3 Reasons We’re Getting Married After Living Together
I’m a man who didn’t want to get married. I’ve lived with the mother of my children for 15 years. Fifteen years. Now, I realize the importance of marriage and wish I had gotten married years ago.
Reasons I Avoided Marriage
- I grew up around people that didn’t value marriage.
- My parents never got married.
- I saw so many marriages end in divorce.
- I was scared of commitment.
Can you identify with any of these reasons? Maybe yours are different, but for me, I think it really came down to fear. Some parts of marriage seemed practical, but other parts didn’t. I saw a lot of cheating going on, which was scary too. I didn’t want any part of that.
Sometimes our real intentions are hidden a few layers deep. At times, we just need someone to lovingly shake the ground we walk on to bring maturity to the surface. I’ve always been a leader, even though I never really followed the rules of life. Sometimes I tried to make it without what some say: “It’s all his plan for being successful.” I’ve seen the ups and downs of life and marriage, so I was a little terrified.
I’ve racked my brain on how I would explain in my own words about my experience without fear. I didn’t want to bore you about what I’ve been through in a short blog. But in my mind, I know this is going to be a journey for you too.
Like I said, we’ve lived together for many years. So, what has changed? Why am I ready for marriage now?
Here are a few reasons we’re getting married after living together all this time:
1. For me, getting married is about growth and seeing how life goes when you do what’s right by each other.
The years of pain and hurt come at a cost that only you and the person you’re doing life with know about. My fiancé and I have been through a lot. A lot of pain and a lot of hurt. But at the end of the day, my goal is to grow. I’ve seen what can happen when you do what’s right by each other. And even after everything we’ve been through, there’s something better for our relationship in the future. We just have to put in the work to get there.
2. I really feel ready now more than ever.
People often ask me, “Why are you not married yet?” The thing is, I knew I wasn’t ready mentally. But for me, life has shown me that it’s always been about timing. When getting your dream job and trying to climb the ladder to success, the right person pushes you to become better. So many great things are happening in our lives that make me want to get to the next step in life.
3. My support system has grown over the years, and I see what it takes to succeed in life and marriage.
Just being around my family and friends that support me no matter what life throws at me inspires me to never give up and to keep going spiritually and mentally. It goes back to what I’ve been trying to get my fellow fathers to understand. It’s a process in life that we have to be willing to take – to right our wrongs and focus on becoming better. So for me again, I say getting married after living together is part of me trusting and showing and believing.
I feel that it’s important to show my kids that marriage can be a great thing if you both believe in it and lead by example. And I’m looking forward to showing my family that I am committed to being there for the long haul.
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Over the last two decades there has been a steady increase in the number of couples choosing to move in together before marriage, and many of them expect to make a commitment to each other. The catch is that a large number of them decide not to marry. The nagging question becomes, does marriage really make a difference in relationship quality over time?
The Census Bureau reports that the percentage of cohabiting adults ages 25 to 34 increased from 12 percent a decade ago to 15 percent in 2018. Among 25- to 34- year-olds, living together has become commonplace. Among currently-married adults, a whopping 67 percent say they have lived with either their current partner or someone else before they tied the knot. In 1978, however, marriage was more common, with 59 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds married compared to only 30 percent today.
With the dramatic increase in couples who live together, one might believe that cohabitation is becoming more like marriage (or at least a step toward it). If you think that, you aren’t alone.
Plenty of researchers across the globe have surmised that over time, cohabitation would become more like marriage. Interestingly though, the latest research indicates that might not be the case.
Researchers from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and The Wheatley Institution at Brigham Young University analyzed the results of a December 2018 YouGov “iFidelity Survey” of 2000 American adults. The data continues to confirm key differences in marriage and cohabiting relationships. They even found categorical differences between marriage and cohabitation on three relationship factors in particular.
First, married men and women are more likely than couples who live together to report satisfaction with their relationship.
After controlling for education, relationship duration and age, married women (54 percent) and married men (49 percent) were more likely to report being “very happy” in their relationship compared to cohabiting adults.
Second, married adults are more likely to report higher levels of relationship commitment.
Forty-six percent of married men and women were in the top relationship commitment group. Whereas just over 30 percent of cohabiting partners were in the top group. This finding is consistent with other research that links cohabiting relationships with lower commitment levels.
Third, married adults proved more likely to report higher levels of relationship stability than those who live together.
When asked how likely respondents thought their relationship would continue, 54 percent of married adults were in the top perceived relationship stability group. That is compared to only 28 percent of cohabiting adults.
Married relationships are much less likely to break up than cohabiting ones. Even in places like Europe where cohabitation has long been an accepted practice, studies consistently show that married couples experience more stability than couples who live together.
Marriage has many other benefits for men, women and children in addition to commitment, satisfaction and stability. There’s plenty of research to prove it. Adults may be looking for financial benefits, better physical and emotional health, longevity or a more satisfying sex life. The evidence shows that marriage offers some things that cohabitation does not.
Most people are looking for a committed, highly-satisfying and stable relationship. But the research strongly indicates that cohabitation is likely not the best route. Before you decide to move in together, do your homework. Decide if that road will take you where you want to go.
This article originally published in the Chattanooga Times Free Press on February 24, 2019.
Looking for more resources? Watch this episode of JulieB TV for an in-depth look on this topic!
Sara and Ethan* started dating in 2012. One year later, Ethan told Sara he wanted to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He was seriously considering an out-of-town move.
“I was attending a community college at the time, but knew I needed to transfer to a four-year school,” says Sara. “I felt like our relationship was strong. But trying to keep things going from a distance didn’t seem like a good idea. Since UTC was close to where Ethan would be, I decided to move as well.”
Money was tight for Ethan and Sara. Living together made sense to them financially, but Sara was concerned about what her family and others would think.
Ethan and Sara are among the more than 70 percent of couples who choose to live together before marriage.
“Cohabitation has greatly increased in large measure because, while people are delaying marriage to even greater ages, they are not delaying sex, living together or childbearing,” say researchers Scott Stanley and Galena Rhoades. “In fact, Dr. Wendy Manning noted in her 2018 address to the Population Association of America that almost all of the increase in non-marital births in the U.S. since 1980 has taken place in the context of cohabiting unions.”
Stanley and Rhoades note that increasing number of couples who live together before marriage, as well as serial cohabitation, might be of no special consequence except for the many births that now occur in those unions. Some of these couples have a long-term commitment similar to marriage. But on average, cohabiting parents are much more likely than married parents to break up. This increases the odds of family instability for children.
Additionally, a CDC National Center for Health Statistics report found that cohabiting couples tend to be poorer and less-educated than married couples. This creates a greater disadvantage for children. For instance:
- 47.9% of cohabiting women had household incomes less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level. That’s compared to 25.6 percent of wives.
- 36.1 percent of cohabiting men had incomes less than 150 percent of the federal poverty line. That’s compared to 21.2 percent of husbands.
- 25.2 percent of cohabiting women had incomes over 300 percent of the federal poverty line. That’s compared to 48.1 percent of wives.
- 32.4 percent of cohabiting men had incomes over 300 percent of the federal poverty line. That’s compared to 52.4 percent of husbands.
- 25.3% of cohabiting women had a bachelor’s degree, compared to 43% of married women.
- 16.2% of cohabiting men had a bachelor’s degree, compared to 36.5% of married men.
Large majorities of married, non-married and cohabiting couples believe that having and raising children without a marital commitment is fine. They believe that living together before marriage may help prevent divorce.
“This notion has had wide acceptance since at the mid-1990s, when three-fifths of high school students believed that, ‘It is usually a good idea for a couple to live together before getting married in order to find out whether they really get along,’” Stanley and Rhoades say.
Based on their ongoing research on cohabitation, however, Stanley and Rhoades have strong evidence that some patterns of living together before marriage are associated with increased risks for less successful marriages, that experiences and choices impact future outcomes, and that cohabitation is definitely linked to relationship risks.
“What this means is that people who are already at greater risk for worse outcomes in relationships because of things like family background, disadvantage or individual vulnerabilities are also more likely to do any of the following: cohabit and not marry, cohabit before having clear, mutual plans to marry, or cohabit with a number of different partners over time,” Stanley and Rhoades assert.
There is significant research showing that people learn from experiences and that experiences change people’s beliefs, so it’s no surprise that the experiences of couples who live together can change their beliefs about marriage. Consequently, Stanley and Rhoades believe that the increase in cohabitation, serial cohabitation and premarital cohabitation has led to consistent downward trends in the belief that marriage is special.
Another concern is that cohabitation makes it harder to break up.
“Because of the inertia of living together, some people get stuck longer than they otherwise would have in relationships they might have left or left sooner,” Stanley and Rhoades say. “We believe some people marry someone they would otherwise have left because cohabitation made it too hard to move on. While the increased risk can be modest, numerous studies consistently show that those who live together before marriage report lower than average marital quality and are more likely to divorce. This is compounded by the fact that most couples slide into cohabiting rather than make a clear decision about what it means and what their futures may hold.”
Finally, since more children are being born to unmarried parents in relatively unstable relationships, studies indicate that only 1 out of 3 children born to cohabiting parents will remain in a stable family through age 12. That’s compared to nearly 3 out of 4 children born to married parents. This means that many who cohabit are entering future relationships with the challenge of children as part of the package.
Our society is in a complicated reality. A large portion of the population is choosing to live together before marriage.
There’s a lot for all of us to consider. Research shows that emotional, financial, educational and social stability of cohabiting impacts current and future relationships, along with the communities in which we live.
*Not real names.
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Arielle Kuperberg, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, claims that her findings on premarital cohabitation debunk 30 years of research. Kuperberg believes her study shows that couples who cohabit before marrying are no more likely to divorce than anyone else.
Since the 1960s, there has been a 900 percent global increase in cohabitation. Many people believe that not living together before marriage is a huge mistake. However, there is still no clear evidence that cohabitation helps to create family stability.
It is a huge deal to claim you have debunked decades worth of study with one piece of research.
The University of Denver’s Dr. Scott Stanley, and others, have conducted research on this issue for years. In his blog, slidingvsdeciding.com, Stanley breaks down many of the myths surrounding cohabitation and marriage.
“At the heart of it, Kuperberg asserts that scores of researchers have had it wrong for decades, and that maybe there never has been an association between cohabiting and marriage and divorce,” Stanley writes in a recent post. “She asserts that what was misunderstood all these years is that cohabiters are more likely to divorce, not because they cohabited, but because they tended to start living together when they were too young to either be making a wise choice in a mate or to take on the roles of marriage. This logic is akin to the well-replicated, robust finding that marrying young is associated with greater odds of divorce. Given that, why wouldn’t moving in together at a young age also be a problem?”
Great question.
Kuperberg’s study does not show that living together before marriage decreases divorce. At best, it may show that cohabiting before marriage does not increase the risk of divorce for some couples.
Stanley’s blog describes some of the issues with premarital cohabitation. These matters can cause difficulty forming lasting love in marriage.
If you’re considering living together, you just might want to think about them:
- Serial cohabitation is associated with greater risk for divorce. Cohabiting with more than just your future spouse is linked to poorer marital outcomes.
- Cohabiting with your eventual mate before having clear, mutual plans for marriage correlates to lower marital satisfaction and higher divorce risk. Couples who currently live together and have clear plans for marriage have stronger relationships.
- Cohabiting without a mutual and clear intention to marry is on the rise. Unmarried, cohabiting women have greater rates of unplanned pregnancies than married women.
- Living together often creates constraints that make it harder to break up. Yet, the kind of dedication most strongly associated with happy, strong relationships levels off.
You can read Stanley’s entire blog post here.
If this topic is relevant to you, don’t buy Kuperberg’s research hook, line and sinker. Learn more about all the research related to cohabitation. Then, consider how it might impact your life and the ones you love.
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Marriage Benefits Children
Marriage is declining, and some believe it really doesn’t matter anymore. However, some compelling findings indicate it might matter more than you think, especially for a child’s well-being.
Wendy Manning, director of the Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University, says family instability is a consistent and negative implication for child health in both cohabiting and married-parent families.
Moreover, a 2010 CDC study on child well-being and family structure shows that children from homes with married parents did better in every category.
Children ages 12-17 living with cohabiting parents instead of married parents are:
- Six times more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems;
- 122 percent more likely to be expelled from school; and
- 90 percent more likely to have a lower GPA.
Additional studies indicate that children born to couples that live together are more likely to see their parents break up.
In fact, two-thirds will split up before their child is 12. Most split up before their child is 5. Compare that to only one-quarter of married parents who split up. Cohabiting relationships seem to be more fragile than marital relationships.
Economic indicators show that 21 percent of children with cohabiting parents live below the poverty line. Only one in 10 children with married parents lives in poverty.
As of early 2016, half of all children born to women under 30 were born out of wedlock.
Pew Research and other studies find that most Americans would like to marry someday.
So why are so many young people choosing cohabitation over marriage? What explains the increase in women under 30 choosing to have children outside of marriage? Well, it’s complicated.
For starters, many young people don’t want the kind of marriage their parents had, nor are they confident that they can actually do marriage well. Others say there are no marriageable men or women. Some see no benefit in a “formal” arrangement for themselves and their children.
Plenty of research indicates that healthy marriage positively impacts children and society. And despite growing up with examples of unhealthy marriages, divorce or other adverse childhood experiences, it’s possible to heal from the past and have healthy relationships and even healthy marriages.
But the research is clear. The social, economic, health, and emotional benefits of marriage extend to everyone but are especially crucial for children.
***If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, contact the National Hotline for Domestic Abuse. At this link, you can access a private chat with someone who can help you 24/7. If you fear that someone is monitoring your computer or device, call the hotline 24/7 at: 1−800−799−7233. For a clear understanding of what defines an abusive relationship, click here.***
No one wants to suffer the heartache of a broken relationship, whether it is a divorce or the dissolution of a cohabiting situation. While living together may have short-term advantages, it comes at a high long-term cost.
MYTH: Living together is an easy way to “try out” the relationship before committing to marriage.
Truth: While the idea of “test driving” a car before you buy it is a good idea, it doesn’t apply to marriage. Couples who live together often have attitudes like: “I can leave any time,” and “My money vs. your money” that married couples don’t typically have. Married couples often have a stronger bond to each other because of their vow of permanence. Married couples also tend to have less volatile relationships.
MYTH: Living together will give us a stronger marriage.
Truth: Although many couples think that moving in together can give them a great head start in their marriage, living together can actually harm your marriage. Couples who live together before they marry have a divorce rate that is 50 percent higher than those who don’t.
MYTH: Sharing finances and expenses will make things easier on our relationship.
Truth: While sharing finances and expenses seems like the easy thing to do in the beginning, problems do arise. Just like any couple, disputes often center around money. Couples who live together have more financial issues to resolve. Conflicts arise over who is responsible for which bill, and the rights that one partner has to tell the other how to spend “their” money.
MYTH: Your sex life goes downhill when you get married.
Truth: The level of sexual satisfaction is higher among married couples than for couples who live together. Couples who live together tend to be less faithful to their partners than married couples.
MYTH: Marriage is just a piece of paper.
Truth: Emotionally, physically and spiritually, marriage is so much more than a piece of paper. It is a commitment. Viewing marriage as only a legal arrangement strips it of its meaning and sets the relationship up for failure. If couples do not view marriage as a loving, committed relationship, divorce is almost inevitable.
MYTH: It’s only temporary.
Truth: Many people enter a cohabiting relationship hoping they will be married soon. However, living together isn’t always a stepping-stone to marriage. Statistics report that 60 percent of couples who live together will not go on to get married either because they break up (39 percent) or just continue to live together (21 percent).
MYTH: Living together is best if children are involved.
Truth: The effects of cohabitation on children is significant. Children in these situations are at risk of emotional and social difficulties, performing poorly in school, having early premarital sex and having difficulty forming permanent emotional attachments in adulthood. If the man in the household is not the biological father, children are at greater risk of experiencing physical and sexual abuse.
How to have a healthy, long-lasting relationship
If your goal is to have a stable, healthy and fulfilling relationship, here are some tips.
TIME. This is the only surefire way to find out if a couple is compatible. Time gives you the opportunity to see how your partner handles different situations that life throws at you: the hard stressful times, the joyous and rewarding times, and the humdrum of everyday. If you can survive these life events with someone and still love them then there is an excellent chance your relationship will last.
COMMUNICATION.
Relationships aren’t always wine and roses. Know that your partner will disappoint and frustrate you at times. Knowing how to communicate increases your chances of being able to resolve and even prevent conflict.
CONSIDER MARRIAGE.
What makes marriage unique from simply living together is a “vow of permanence.” Partners publicly promise they will no longer be alone and no matter what happens down the road someone will be there to take care of you and support you.
PREMARITAL EDUCATION.
Couples who attend premarital programs experience a 30 percent increase in marital success over those who do not. They report greater communication, sharpened conflict management skills, a strong dedication to one’s spouse and overall improved relationship quality.
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Cohabitation has been a hot topic of conversation for many years. In the 60s and 70s very few couples lived together before marriage. Today, more than 60 percent of couples cohabit before marrying. Numerous reputable studies, however, find that couples who cohabit prior to marriage significantly increase their risk for divorce.
In April 2012, a New York Times piece addressed the downside of cohabitation. It said that couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to have less-satisfying marriages — and are more likely to divorce — than couples who live apart before marriage.
Researchers call these negative outcomes “the cohabitation effect.”
Prior to the NYT piece, the March 2012 Christian Science Monitor touted “new research” that was part of a Centers for Disease Control survey of 22,000 men and women, focusing on marriage and divorce and what makes a good marriage. It suggested that times have changed from when cohabitation before marriage signaled higher chances for divorce later. The study’s lead author, Casey Copen, says that cohabitation plays a smaller role in predicting divorce than it used to.
So does cohabitation harm your chances of marriage? Does it increase the risk of divorce?
“I would tell people to hit the pause button before they run out and encourage friends to start shacking up,” says Glenn Stanton, author of The Ring Makes All the Difference: The Hidden Consequences of Cohabitation and the Strong Benefits of Marriage. “A wealth of data suggests that the significant negative impact of cohabiting has not disappeared into the ozone.”
Stanton points out that the Christian Science Monitor did not cite a study on cohabitation. Instead, it cited a study examining first marriages in the United States.
“This is only one study in a long, impressive and robust body of research showing that cohabitation is generally associated with greater divorce risk in marriage,” Stanton says. “In fact, the study actually acknowledges that it has been well-documented that women and men who cohabit with their future spouse are more likely to divorce compared with the non-cohabiting marrieds.”
Stanton cites a particular study about cohabitation’s negative impact on both marital quality and marital longevity. The negative impact did not wane as cohabitation has gained social acceptance.
But does “social acceptance” mean that living together before marriage is a positive thing?
For example, smoking cigarettes was not only socially acceptable in the past. In fact, it was the cool thing to do for years. Then research revealed that smoking, and even second-hand smoke, causes lung cancer. While not everybody who smokes gets lung cancer, the risk was great enough to make people think twice.
If a lifelong, healthy marriage is your goal, consider the evidence. There is more than enough of it to support that living together before marriage may put your relationship at risk.
Chattanooga Times Free Press originally published this article on May 6, 2012.
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