getting married way too soon. The question is “Should Couples Live Together before Marriage?” Some may agree that it is a good idea to cohabitating before marriage but some may not. Their decision may be based on their parents’ standards and strong belief background. From personal experience, couples (those who are actually planning to start a life together) should live together before marriage. For many reasons: to see how your spouse lives, it helps finically, and it is practice before the real thing. You always want to know you are ready before you need up with someone you are not compatible with.

Clinical Psychologist and professor at University of Virginia Meg jay, wrote “The Downside of Living Together”, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—and How to Make the Most of Them Now in 2012, which discusses effect from cohabitation. Jay points out that couples who cohabitate before marriage are more liable to divorce as opposed to couples who do not. Jay states that reasons to cohabitate often differ between partners. Women tend to see cohabitation as an act toward marriage. In contrary, men lean towards the idea that cohabitation is a form of a “test” or postpone marriage in a relationship. Jay continues that sometimes it is hard to get out of a cohabitation relationship due to “lock-in.” Jay explains, “lock-in” happens when the probability of changing is decreased once an investment is made. However, Jay believes that a good relationship can be maintain in cohabitation. Jay asserts that it is important to discuss personal view and commitment between couples before cohabitating, and to consider it as a step toward marriage. Jay concludes that living together might increase possibilities for mistakes, or even pressurize a person too long.

Marriage used to be essential to a couple sharing a life together. Now, it is becoming increasingly common for couples to live together before marrying. Sharing a single rent check, shyness about making a life-long commitment, or just the popularity of cohabiting celebrity couples, such as Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, are all reasons moving in together before marriage is clearly more popular than ever. While generally viewed as the perfect opportunity for couples to ensure they are a good match before becoming “marriage-official,” cohabiting may actually increase relationship instability, negatively affects health, and even has negative impacts on children.

The problems that arise from this, is the lack of individual moments, which give key insights and perspective on how the relationship is going. When people cohabitate, they are living with each other’s faults, without any form of commitment set in place to allow for the forgivingness of a formal relationship to take place. The element of empathy is simply not present, causing more couples to be more and more argumentative,

Should we consider moving in before getting married? In the New York Times Magazine, the article The Downside of Cohabiting before Marriage states that “In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. The majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by cohabitation”. (1) Considering moving in with your partner before marriage you will get to know each other a lot better. The Census Bureau reports that over 40-50 percent of married couples in the United States end in divorce. When couples live with their partner prior to marriage, the responsibility is now of two instead of one. Splitting things like bills and rents has never been so easier. Moving is a huge step in a relationships. Two people are essentially committing loyalty to one another as they move in together. Living together is a better option prior to getting married.

According to psychologytoday.com Cohabitation (i.e., living together in a sexual relationship before marriage) is an increasingly common trend in United States. Today, most heterosexual couples live together before marriage. A survey of over 12,000 heterosexual women aged 15-44 between 2006 and 2010 showed that approximately half (48 percent) of women cohabitate prior to their first marriage. This number is up from 34 percent in 1995.

In todays’ world, with increased incidence of unsuccessful relationship or marriages, there are some people who want/prefer to live together before marriage so that they can understand each other and they don’t have to experience a painful divorce. In my point of view, this is another option/type of marriage. Because if the relationship won’t work successfully then they can separate their ways easily and live happily. By living together before marriage, they have time to know about each other's living style and behavior and their relation get even stronger than before but if it does not work then they can move ahead in their lives before taking a wrong step of living together for the whole life but sometimes living together is against to some family principles, ethics of society, religious point of view. Sometimes these types of relationships are very successful without any regret in life and on the other hand it comes out as an unsuccessful and worst relationship. But I think advantages are more powerful than disadvantages.

Bruce Wydick argued that, “cohabitation may be narrowly defined as an intimate sexual union between two unmarried partners who share the same living quarter for a sustained period of time’’ (2). In other words, people who want to experience what being in a relationship truly is, tend to live under one roof and be more familiar with one-another. Couples are on the right path to set a committed relationship where the discussion about marriage is considered as the next step. However, many people doubt the fact as to live or not together with their future

Although marriage has been a central factor and gives meaning to human lives, the change in people’s lifestyles and behaviors through a long period of social development has resulted in alternate choices such as being single or nonmarital living. As a result, cohabitation has become more popular as a trendy life choice for young people. The majority of couples choose cohabitation as a precursor to marriage to gain a better understanding of each other. However, there are exceptions, such as where Thornton, Azinn, and Xie have noted: “In fact, the couple may simply slide or drift from single into the sharing of living quarters with little explicit discussion or decision-making. This sliding into cohabitation without

Cohabitation is replacing marriage as the first living together experience for young men and women. When blushing brides walk down the aisle at the beginning of the new millennium, well over half have already lived together with a boyfriend.