Replies

-— The common argument is that if you were buying a car wouldn’t you want to test drive it first? -—

They’ll probably be surprised to learn that cohabiting couples are far more likely to divorce, if they get married.

There was an interesting sociological study on that a few years back. It was on the net; I wish I could find it again. It was trying to determine exactly why cohabitation correlated with increased divorce rates.

The investigators noted that the divorce rate among couples who cohabited only after they were engaged wasn't elevated by much.

Then they questioned whether it was serial cohabitation which was making people take marriage less seriously. So they looked only at cohabitators who cohabited with only one partner (but without being engaged first), but saw that their divorce rate was still much higher. So that explained some of the difference, but not all, or even most.

Their conclusion was that couples who cohabited before deciding to marry (that is, before engagement) were basically putting themselves on a short path to marriage (and therefore divorce) without really consciously realizing or choosing it.

Either they conceived a baby, or they simply decided it was much easier to marry than break up, or one party made life miserable for the other party until they agreed to marriage. But in any case, they ended up getting married "by default," often without really wanting to be married, and even though there were often issues in the relationship which were glaring red flags warning against marriage.