[independentmind]

First of all, I said that it was a start. So you have issued a challenge have you? We shall see who wins this one. Right now, however, I can't devote anymore time to this. Expect to get pinged in the next few days.

Marriages preceded by cohabitation are 50 to 100 percent more likely to break up than those not preceded by cohabitation. That is an absurd statement.

There is nothing absurd on the face of this statement.

All the material in the source referred to cohabitation before marriage. You orignal statement in post #548 was about sex before marriage. Granted, cohabitatants do have sex before marriage but most sex before marriage takes place outside of cohabitiation.

I assume you have a study which proves that most cohabitation takes place outside of marriage? And unless you are completely anal retentive (and I am not excluding that possibility), you should be able to acknowledge that it is fair at least to make strong inferences about the effects of premarital sex by studying cohabitation.

[independentmind]

Try again.

I assume you have a study which proves that most premarital sex cohabitation takes place outside of cohabitation marriage?

[pcl]

Marriages preceded by cohabitation are 50 to 100 percent more likely to break up than those not preceded by cohabitation.
That is an absurd statement.
There is nothing absurd on the face of this statement.

Any statistic that admits a margin of error of 100% is absurd.

[pcl]

I assume you have a study which proves that most cohabitation takes place outside of marriage?

I assume that your source's working definition of "cohabitation" is living together outside of marriage. Given that I would have to that that yes most cohabitation takes place outside of marriage

Do you have some other definition in mind for cohabitation?