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The Downside of Cohabitation
I don't have an opinion on cohabitation before marriage one way or the other. I think both ways work for a marriage of two people who are ultimately right for each other.
But the bolded really spoke to me and how I got into the situation that I'm in, that I'm still trying to make the best of, for better or worse. As Tyler Perry/Madea once preached and I'll paraphrase "some people are just supposed to be with you for a season, people you are supposed to learn something from and then move on. You'll always get in trouble when you mix up seasonal people with lifetime expectations."
NYTimes
AT 32, one of my clients (I?ll call her Jennifer) had a lavish wine-country wedding. By then, Jennifer and her boyfriend had lived together for more than four years. The event was attended by the couple?s friends, families and two dogs.
When Jennifer started therapy with me less than a year later, she was looking for a divorce lawyer. ?I spent more time planning my wedding than I spent happily married,? she sobbed. Most disheartening to Jennifer was that she?d tried to do everything right. ?My parents got married young so, of course, they got divorced. We lived together! How did this happen??
Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. 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. This shift has been attributed to the sexual revolution and the availability of birth control, and in our current economy, sharing the bills makes cohabiting appealing. But when you talk to people in their 20s, you also hear about something else: cohabitation as prophylaxis.
In a nationwide survey conducted in 2001 by the National Marriage Project, then at Rutgers and now at the University of Virginia, nearly half of 20-somethings agreed with the statement, ?You would only marry someone if he or she agreed to live together with you first, so that you could find out whether you really get along.? About two-thirds said they believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.
But that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages ? and more likely to divorce ? than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.
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.
As Jennifer and I worked to answer her question, ?How did this happen?? we talked about how she and her boyfriend went from dating to cohabiting. Her response was consistent with studies reporting that most couples say it ?just happened.?
?We were sleeping over at each other?s places all the time,? she said. ?We liked to be together, so it was cheaper and more convenient. It was a quick decision but if it didn?t work out there was a quick exit.?
She was talking about what researchers call ?sliding, not deciding.? Moving from dating to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to cohabitation can be a gradual slope, one not marked by rings or ceremonies or sometimes even a conversation. Couples bypass talking about why they want to live together and what it will mean.
WHEN researchers ask cohabitors these questions, partners often have different, unspoken ? even unconscious ? agendas. 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. One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse.
Sliding into cohabitation wouldn?t be a problem if sliding out were as easy. But it isn?t. Too often, young adults enter into what they imagine will be low-cost, low-risk living situations only to find themselves unable to get out months, even years, later. It?s like signing up for a credit card with 0 percent interest. At the end of 12 months when the interest goes up to 23 percent you feel stuck because your balance is too high to pay off. In fact, cohabitation can be exactly like that. In behavioral economics, it?s called consumer lock-in.
Lock-in is the decreased likelihood to search for, or change to, another option once an investment in something has been made. The greater the setup costs, the less likely we are to move to another, even better, situation, especially when faced with switching costs, or the time, money and effort it requires to make a change.
Cohabitation is loaded with setup and switching costs. Living together can be fun and economical, and the setup costs are subtly woven in. After years of living among roommates? junky old stuff, couples happily split the rent on a nice one-bedroom apartment. They share wireless and pets and enjoy shopping for new furniture together. Later, these setup and switching costs have an impact on how likely they are to leave.
Re: The Downside of Cohabitation
This is consistent with other things I've read about cohabitation.
I think it really comes down to this:
{C}ouples with differing levels of commitment and those who use cohabitation as a test are most at risk for poor relationship quality and eventual relationship dissolution.
If you "slide into" living together, as the essay calls it, I would imagine you're at a higher risk for the above happening.
This is interesting. My H and I did cohabitate - HORRORS! - but the key difference here is that we'd already established that we were in a committed relationship and he did propose before he moved in. So, there was no "sliding" into anything.
The other thing that's interesting here is how women and men had different views of what living together meant. Men - postpone commitment vs. Women - next step to marriage. This is where your grandmom would say "Well Baby, he ain't gone marry you. Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free." This is just one more illustration of why you need to have grown-up conversations about expectations before you're laying on your back screaming YES! OHMYGOD!
I think it depends on your personality. I lived with two guys. By living with the first, I learned he was more needy and emotional, and also came up with a lot of excuses for his job. It didn't happen overnight, but I identified I didn't want to be with him. And it was hard as HELL breaking up, getting him to move out, etc. Very traumatic when your ex-boyfriend is running around with a razor threatening to kill himself.
I will say by the time my husband and I moved in together, I did think we was "the one." And that all worked out, so...
The bolded part makes zero sense to me. Deciding to get married is not like having a credit card. I think moving in together is a pretty serious decision. But I would never approach marrying someone like, "Well, we ARE living together...I guess this is the next step...and I really don't want to move my couch, that thing is HEAVY."
At the same time, I have a close friend who lived with her husband for 9 years before they were married. She said once they actually were married, she felt panicky. Like before she COULD leave if she wanted to, but now she's can't. I've never felt that way but maybe realizing that this "living situation" is now permanent plays a role.
*Throws $100 bill in CeeJay's church plate*
I'll be damned if I didn't just get off the phone with Jflute who apparently thought *I* was going to file *his* taxes. Um, no. I said I would do them for you and then told you what you needed to do to file them electronically if that's what you wanted to do.
I've said before that we don't really argue, but he ran me kinda hot with that isht today and I was in here loudly saying, "this is what divorce means. you do your own isht. I filed my taxes, why should I be worried about or bothered with yours?!"
I shouldn't have done the damn taxes to start off with but he can't even be bothered to FILE the gotdayum taxes?! Get off my phone blowing my work-sponsored early birthday party sugar high.
Wait. What was this post about again? *whooooo saiiiiiii*
P.S. We did not live together before getting married.
I had to very deliberately move in with H. He was in another state, so it involved me quitting my job and moving everything. We had a lot of talks about when it would happen and if I wanted to be engaged first (I wavered.) He even offered to put my name on the deed before I moved out.
With the college bf, that was a slide. I would have broken up with him the summer before our senior year, but we were living together. We ended up working things out, but I also accepted a lot of bs with the mentality that I was leaving when I graduated. I can see how, without that endpoint, we could have been exactly what the article talked about.
Madea is so wise.
Yep.
Friends of mine are getting divorced and she described it like this a bit - she just realized he wasn't ever going to be a lifetime partner.
OK, to reply to the actual post, I am anti-living together before marriage pretty much because of what this story pointed out: I don't want to be stuck living with someone and not be able to extricate myself from that situation and dating relationships are too flimsy for me to rearrange my living conditions.
I own a home and have owned it for 10 years. You can't move into my house. I'm not moving out of my house to move in to yours. I'm not doing all of that unless I know you are all in and, for me, that means marriage.
And yes, I know marriages can end (mine did), but that doesn't change my feelings about living together before marriage for ME. I am also pretty sure it wouldn't have made one bit of difference in the outcome of my marriage if we had lived together before walking down the aisle.
Also, I'm always amazed at people who meet and then four months later they are living together. I'm still deciding if I like this dude. How are we in the same house sharing bills and bathrooms already?
The downside of Cohabitation?
Living with someone.
I don't know that I'd say people slide into marriage.
But I do think at some point in the cohabitation relationship, some people get restless and start feeling like something needs to change. Because they still like their SO, they presume that change is marrying and sometimes it just means you've gone as far on this pony as you're going to.
Click me, click me!
Seriously.
This only confirms my view on cohabitation. IMO it is for committed couples who plan to marry - it is not a substitute for dating.
My financial advice has always been - do NOT combine finances, pay off the other person's debt nor buy a house together until AFTER getting married.
You know Sisu, I don't often agree with you, but I'm gonna have to say I 100% agree with you right here.
I agree as well. My Grandma told me " Don't do someone else's laundry unless you are married" no I moved in after getting engaged but I see her point 100%.
my husband and i had many long, boring talks about our relationship (tm futurama) before we decided to live together. this was pre-engagement, but post- discussions that, generally, marriage was where we saw ourselves going.
personally, i thought it helped us a ton because we'd gotten over some of the "you are in my space--get out" stuff. and marriage still felt new and special and different when we did get married a few months later, perhaps because shortly thereafter we moved.
and we STILL don't have all of our finances combined. because i don't play that way. gimme my money.
i'm not sure why i'm sharing this anecdote here. maybe to make myself feel better. he also helped me to pick out my wedding dress and i out-earned him for the first 4 years of our marriage. and have a firstborn girl. we're pretty much screwed in the "things that'll break you up, according to random studies" department. good thing i like him.
ooh, wait! i remember--it's the difference between "deciding to live together" and "ending up living together." we were certainly the former, and i think the later is scary. perhaps i'm too territorial, but i can't see that ever happening with me. even with a non-relationship roommate.
It's an interesting theory, but it doesn't seem to fit with the recent report that cohabitation as a negative predictor of marital success is really on the decline. Also, if the marriage ends in divorce, the couple obviously hit some point in their relationship where the inertia effect came to an end...are there also couples who live together and subsequently break up before getting married because whatever that trigger was came out while they were only living together?
I think the pre-cursor, for me personally, would be engagement before cohabitation.
Not that that guarantees the situation, but it would help cement it.
I would not live with someone while just dating.
true dat.
Yeah, I know a couple who got married just because they were "in too far" (his words, not mine). By that I mean they owned a house together. I'm surprised the marriage lasted as long as it did. But then again, they were both telling us this before the wedding.
Dude, I think it's bizarro to buy a house with someone before you're sure you want to marry them. Unless you're in a same sex relationship in a state that doesn't recognize them or you've ever uttered some version of the phrase "We don't need a piece of paper to show our committment" then you have no business buying a house with someone you aren't married to.
TBH, I side eye people who buy when they're engaged. I think having a mortgage can make it easier to tamp down on doubt and walk down the aisle anyway when perhaps you should be taking a little time to work through those feelings.
Click me, click me!
I can't see commingling my money with some dude I'm not legally married to, so buying a house? There would have to be so many legal documents drawn up laying out what would happen in scenario A, B, C, D and so forth, it wouldn't be worth the hassle.
I think this article makes sense. If I'm being honest, I don't know that DH would have ever been DH if we hadn't lived together. He moved in with me rather quickly because he moved back to the state I was living in and was going to stay with me temporarily until he found a place, and never moved out. We weren't ready in any way shape or form to move in together, and I felt really conflicted for a long time about whether or not I wanted to be with him. We struggled for a few years and finally "figured it out" and got married. It all worked out in the end (not that this is the end I guess, but you know what I mean) but the road to get here was a lot rockier than it probably had to be and I don't think we would have stuck it out as bf/gf if we didn't have a lease and other financial obligations that were shared.
I don't regret the way things turned out because I love him, but I do think that if we hadn't moved in together 7 years ago we probably would have broken up 6.5 years ago and I would have met someone else who I may have had an easier time with and who I would have loved just as much.