Reality Check: Cohabitation – Members Content
Cohabitation is a general term that refers to a number of different living arrangements. These comments refer to those couples who are both living together and also sexually active, (that is, they are not just sharing a residence as friends) and are not in a permanent alternative to marriage (de-facto relationship).
Despite the widely held belief that a period of cohabitation is a helpful transition to marriage, both the statistics from secular social studies and the insights offered by the Church lead to the same conclusion: that cohabitation reduces the likelihood of marital success, not enhances it. This begs three questions: Why is this true? If true, why is cohabitation so common? And what does it mean for those of us who have been living this way?
How does cohabitation harm marriage?
The proposition that cohabitation helps one prepare for marriage is seriously flawed at many levels. Living together without a ‘vowed commitment’ taken before family and friends is not the same as the ‘real thing’. Marriage is like parachuting – you can prepare for it but by its nature it is an ‘all in’ experience; you can’t half or partly jump out of a plane!
Marital success is not found in efficient household management, it is found in a total commitment and cohabitation by its very nature is a limited commitment. Without a commitment for life, it is both natural, and sensible, to hold back in some way; in the absence of a permanent commitment, it’s risky to be too open or too vulnerable. Therefore cohabitation trains couples to live with limited, conditional trust. This tendency to hold back, be it conscious or unconscious, establishes interaction patterns that naturally become the norm in a couple’s relationship. Even after they marry, most cohabiting couples return to the patterns of interaction that they had already established before marriage.
Why do so many couples cohabit?
The move into cohabitation often arises from good motives. With the prevalence of divorce, many singles approach marriage with a fear of failure which encourages the attitude that it is prudent to ‘try out’ marriage first; we want to test the relationship because the cost of failure is so great. Another reason is that many desire to have the benefits of marriage while keeping their options open for the future. Of course, in many places, cohabitation has become so widespread it becomes a cultural norm and couples drift into it without ever giving it considered thought.
What does this mean for those who cohabited before marriage?
Are they less likely to have a successful marriage? Statistically, they are more likely to divorce. However, the odds can be beaten when couples take proactive steps to reduce the negative impact of cohabitation and maximise their chances of marital success.
Ideally, couples will live separately prior to the wedding and refrain from sexual intercourse until the wedding night. This helps them to reset their cohabiting interactions so that they can create new, marital ones. In addition, they need to be alert to patterns of complacency and be particularly proactive in maintaining their intimacy and trust through ongoing education.
David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead “Should We Live Together” the National Marriage Project, “First Things First”.
