Four Myths About Living Together Without Marriage

In the United States, living together instead of marrying has become the norm for couples -- half of young adults aged 20-40 are cohabiting instead of getting married. Cohabitation has increased nearly 1,000% since 1980, and the marriage rate has dropped more than 40% since 1960.

Some see substituting living together for marriage as an insignificant shift in family “structure.” Those who are better informed realize that the shift has disastrous ramifications for the individuals involved, as well as for society and public policy.

The faulty reasoning leading young adults to make such a poor choice must be exposed. Here are four myths surrounding the shift.

Myth No. 1: Living Together Is a Good Way to “Test the Water”

Many couples say that they want to live together to see if they are compatible, not realizing that cohabitation is more a preparation for divorce than a way to strengthen the likelihood of a successful marriage -- the divorce rates of women who cohabit are nearly 80% higher than those who do not. In fact, studies indicate that cohabiting couples have lower marital quality and increased risk of divorce. Further, cohabiting relationships tend to be fragile and relatively short in duration; less than half of cohabiting relationships last five or more years. Typically, they last about 18 months.

Myth No. 2: Couples Don’t Really Need That “Piece of Paper”

A major problem with cohabitation is that it is a tentative arrangement that lacks stability; no one can depend upon the relationship -- not the partners, not the children, not the community, nor the society. Such relationships contribute little to those inside and certainly little to those outside the arrangement. Sometimes couples choose to live together as a substitute for marriage, indicating that, in case the relationship goes sour, they can avoid the trouble, expense and emotional trauma of a divorce. With such a weak bond between the two parties, there is little likelihood that they will work through their problems or that they will maintain the relationship under pressure.

Myth No. 3: Cohabiting Relationships Usually Lead to Marriage

During the 1970s, about 60% of cohabiting couples married each other within three years, but this proportion has since declined to less than 40%. While women today still tend to expect that “cohabitation will lead to marriage,” numerous studies of college students have found that men typically cohabit simply because it is “convenient.” In fact, there is general agreement among scholars that living together before marriage puts women at a distinct disadvantage in terms of “power.” A college professor described a survey that he conducted over a period of years in his marriage classes. He asked guys who were living with a girl, point blank, “Are you going to marry the girl that you’re living with?” The overwhelming response, he reports, was “NO!” When he asked the girls if they were going to marry the guy they were living with, their response was, “Oh, yes; we love each other and we are learning how to be together.”

Myth No. 4: Cohabiting Relationships Are More Egalitarian Than Marriage

It is common knowledge that women and children suffer more poverty after a cohabiting relationship breaks up, but it’s not so well understood that there is typically an economic imbalance in favor of the man within such relationships, too. While couples who live together say that they plan to share expenses equally, more often than not the women support the men. Studies show that women typically contribute more than 70% of the income in a cohabiting relationship. Likewise, the women tend to do more of the cleaning, cooking and laundry. If they are students, as is often the case, and facing economic or time constraints that require a reduction in class load, it is almost invariably the woman, not the man, who drops a class.

So What’s the Conclusion?

A mass of sociological evidence shows that cohabitation is an inferior alternative to the married, intact, two-parent, husband-and-wife family. Increasingly, the myths of living together without marriage are like a mirror shattered by the force of the facts that expose the reality of cohabitation.

Dr. Crouse is senior fellow of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute.

So he made the committment. Congratulations on beating the odds and may you have many, many more happy years together

~They~ made the commitment John ;~D

Beyond that, I share your warm wishes for Linda's continued happy marriage.

My own situation is similar to Linda's in the basics. I too cohabitated with my husband (and still do, I guess ;~D) and we both expected marriage to come from it. I met my husband online when we lived 4 states apart. (Big western states apart, not those little NEastern states ;~D)

After getting to know each other online and then in person on expensive trips, it made more sense to us to move in together rather than have him try to move, find employment and set up another whole household. We were definately sure we would marry, and also very much needing to be sure that this relationship in person was as compatible as we thought it would be online. It was. :~D We're both mature adults, we were married the following summer, waiting that long mostly because we needed to accommodate the schedules of family for the wedding.

It's not the way everyone I know would do it. But it made sense to us. Life and love in a free country. And it doesn't usually hurt to go slow in involving the lawyers. ;~D

Sin is sin. I'm not sure there are degrees of sin.

There are degrees of sin.

From Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas

Whether all sins are equal?

Objection 1. It would seem that all sins are equal. Because sin is to do what is unlawful. Now to do what is unlawful is reproved in one and the same way in all things. Therefore sin is reproved in one and the same way. Therefore one sin is not graver than another.

Objection 2. Further, every sin is a transgression of the rule of reason, which is to human acts what a linear rule is in corporeal things. Therefore to sin is the same as to pass over a line. But passing over a line occurs equally and in the same way, even if one go a long way from it or stay near it, since privations do not admit of more or less. Therefore all sins are equal.

Objection 3. Further, sins are opposed to virtues. But all virtues are equal, as Cicero states (Paradox. iii). Therefore all sins are equal.

On the contrary, Our Lord said to Pilate (John 19:11): "He that hath delivered me to thee, hath the greater sin," and yet it is evident that Pilate was guilty of some sin. Therefore one sin is greater than another.

I answer that, The opinion of the Stoics, which Cicero adopts in the book on Paradoxes (Paradox. iii), was that all sins are equal: from which opinion arose the error of certain heretics, who not only hold all sins to be equal, but also maintain that all the pains of hell are equal. So far as can be gathered from the words of Cicero the Stoics arrived at their conclusion through looking at sin on the side of the privation only, in so far, to wit, as it is a departure from reason; wherefore considering simply that no privation admits of more or less, they held that all sins are equal. Yet, if we consider the matter carefully, we shall see that there are two kinds of privation. For there is a simple and pure privation, which consists, so to speak, in "being" corrupted; thus death is privation of life, and darkness is privation of light. Such like privations do not admit of more or less, because nothing remains of the opposite habit; hence a man is not less dead on the first day after his death, or on the third or fourth days, than after a year, when his corpse is already dissolved; and, in like manner, a house is no darker if the light be covered with several shades, than if it were covered by a single shade shutting out all the light. There is, however, another privation which is not simple, but retains something of the opposite habit; it consists in "becoming" corrupted rather than in "being" corrupted, like sickness which is a privation of the due commensuration of the humors, yet so that something remains of that commensuration, else the animal would cease to live: and the same applies to deformity and the like. Such privations admit of more or less on the part of what remains or the contrary habit. For it matters much in sickness or deformity, whether one departs more or less from the due commensuration of humors or members. The same applies to vices and sins: because in them the privation of the due commensuration of reason is such as not to destroy the order of reason altogether; else evil, if total, destroys itself, as stated in Ethic. iv, 5. For the substance of the act, or the affection of the agent could not remain, unless something remained of the order of reason. Therefore it matters much to the gravity of a sin whether one departs more or less from the rectitude of reason: and accordingly we must say that sins are not all equal.

Reply to Objection 1. To commit sin is lawful on account of some inordinateness therein: wherefore those which contain a greater inordinateness are more unlawful, and consequently graver sins.

Reply to Objection 2. This argument looks upon sin as though it were a pure privation.

Reply to Objection 3. Virtues are proportionately equal in one and the same subject: yet one virtue surpasses another in excellence according to its species; and again, one man is more virtuous than another, in the same species of virtue, as stated above (66, A1,2). Moreover, even if virtues were equal, it would not follow that vices are equal, since virtues are connected, and vices or sins are not.

Your post reminds us in a subtle way that in your mind women are lessers and merely fools or victims of the whims of their men. The men are not bovine providing services for free in your mind, the women are.

Not all women, and not all men. I look down on any woman who would submit to a sexual relationship without being married. I look down on any man who would be in a sexual relationship without being married. (I do however recognize common law marriages. If they have a strong and lasting (several years) committment to each other I count them as married)

Knowing what I do of male nature, the men in most of these situations would be using the women. Men want sex and women want security. However, only a cad would take advantage of a woman this way.

There may be a case (or even a few) of women taking advantage of the men for sexual favors but I've never seen one. Women just aren't wired that way.

it's up to the people involved to make the relationship work, or not work

This is true. But those who don't commit foer the long haul start at a great disadvantage

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