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 Author Thread: Would you live with someone you want to marry?
 wink*smile*

Joined: 4/9/2009
Msg: 51
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 7:17:08 AM
Thanks for posting this question, Timothy. I have pondered this too. One of my sons decided to live with his gf-as of a couple of months ago. Even though they do love each other, are totally committed and are planning on getting married, I was concerned. They are both very young-under 21. I did a TON of research on living together before marriage. The results indicate that if you are under 25 it is not a good idea. If you are over 25, in an exclusive, committed relationship, then living together has no negative impact on marriage. Not my opinion, those are the results of many, many studies. I passed this on to my son and his gf and they ignored it and are living together. I hope it works out for them. I love my son regardless of his decision and I adore his gf.
Now for me, I dunno'. I got married before living together. Was married all my life-till my husband died. It is different now than it was when I was in my twenties.
Just found these forums, quite interesting!
All the best
 Happily Ever...maybe

Joined: 2/13/2007
Msg: 52
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 7:21:12 AM
I can only speak for myself, but personally I would never marry a woman I hadn't lived with first. Conversely though, I also wouldn't live with a woman unless I had every intention of marrying her at some point in the future and the issues had been thoroughly discussed and agreed upon.

Its true that living with someone before you get married could possibly put strain on a relationship and it won't survive, but if a relationship can't survive little bumps along the way, what in the world makes you think it will survive all the trials and tribulations that come with marriage? I'd prefer to find out sooner rather than later that we just can't make it together before we do it all legally and then have to extricate ourselves from a mess. That doesn't mean I love her any less, just that its possible to be in love and pragmatic at the same time.
 forums1

Joined: 5/14/2007
Msg: 53
Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 7:35:04 AM
I did a TON of research on living together before marriage. The results indicate that if you are under 25 it is not a good idea. If you are over 25, in an exclusive, committed relationship, then living together has no negative impact on marriage. Not my opinion, those are the results of many, many studies.


That, wink*smile*, makes a lot of sense to me. And, no offense to your son intended, at his age both sexes are still trying to figure out life in so many ways, it wouldn't surprise me - I'm willing to bet way more marriages (without living together) that started in that age range fail, then after 25. You're still figuring yourself out, much less someone else And not that it *can't* work out, nothing in life is certain - wish your son and his GF the best, and I hope it does work out. You never know.

I would though, then, be interested in say, 25-30 range and 30+ range... how many marriages fail where people *didn't* live together first, vs. those who did (ie, the same comparison by age groups).
 .Marc

Joined: 2/11/2007
Msg: 54
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 7:38:05 AM
Also, just as an aside, my mother has said numerous times over the years that she'd've never married my dad if she'd've lived with him beforehand.

Obviously I have a personal stake in the fact that they did in fact get married, but why chance a lifetime of unhappiness?

I don't really buy the studies on this, primarily because there are so many factors that go unaccounted for. There are too many variables.
 kim247365

Joined: 1/8/2009
Msg: 55
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 7:43:10 AM
Statistically, yes the divorce rate has been proven higher for couples that have lived together prior to marriage. People have lived together for years and years and then once they got married, BOOM all the sudden theres changes in personalities that makes you wanna and more . So i say you gotta do what you feel is right for you. Just remember one thing hell of alot easier to walk away from a living together arrangement than a marriage (cheaper too). Besides if shes so into you and you guys are so perfect together then i'm just so sure she will respect your choice to not live together before marriage.
 throwingitoutthere

Joined: 3/18/2009
Msg: 56
Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 7:45:25 AM
I'm definitely in the camp of living with someone before marriage.

I find the statement "living together prior to marriage increases the chance of divorce" to be a very ambiguous and broad statement...

1) What age range had higher/lower incidences?
2) How long did they date before moving in together?
3) How long after moving in together did it take for a proposal?
4) Were other factors involved (prior marriage, children, family, socio-economic)?
5) How predisposed to divorce were the subjects even if they didn't move in together?
6) If you add in dating + cohabitation + marriage years how does the duration compare to relationships where people just cohabitate and don't get married OR versus those who just date?
7) Is there inequity when one owns a house and the other doesn't?

I would need more evidence before I would be convinced that not living together before marriage was a better option.
 forums1

Joined: 5/14/2007
Msg: 57
Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 7:51:06 AM

I don't really buy the studies on this, primarily because there are so many factors that go unaccounted for. There are too many variables.


Googled a bit and ran across this, which does kinda back that up - too many variables:

Here's some reasons the sociologists had this measured inaccurately for so long:

1. Poor people tend to cohabitate before marriage more than well-off people. (Moving in together does save rent.) And poor people, because they experience more stressors in their lives, tend to divorce more. So the higher divorce rate among cohabitators may have nothing to do with whether they lived together first.

2. They aggregated all marriages together, going back a couple decades. People who cohabitated back then, when it was less common, had somewhat different results than people who cohabitate today.

3. They had asked people too broad a question - "did you cohabitate before marriage?" They did not distinguish between people who had cohabitated only with their eventual spouse, and people who had cohabitated with someone else, not their eventual spouse.

4. When they further cross-analyzed the data by race, they learned that cohabitation increased the odds of divorce for whites, but not for blacks or hispanics.

5. They didn't have the chance to ask people, "why did you move in together?" This turned out to be very key.

Those distinctions point directly to the conclusions we can make about cohabitation. But probably the top note is that these subfactors did not reverse the cohabitation conundrum, they just made it go away under certain conditions.

In other words, no study has actually found that cohabitating before marriage helps the odds. Only that under certain conditions, it didn't hurt the odds.

It turns out that couples who moved in together with the full-intent of marrying - maybe they were even engaged - do not divorce more than those who never cohabitated.

But couples who moved in together because it was convenient, or because they felt they needed a trial period - those are the ones who tend to get divorced more often. Why didn't this filter work? Well, many couples who "try it out" do break up before marrying, but many of them also just follow the path of inevitability. They had reservations, but they get acclimated to those, and they believe they can live with it. They pretend, "It won't be a problem." Many couples who get divorced will tell you, "The warning signs were there, I just didn't think it would be a problem." So many of these couples "try it out" and ignore the evidence, if you will. They marry anyway, and somewhere down the road they realize "yup, it's a problem." This could be as mild-mannered as a personality conflict, or as major as alcoholism, or somewhere in between - like sexual compatibility.

Here's a curious gender twist that the odds-makers know:

If the bride has cohabitated with another man, (not her eventual spouse), her odds of divorce go up. But if the groom has not cohabitated with another woman - if he's never shacked up with another gal, other than the bride - his odds of divorce go up. Having nothing to compare his marriage to, he might not realize how good he has it. His expectations are probably too high, and he'll get disappointed sooner when the honeymoon wears off.

Lastly, how long the couple lived together before marriage does not appear to be a factor on whether they divorce. Just doesn't.

I recognize the variety of these variables can be hard to apply to one's own life. It doesn't sort out to simple rules, like "Guys should live with another girl first, but girls shouldn't live with a guy unless he's already proposed." Because these are odds, not direct causes. People choose to cohabitate, and then the sociologists measure the outcome. But cohabitation may not be the catalyst. The choice to cohabit may be indicative of underlying relationship chemistry or commitment tenacity - and that might be what really determines who gets divorced.
 kim247365

Joined: 1/8/2009
Msg: 58
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 8:02:07 AM
You can get all the evidence you require fact remains no matter what the length of a relationship prior to marriage people change once that paper is signed and more than half dont even realize the little changes within themselves unless their partner brings it up to them ( and dont even try and say people dont change your only fooling yourself). My marriage lasted 18 years and we lived together for a year prior but since were divorced i dont consider that a success story. Like i said before he should discuss the issue with her afterall hes part of this relationship and is entitled to his feelings on the issue as well. But i suspect more than likely he will cave in if an ultimatum is given, and if it is at that point dude the relationship is already doomed.
 packagedealx3

Joined: 2/4/2006
Msg: 59
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 8:09:37 AM
I think the reason that good relationships and cohabitating wind up tanking after marriage is that when they are not married, both parties know that they are together by choice. I think when they marry, one or both changes their mindset to they cannot leave, and consequently things that didn't bother them before have new meaning because they are now married, and the same feelings and ideas that were appropriate no longer are. To them, they cannot express when they are ticked about or even recognize that being together is always a choice, piece of paper or not.

Agian, the reasons and circumstances around cohabitating as well as how each individual views marriage will determine whether living together is positive or negative to a couple considering marriage.

I would also agree that if people cannot live together successfully, it is a good indicator that things are not going to get better when the knot is tied. Is it not perhaps fear that she will take off before you can catch her permanently?
 NastyJerk

Joined: 4/18/2009
Msg: 60
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 8:32:19 AM
OP: I think you are missing the point of most posts here. If there is something about you, the other person, or the interaction of you and the other person that will cause the relationship to end if you live together outside of marriage, is one of these three things going to change just because you are married? I say no.

I think you need to be enmeshed in the day-to-day interactions before you can truly know someone. Does the fact that she is a slob drive you crazy? Is her unwillingness to leave the toilet seat up very annoying? Is her inability to balance her checkbook frustrating? Do you find that the only times you interact are when she is changing the channel from Lifetime or Oxygen or when she is assigning you your daily list of man chores?

You just don't know someone until you cannot each go home to your place.
 Q-Daddy

Joined: 5/16/2009
Msg: 61
Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 8:42:48 AM
I would argue that the Divorce rate of people that live together before marriage is so high is because almost everyone I know lives with them before they get married. I think this is a guise to push your own sence of morality on everyone. With the divorce rates being so high and the costs financialy and emotional why wouldnt one do everything they can to be sure, including living together before taking the plunge...
 NotInnocent

Joined: 9/7/2007
Msg: 62
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 8:47:53 AM
After the marriage will you be living in separate households??

How do you know if you can get along if you don't live together? So many idiosyncrasies that come out once you live together; you need to see if you can deal with them.

Sheesh.. Another divorce on the way; did you pick the D-Day yet?
 forums1

Joined: 5/14/2007
Msg: 63
Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 8:55:13 AM
I would argue that the Divorce rate of people that live together before marriage is so high is because almost everyone I know lives with them before they get married. I think this is a guise to push your own sence of morality on everyone. With the divorce rates being so high and the costs financialy and emotional why wouldnt one do everything they can to be sure, including living together before taking the plunge...


Most of the newer studies I saw while browsing, Q-Daddy, pretty much say that... that *65%* of couples today are cohabitating (regardless of whether they eventually marry, or just stay living together, long term). Only 35% marry w/o living together first.

Seems that alone would skew the divorce results.

Its also interesting that they've found that living together while engaged (which is still before "married"), or living together with a serious plan of getting married (ie, living together and "we'll marry when we both graduate college" or "in two years"), has no impact on divorce rate. (In other words, relationships committed to the idea of marriage, who place high value on marriage - living together has no impact).

However, I do have one statistic that I didn't see published anywhere, but is quite obvious:

100% of religious websites agree that living together before marriage is detrimental to the marriage. (I'm sure you *never* would have guessed that, LOL).
 Wishes Granted

Joined: 3/6/2008
Msg: 64
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 9:07:47 AM
Great info gathering forums1.. You've uncovered what I've always thought.. That the stats were basically based on one question ("Did you live together before marriage.") and didn't take into consideration many other variables ..
In other words, no study has actually found that cohabitating before marriage helps the odds. Only that under certain conditions, it didn't hurt the odds.
How "conclusive" :0)
 forums1

Joined: 5/14/2007
Msg: 65
Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 9:19:20 AM


In other words, no study has actually found that cohabitating before marriage helps the odds. Only that under certain conditions, it didn't hurt the odds.

How "conclusive" :0)


Actually, I found a very recent one that said that a woman that had cohabited only once, with her husband, actually had a *lower* divorce rate than those that had married w/o living together, or had lived with multiple partners before marriage.

Just thought I'd make your day.

Oh, and to clarify my "100% of religious sites" mention above, I add a disclaimer - that's only based on a statistical sample of googling maybe 200 sites, of which 50% were religious or had an obvious religious bias, and all in the "catholic/christian/baptist/methodist/etc" realm. The Church of the Holy Donut may very well not have that view, so as always, we need to be aware to take random statistics with a bias of who is posting the statistic, and the sample size involved.
 TimothyPaul001

Joined: 7/29/2007
Msg: 66
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 9:58:47 AM
To the posters who said they would live together before marriage, here's things you should know:

--A Penn State study reports that even a month’s cohabitation
decreases the quality of the couple’s relationship.

--A Columbia University study cited in New Woman magazine
found that "only 26% of women surveyed and a scant 19% of
the men married the person with whom they were cohabiting."

--Couples who do marry after living together are 50% more
likely to divorce than those who did not.

--The National Survey of Families and Households indicates
that "unions begun by cohabitation are almost twice as likely
to dissolve within 10 years compared to all first
marriages: 57% to 30%."

--More than eight out of ten couples who live together will
break up either before the wedding or afterwards in divorce.

--Only 12 percent of couples who have begun their
relationship with cohabitation end up with a marriage
lasting 10 years or more.

--"Statistically speaking, living together is not a trial of marriage,
but rather a training for divorce."

The effects on children are simply devastating:

--Children of cohabiting parents are ten times more likely
to be sexually abused by a stepparent than by a parent.

--Children of cohabiting parents are three times as likely to
be expelled from school or to get pregnant as teenagers than
children from an intact home with married parents.

--Children of cohabiting parents are five times more apt to
live in poverty, and 22 times more likely to incarcerated.

Still think living together before marriage is a good idea?
 lbiker

Joined: 4/24/2008
Msg: 67
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 10:06:36 AM
msg # 26 iq 2hi 4u


LOVE YOUR HONESTY...WISH MORE COULD BE THAT HONEST...SAVE ALOT OF US ALOT OF TROUBLE......

lBIKER
 farscapeprincess

Joined: 4/28/2008
Msg: 68
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 10:18:18 AM
Since I started a similar thread and it looks like it will be deleted, I decided to post this here:
As you can see this guy thinks living together is the way to go. YMMV.

I read an answer to a woman's question on another site (non-dating) regarding marriage in which the writer said that he had been with his partner for over 20 years, but they aren't married and probably will never get married. They have a child together and have a solid relationship. Now here is his view of marriage and that is when a legal marriage takes place it seems to give the parties involved a license to take each other for granted and go on auto pilot. Absent marriage, they work at the relationship. In other words, they work at it because there is no marriage ceremony that holds them together and that either of them can leave. That's pretty much the gist of it.

I can see where this writer is coming from, although I don't exactly agree with him. How many times do we here about men and women who say they stay in an unhappy relationship for financial reasons or because of the children or whatever the reason may be? Sometimes that seems to give people like that a "license" to cheat. So rather than work on their relationship, they just let sleeping dogs lie and do nothing. I'm not saying everyone does that, but some. Then there are the ones that take action and get a divorce or try marriage counseling which sometimes won't work if both parties aren't willing to change.

So my question is, do you think people are better off living with each other because they tend to work on their relationships every day and not go on auto pilot? Does the act of marrying legally have a numbing effect because now you have him/her and it's harder to get out of the relationship? Yes, I know there are people work every day at their marriage, but when you consider the divorce rate many don't.
 rickie121x

Joined: 3/24/2009
Msg: 69
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 10:23:22 AM
This forum title is what would cause confusion. The order of actions would be, should be, that living with someone would then allow consideration of and bring to focus the reasons to marry. There is the implication, in the subject, that you would have the desire to marry, and then live with the person to cement the desire/decision.

I imagine that could be all right, but why would someone take on such a momentous spiritual and legal decision, of marrying, without having the experience of knowing how this person would perform in that wonderful, and yet possibly devastating role of a live-in partner?

Live with 'em, and don't even think about marriage until the thought and desire comes about with consideration and reason.
 Wishes Granted

Joined: 3/6/2008
Msg: 70
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 10:31:21 AM

--"Statistically speaking, living together is not a trial of marriage,
but rather a training for divorce."
It can be argued that statistically speaking "Marriage is also just a training for divorce" so what's the difference?

They have a child together and have a solid relationship. Now here is his view of marriage and that is when a legal marriage takes place it seems to give the parties involved a license to take each other for granted and go on auto pilot. Absent marriage, they work at the relationship.
I agree with his view. The bottom line is if your both love each other and you both are committed to the union and each other then it doent matter if there is or there isn't a legal licence. Perhaps I'm different.. my personal situation was set up as if we were married legally.. assets and everything.. we only obtained the legal licence when we decided to start a family just in order to keep things more simple for our children because that is what society (in general) dicated we do.
In other words, they work at it because there is no marriage ceremony that holds them together and that either of them can leave. That's pretty much the gist of it.
whether married or living together either one of them can leave anyway.. and no couple should considering living together for any other reason then their love for each other and their committment to the companionship. In Canada after a certain length of time.. family law considers you as having a "common law marriage" where your rights are pretty much on par with a legally married couple. (barring the "marital home" rules)
 forums1

Joined: 5/14/2007
Msg: 71
Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 10:40:07 AM
Still think living together before marriage is a good idea?


Yup. Then again, I wouldn't live with someone I wasn't willing to marry and fully committed to. If you are the type to "run away" at the first sign of problems, and you expect your relationship (or marriage) to always be "roses and daisies" - don't get married.

As Kim put it: "I suspect more than likely he will cave in if an ultimatum is given, and if it is at that point dude the relationship is already doomed." Every relationship I've seen (married or not) where "ultimatums" are used, has failed - and marriage isn't something that *ever* should be an ultimatum. Just like most marriages to "do the right thing" (she's pregnant) usually don't work in the long run (most, not all).

-----------

It's not without controversy. Conventional wisdom - backed up by studies in the 1980s and '90s - has held that so-called serial cohabitants have higher divorce rates than those who wait until marriage to live together. However, new data suggest that when someone cohabits only with a future spouse, divorce rates are the same or lower than if they didn't live together before marriage.

A study published in November by sociologist Daniel Lichter of Cornell University found that the odds of divorce among women who married their sole cohabiting partner were 28 percent lower than those of women who never cohabited. (See "Behind the numbers" story on D3.)

"They used to say that cohabitation was a risk factor for divorce. Now that we have broader samples, that's not true," says Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and author of "Marriage, a History."

The majority of Americans now live together before getting married. Of couples married after 1995, 65 percent of men and women in first-time marriages lived together beforehand, according to the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.

(added by me here: if 65% of marriages were by people who lived together prior, which leaves 35% that married w/o cohabitating, and 50% of marriages end in divorce: it stands to reason that 32.5% of divorces are from couples that lived together prior, and only 17.5% are from couples that married w/o prior cohabitation, right? Somehow equating that, though, to "cohabitation leads to twice the divorce rate" is quite obviously erroneous statistically, since 50% of either group ends in divorce - to say otherwise is blatant manipulation of the statistics as a means to justify non-cohabitation)

"For most people, cohabitation is still a transition point," says University of Michigan sociologist Pamela Smock. "This is not the case for everyone, as there is an increase in the percentage of cohabiters who live together for a long period of time - a subgroup for whom it's not just a train stop. But by and large, cohabiting relationships tend to be short, as the couple either breaks up or marries within a number of years."

She expects that in coming years, as much as 80 percent of the population will live together unmarried at some point in their lives, up from the current 70 percent.

One can't talk about cohabitation without also talking about marriage. As the average age of a first marriage in the United States has risen to 27 years for men and 25 for women, young adults are filling in before that with "marriage lite," in Coontz's words.

But while in some countries, like Sweden, cohabitation has effectively become a substitute for marriage, that's not the case in the United States. Paula England, a sociologist at Stanford University, says it is "very rare" for cohabiting Americans not to get married for ideological reasons.

"In the kind of interviews I've done, it seems like Americans have marriage in the back of their mind, as a gold standard," England says.

Perversely, as marriage rates fall and cohabitation increases, many researchers have come to the conclusion that people respect marriage more, not less, than in the past.

"It's fascinating - why have these standards for marriage gone up?" asks England. "In the old days, the idea was, the man has to make enough money to support both parties' move out of the parental home. What's so weird with cohabiting couples now is that they are already living on their own. ... Sometimes they've even had the kid."

Marriage rates among the less educated, especially men, have fallen during the past few decades, with approximately 1 out of every 3 children currently born out of wedlock.

And 69 percent of women ages 22 to 44 with a high school diploma or less had cohabited with a partner, compared with 46 percent of college-educated women, according to the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.

While the majority of Americans will still get married at some point in their lives, it is often a distant, blurry goal for those moving in together. Fred Harig, 37, a graduate student at UCLA, has lived with three girlfriends over the years. "With two of them, marriage was in the air, and I was not interested in that in the third one," he says. But even though the topic of marriage was broached, from Harig's perspective it only led to strange power dynamics.

Now, Harig says he is interested in cohabiting only if marriage or a lasting relationship akin to marriage is involved. "I don't want to put the effort into something unless it's long term. It's easier when both parties agree to give up something - if both are going to move forward with that understanding that (cohabitation) is more like a marriage," Harig says. "I mean, it's not like living with a roommate."

"Serial cohabiters" tend to have lower marriage rates, and if married, higher incidence of divorce. In a November 2008 study of 4,832 women - 1,795 of whom had cohabited - based on the 1979-2000 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 15 to 20 percent of cohabiting women had lived with more than one man. Divorce rates for the women who had lived with more than one man were twice as high as those who hadn't.

It's unclear whether cohabiting by itself has a negative effect on marriage or whether people who live with many companions are less likely to get, or stay, married for a host of other reasons.
 TedJMill

Joined: 7/6/2005
Msg: 72
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 10:48:31 AM
I lived with my last girlfriend (though without having sex) and was considering marriage, but things didn't work out. I'm glad we didn't wait until marriage to live together; we would have had the same problems, but I would have had to go through a messier process to get out of it.
 chivi15

Joined: 5/9/2007
Msg: 73
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Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 10:52:11 AM
No, I would never live with a man I want to marry. Without marriage I do not feel completely committed. Why not go on vacations together, get to know each other that way?
 forums1

Joined: 5/14/2007
Msg: 74
Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 11:07:56 AM
--A Penn State study reports that even a month’s cohabitation
decreases the quality of the couple’s relationship.

If their relationship is falling apart after a month of living together, isn't it a good thing they aren't getting married??

--A Columbia University study cited in New Woman magazine
found that "only 26% of women surveyed and a scant 19% of
the men married the person with whom they were cohabiting."

And if living together, unmarried, is their choice - isn't that their choice? Maybe they are perfectly happy not being married? And if its not working and they split, again, isn't it a good thing they didn't marry?

--Couples who do marry after living together are 50% more
likely to divorce than those who did not.

See my bold & comments in my post above.

--The National Survey of Families and Households indicates
that "unions begun by cohabitation are almost twice as likely
to dissolve within 10 years compared to all first
marriages: 57% to 30%."

Does "unions" = "marriage"? Why the difference in wording? And why are we comparing "all unions" to "all first marriages" - if "unions" = "marriages", how many of those failed "unions" are "first unions"? Seems like wording one's way around facts - why not "first marriages begun by cohabitation" compared to "all first marriages"?

--More than eight out of ten couples who live together will
break up either before the wedding or afterwards in divorce.

What part of that "8 out of 10" couples actually marry? Again, if they didn't get married, what part does that play in "divorce statistics"? And aren't they better off NOT having married if they couldn't live together?

--Only 12 percent of couples who have begun their
relationship with cohabitation end up with a marriage
lasting 10 years or more.

They began "their relationship" with cohabitation - did all 12% of them marry? Or do only 12% of "relationships" with cohabitation last 10+ years, and of those only 3% of that 12% married, and of that 3%, 50% divorced? That's very inconsistent wording, *again*.

--"Statistically speaking, living together is not a trial of marriage,
but rather a training for divorce."

The effects on children are simply devastating:

--Children of cohabiting parents are ten times more likely
to be sexually abused by a stepparent than by a parent.

--Children of cohabiting parents are three times as likely to
be expelled from school or to get pregnant as teenagers than
children from an intact home with married parents.

--Children of cohabiting parents are five times more apt to
live in poverty, and 22 times more likely to incarcerated.

"Marriage rates among the less educated, especially men, have fallen during the past few decades, with approximately 1 out of every 3 children currently born out of wedlock."

Less educated usually equals less income (or "poverty"). Statistically lower income is also more prone to be crime/incarceration, sexual abuse, and problems in school, because the parents are both working trying to make ends meet (leaving the children alone more to fend for themselves)
 eschec mat

Joined: 3/3/2009
Msg: 75
Would you live with someone you want to marry?
Posted: 6/6/2009 11:17:30 AM
Ok, now you are stating -A Penn State study reports, A Columbia University study cited in New Woman magazine, The National Survey of Families and Households, and what were the date of the studies and where were they reported? Are they online sources, magazines, literature, propaganda, pamphlet, exactly where can I find these studies so that I may read them? I always love reading studies, I used to perform them. I find factual data to be quite interesting; however, you don't site enough information that I can verify your statistics.
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