Finally, I have a moment where I can sit down! These last few days have been just insane for me. SO now I can show you what prompted me to write Part 1 of this! I read two articles that may or may not be very valid. The first one is just hilarious. In no part of his article does he actually have any REAL reasons why people should not cohabitate, but it was quite an entertaining read. Here is the article: Do Not Cohabitate.
The second on actually has some data to prove their theory and some of the numbers behind how many couples that live together before marriage don't actually end up getting married. Here is that article: Science Blog.
So now that you have read "the facts", what is your opinion? Do you already live together with your significant other? Do you think that if you had, that you wouldn't end up together? Or would you be that 40% that would get married after living together?
2 comments:
I honestly think cohabitation before marriage is a cop-out. Cohabitation is like a mini-marriage except there's no commitment and, therefor, no reason to really get your hands dirty and learn to compromise. How a person reacts to differences in cohabitation does *not* reflect how a person might really react to adversity in a real marriage, it's a whole different ball game when the commitment is there. Disagreements early on in your marriage are what teach you how to compromise; if both persons are committed to their marriage, they will learn to compromise and make it work even if it's harder than just bailing out on every relationship until they find someone who agrees with them. An inability to compromise on things like the dishes or laundry or yard work suggests an inability to compromise overall which really points to an underlying communication problem rather than a personality defect and, however frustrating it might be, it is something that can be worked out over time rather than something that should be seen as a deal breaker.
If you want to marry someone, you don't need a test-drive to make sure you'll like the marriage first. It shows a complete lack in trust in the future of the relationship. Frankly, the idea of divorcing over how to clean the house is ludicrous and suggests that the couple wasn't really that committed to the marriage in the first place. If you would not divorce over how to clean the house, then why does it matter whether you live together or not? I should mention that couples who cohabitate before their engagement have a significantly higher divorce rate than those who don't.
No one in my family or my husband's family has ever lived together before marriage with one exception and that person has been married and divorced 4 times. Everyone else has been married for upwards of 25 years in healthy functional relationships, grandparents at 50 years and the young members of the family are just getting started, but also never lived together before their marriage. I'm sure that's why I feel so passionately that a marriage can work without ever having a test-drive. DH and I don't always agree on everything, but it's taught us how to communicate our expectations and compromise when those expectations are too low or too high. We meet in the middle, that's what it's all about.
In my family, anyone that hasn't lived with their partner before marriage HAS divorced. I don't think the divorce rate has anything to do with living together before marriage or not. I just think that people need to learn what type of partner is compatible with them or not. I feel like a lot of people just get married for the sake of getting married, and thus their relationship ends. I don't think that because you live together or don't before you get married it means your marriage will fail. I think everyone has a different way of learning about relationships and life, and so what works for some may not work for others.
I don't see how living with my fiancee is a cop-out, because it's not like I'm trying to find reasons to NOT be with him while living with him. I just love him so much and knew from the beginning that I wanted to be with him forever, so does it really make a difference if we live together before or after we are married? I like to think not, because I know if something is meant to be it will be. If it's not then it wont be, regardless of whether you chose to live with your significant other before marriage or not.
Post a Comment