Posted on 06/29/2021 5:15:45 PM PDT by CharlesOConnell
"Mom, Joe and I have decided to live together," my strong-willed 23-year-old daughter announced defiantly at our dining-room table, her boyfriend at her side.
Her words made my heart pound and my stomach churn. "Have either of you even thought about the possibility you could get pregnant?"
My daughter looked sheepishly at her boyfriend, admitting they hadn't. The defiance swept over her face again and she replied, "Well, I don't care what you and Dad think. You'll just have to accept it."
"We may have to tolerate it," I said firmly. "But we'll never accept it. You're going, against every value taught you."
As she and her 24-year-old boyfriend marched out the door, I was heartbroken. It was one of the great sorrows of my life.
I couldn't convince my daughter that by entering a relationship of sex without marriage she could be making the worst mistake of her life. But since then I've learned unsettling facts about cohabitation. My hope is that what I learned will help other young people and parents facing the same situation. (The U.S. Census Bureau says 6,085,284 unmarried, opposite-sex partners live together. [Written in 1994]) Here's what I found:
Estimates from a number of experts are that 40 to 50 percent of cohabitants never marry each other. One 1985 Columbia University study found only 19 percent of men who lived with their girlfriends eventually walked down the aisle with them.
I also learned that in many live-in relationship differently, frequently the result of failing to discuss what they expect of each other. When 139 cohabiting students were asked why they lived with' somebody, most women said it was a first step toward marriage. For men, the most common motive was sex. One man, asked why he was living with his girlfriend, replied, "Sex-when you want it, where you want it Though that particular inquiry is now years old, and the fear of AIDS has changed attitudes toward sex, I found from the people I've talked to that many cohabitants still don't talk about what they expect from living together.
Many young couples today insist that living Together Is a good idea, the best way to see if they are compatible-and hence the best way to prevent divorce. The truth? One study found that people who live together before marriage are about 33 percent more likely to split up than those who don't. Another study showed that the longer they live together before marriage, the more likely they themselves thought their chance of divorce. Moreover, the study says, cohabitants have a lower reported quality of marriage and a lower commitment to it.
As Connecticut psychologist Joseph Nowinski explains, "Living together, while frequently touted as an intensely bold, romantic move, is often really a way to avoid full commitment. When two people opt for living together over marriage, one or both of them are often secretly saying, I'm worried my love for you is too fragile to last a lifetime, So I want a quick escape hatch if the going gets rough'. "
A broken heart can't be prevented just by refusing to sign on the dotted line. When live-in couples split, the emotional fallout is often as deeply painful as divorce. University of Southern California clinical psychologist Michael Newcomb explains: "Live-in couples usually become as emotionally attached as married couples. The problem is, it is easier for even a small problem to drive them apart because they just don't have the glue that married couples do to hold them together-such as kids, shared finances, a legal document."
Steve Jaccarino, a contractor in Westport, Conn., and his girlfriend broke up mainly because they disagreed over where they wanted to settle. Today, ten years later, Steve still imagines her coming back into his life. "I'm not over her," he says.
This was one of my deepest concerns. Five years before my daughter announced she was going to live with her boyfriend, she had made the same mistake. At age 18, she had run away from home to live with another boy-and bad gotten pregnant. When he deserted her, my daughter was so devastated and unable to cope that for years the burden of raising the baby had fallen on my husband's and my shoulders.
When another young woman I know of lived with a man, she accidentally got pregnant with twins. Her live-in lover stayed with her until she was seven months along and jobless, then phoned her parents one night and announced, "Come and get your very pregnant daughter." For the next 18 years, she raised her twin boys alone, often barely able to buy food or pay rent. Fully 44 percent of unwed mothers will live in poverty.
Frequently, people who live together first are miserable after marriage. Common problems include: lower overall ability to communicate-less ability to resolve quarrels. In one study, wives who' cohabited before the wedding complained especially about the poor quality of communication with their mates. Clearly, when it comes to marriage, practicing beforehand doesn't make perfect. On the contrary, in a study reported in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, the longer couples had lived together before marriage, the more unhappy they were.
A 1989 study found physical attacks are more common and more severe among live-in couples than among those who are married. Isolation from their families may be a reason for this, the study's authors concluded.
Another survey showed a startling 40 per cent of cohabiting women were forced to endure a kind of sex they disliked. Moreover, since there is often no commitment to be sexually exclusive, those who cohabit may be put at a higher-than-average risk for sexually transmitted diseases such as genital herpes, chlamydia and AIDS.
At age 19, one Palm Springs, California woman offered to let her unemployed boyfriend-move in with her. She recalls: "He was living with his ex-girlfriend at the time. I figured if he moved in with me, he'd be all mine. Instead, I wound up doing all the work and paying all the bills while he was secretly sleeping with her in my bed. It was a bad mistake."
Cohabiting is often portrayed as trouble-free and offering all the joys of marriage with none of the responsibilities. Nonsense!
One young man I know attests to the falsity of this argument. He moved in with his fiancee three months before their wedding. Today he says, "We had all the disagreements of marriage Who does the dishes? Who pays the bills?-without the commitment to hold us together. If we had lived together longer, we might have broken up. When you aren't married and you fight, you don't ever have to work it out if you don't want to. You can just walk away."
Frequently, the woman sees living together as romantic, while the man views the arrangement as a "practical" solution that will help them iron out differences and strengthen their love by destroying any foolish romantic fantasies they may have about each other. In fact, live-in couples may find it harder to build lasting love precisely because they have lost their starry-eyed, romantic "illusions."
Family therapists Judy and Jim Sellner, authors of Loving for Life, say that rich, lasting love goes through several distinct stages. The first is the "romantic" phase when love is wild and idealistic, when couples believe they have found their "one true love" with whom they will "live happily ever after."
It is an absolutely wonderful time, and couples should linger over it and just enjoy the candlelight dinners, the swooning, the craziness of it all. Cutting it short to rush into living together could be a major mistake. Say the Sellners: Couples who weather the tumultuous power-struggle and conflict stages and sail smoothly on to a more peaceful period in which they understand and handle their differences are those whom manage to recall the "overly idealized" visions of each other they enjoyed in the first romantic stage of courtship.
The day my daughter said she was moving in with her boyfriend, I knew some of these facts and shared them with her-to no avail. But over the past few years, as I continued to learn about the data on living together, I was even more convinced it was the wrong thing to do. I became so determined to get this information out to people-and to help young women and men avoid or cope with the pregnancies that all too often result from living together-that I started a support group for unwed parents, which advocates premarital abstinence. My daughter, now 35 and much wiser, is active in the organization and tells anyone who will listen that living together is absolutely the wrong way to go.
As our children become young adults, we can no longer make decisions for them. Nor can we completely keep them from harm. But at least we can arm them with all the facts we can find. We can then only pray they'll make the right choices.
There are amicable divorces. And I’d rather see people divorce amicably than put themselves and their kids through lifelong hell.
The problem is that people can’t let go of their lower natures to navigate divorce properly, any better than they do navigating marriage.
My issue with SAM is that in my years here, I’ve never seen him miss a single chance to generally condemn marriage as an institution - and women! - whenever he can. That seems like a very unhealthy obsession, and he needs to get over his individual experience, realize that there is more in life than his personal resentments, and GET a life.
As to the point of the thread - I suspect that there are MANY people on this board who started out’living in sin’, and went on to have very long, fulfilling marriages.
I wouldn’t suggest that a young couple do it, but it has worked out fine for many.
(Almost 30 happy years with the same good man, here - and yes, we Did.)
bump
I’m not a man - but there are plenty of very good and non-jaundiced men here, who can convince you - if they have any inclination to approach someone as obviously angry and closed-minded as you are.
That 23 y/o daughter is an adult, albeit a young one.
Her remarks sound rude and unnecessarily disrespectful.
“Well, I don’t care what you and Dad think. You’ll just have to accept it!”
Me talking to my parents like that even at age 23, would have earned me a good hard slap in the chops.
However, I know each family is different on what manner of communication is allowed. Even back then (60’s 70’s) some kids were known to talk smack to their parents, treat them as classmates vs parents.
In reality its usually the other way around ...
B-B-B-baby baby baby why you wan’ treat me this way
You know I’m still your lover boy I still feel the same way
That’s when she told me a story, ‘bout free milk and a cow
And said no hug-ee no kiss-ee until I get a weddin’ vow
My honey my baby, don’t put my love upon no shelf
She said don’t hand me no lines and keep your hands to yourself
My thinking is when you live together, you are more willing to compromise since it is short term. When you then get married it is then, “I’m not willing to do that the rest of my life”. The other party then feels cheated.
My Dad, God rest his soul, put it far more simply when I came of age back in the 1970s.
Why buy a cow when you get milk free? And would any woman that stupid be worth keeping?
No, I guess not, I told him . . . and I kept my snake in the cage until I found one worth keeping about my 28th birthday. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it.
The very few amicable divorces dont counter the massive general patrern of antagonistic divorces, which are the norm. The structure of family court encourages women to be antagonistic to gain the maximum amount of money from the man.
I see you ignored most of what I said, especially my simple statement about selling me on all the bene fits marriage brings a man today.
Maybe its you who are really projecting here, because you certainly have no idea about my life.
I will continue to post my opinions based on reason and facts, and if you dont like them, I truly do not care at all. Truths are often not pleasant. Do you think I am happy about the current situation for men and marriage? I have never ever said that. Its exremely depressing. BUT ITS THE TRUTH. Why you dont like hearing it or acknowledging it could be a whole number of reasons.
True and great point. All real marriages are three-way. God, man and wife. However I’m pretty sure God will take her side in a pinch. 😬
Maybe you should tell us what actually happened to you, since you assert that your posted opinions are based on reason and facts.
I suspect that in any divorce or ensuing litigation, there is very rarely only one ‘guilty’ party.
Durn tootin’ - remember who Mary was. But yeah, a Christ centered marriage is most important; keeps everyone focused, and together. There are sadly, failed Christian marriages esp. among pastors who should be the “go to people” when things get rocky.
Being grounded in reality isnt anger or close minded.
Your response is just an attempt to dismiss a viewpoint you dont particularly like by caling it anger and the person expressing it, close minded.
Shame tactics and nsults shut down discussion and information exchange, and as you used them, you show you have no genuine desire to discuss the issue, and instead just want to shut me up because yu didnt like whatI said.
The Bezos divorce comes to mind. $150 billion will get ya a lot of amicability.
A woman who espouses the primacy of real butter and heavy whipping cream in the kitchen is probably not a slouch in other areas of life.
This November it’ll be 26 years for this couple that “lived in sin” for two years before marriage (so, really 28 years..and still going strong).
I base it on divorce statistics
I base it on secondhand experiences told to me by friends and family
I base it on others stories of their divorces they have shared with the world one way or another
I base it on the legal inequalities of current us law that are heavily, heavily weighed in favor of women at the expense of men
I base it on the legal statisics that show even when men may in rare cases, get payments by a woman, for example, he is far more likely not to be paid, as the system almost never goes after women who do not make their payments, and the stats show of the very few women who ever are ruled to make payments, a higher percentage of these women do not make payments at all, or fail to make the proper amount payments.
I base it on documentaries such as Divorce Corp, where people share their stories, divorce attorney explain wht goes on in Family Court, and Family Court judges explain what go on in Family Court. It is an abomination of gross injustice.
My kids were raised that at 18 they were on their own to make life choices.
So, it isn’t actually from personal experience? You’ve never been married?
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