Cohabitation popular with college students

The Digital Collegian (Penn State) ^ | Thursday, January 23, 2003 | Camille Lamb

[Willie Green]

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

Couples who decide to live together before getting married are now more commonplace than those who choose to marry before sharing a residence, said Dorian Solot, co-author of the book Unmarried to Each Other: The Essential Guide to Living Together as an Unmarried Couple.

The book, co-written by Solot's partner Marshall Miller, explores the issues surrounding cohabiting couples and alternative families. According to Solot and Miller's statistics, two in every five college-age people cohabit.

Jessica Dobrowolski (senior-geographic information science) is among those who gave cohabitation a try.

"It causes a lot of added stress that you don't anticipate," Dobrowolski said. "I lived with just [my boyfriend] in the apartment ... I think the stress is lessened if you have other roommates and your boyfriend happens to be one of those other people."

She named cohabiting as a reason the relationship did not last.

"I am going to be very cautious before moving in with anyone else I am in a relationship with," she said.

Solot said Dobrowolski had learned an important lesson in cohabitation -- it is a decision to be made carefully.

"Also, for many students it works out really well to live with a significant other and other roommates, especially if each person has his or her own bedroom," Solot said. "Then you're sharing more time than you would have been, but each still has a private space to retreat to."

Bryan Koval (senior-secondary education) has been dating his long-distance girlfriend for 11 months. He said he thinks cohabiting could be a positive experience.

"This sounds cheesy, but she is my best friend. Before anything romantic, she's somebody I like hanging out with and being around," he said. "The fact that she's someone I feel very strongly about would be an added perk."

Couples thinking about upping their commitment level by cohabiting have a few things to talk about, Solot said.

"It sounds like Bryan and his girlfriend have a serious relationship and are thinking about moving toward a higher level of commitment," Solot said. "As a next step, they should consider what their attitudes toward marriage are, and if that's the direction they want to go, talk about a specific time frame."

Brooke Everett (senior-anthropology) said she has been with her boyfriend for about two years, but would not consider moving in together yet.

"Personally, I wouldn't do it at this point in my life, but I think it's important to do it before you're married," Everett said. "You can love a person to death, but if they drive you nuts to live with, it's not going to work."

Michael Kerns (junior-music performance) went through a divorce in his early twenties. In light of his first experience, he chose to move in with his present fiancée before deciding to marry again.

"You know, honestly, I do think it was beneficial [to cohabit] because ... there are a lot of things I wish I'd known about my first wife before we got married," he said. "I think I would have acted differently."

Kerns said he felt he made better choices as a result of learning from the past.

"Because [my fiancée and I] had both been married before, we'd learned a lot about ourselves and knew the kind of qualities we were looking for in a person," he said.

Solot said her best advice for couples considering cohabitation is to talk about it.

"So many couples make assumptions. If one thinks they're just going to save money on rent by moving in together and see how it goes and the other thinks they're practically engaged, they're going to have problems," Solot said. "But my partner and I lived together as college students and 10 years later, we're still committed, together and happy. There's a lot of cause for hope."

[ricpic]

We're talking about kids (yeah college men and women my foot) in the seventeen to twenty one year range.

Males don't begin to have the maturity levels necessary to handle the stress of marriage or cohabitation until their mid-twenties. And that's a stretch.

Playing grownup too fast.

[gridlock]

Serial cohabitation is practice for divorce.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Willie Green]

Males don't begin to have the maturity levels necessary to handle the stress of marriage or cohabitation until their mid-twenties. And that's a stretch.

I don't know how much chronological age has to do with it...
but I do recall a distinct maturity difference between students who were "cohabitating" and those married students who struggled to support themselves while still attending school.

[weikel]

Serial cohabitation is practice for divorce.

That I will agree with. It should be noted that women file about 90% of the divorces in this country. So in any study saying it leads to divorce their behaviour must be followed more closely since men filing for divorce is an anomaly.

[AABC]

http://marriage.rutgers.edu/SWLT2%20TEXT.htm

I always cite this study when my boyfriend even mentions moving in together. =) basically states that likelihood for divorce is greater when couples cohabitate.

[madprof98]

The negative consequences of cohabitation are well documented. The relationships (even those that eventuate in marriage) do not tend to last, and pregnancies end in abortion or out-of-wedlock births. Maggie Gallagher's The Case for Marriage reviews the studies. But, of course, facts are no match for hormones unchecked by social stigma.

[LibertyGirl77]

You have to be sure you're comparing apples to apples, though.

Couples who are already engaged who move in together to save on living expenses before the wedding, for example, are just as likely to stay together as couples who wait until their wedding day to share a home. In fact, some studies have shown that the early days of marriage are actually happier and easier for those who adjusted to living with each other in the months leading up to marriage.

However, the couples who see living together as a "trial run" to help them decide whether they can commit almost always break up, and those who do marry are more likely to divorce.

Studies can say almost anything you want them to say . . .

[APBaer]

"I don't even know what the hell a garlic press IS."

And you do NOT want to know what Mistress Zelda uses them for in her House of Pain

[yendu bwam]

Shacking up doesn't work for many because the attitude going into it is "let's see if it works", and "I can leave if it ______ (fill in the blank)". When one makes the commitment of marriage, there's more of a desire (or at least there used to be) to find a way to make it work.

Bingo! Far more who shack up first have failed marriages than those who do not. Those who shack up tend to devalue marriage for themselves.

[MrB]

She named cohabiting as a reason the relationship did not last

This is so easy. While cohabiting, you have all the negatives of putting up with someone else's way of living, and none of the positives in a marriage.

People who take marriage seriously have an incentive to make the relationship last.

[maxwell]

Is THAT what that was. And Mistress swore she had 'em special-ordered from Oozbekistan...

[APBaer]

All the way from Oozbekistan?


You must have been a very *BAD* boy!

[Goodman26]

I think if woman are going to continue to postpone marriage until their '30's, then some pre-marital cohabitation might be desirable. The problem now, with modern suburban wives, is that if they get married late and have children late, the shock is too much for them. They've spent a good 10 - 15 years, indulging themselves, and settling their habits (food, apartment maintenance, bathroom time, etc.) and suddenly a dirty husband and babies screaming in the middle of the night come as a huge psychological shock.
I think it is best of course that they marry and reproduce in their early '20's. But if they are not up for that, maybe some form of cohabitation should be considered. All of this is IMHO only.

[American Soldier]

I do too (meaning I have cohabitated with my current girlfriend) but I don't see what you mean by the "sore spot" reference. If things don't work they don't work. That's not bailing out, that's making a rational decision not to be married in the first place. My guess is that it's the same issues that would result in divorce later, so it's better than they break it off after merely cohabitating than if they signed a marriage contract and breached in later.

[NittanyLion]

Couples who are already engaged who move in together to save on living expenses before the wedding, for example, are just as likely to stay together as couples who wait until their wedding day to share a home. In fact, some studies have shown that the early days of marriage are actually happier and easier for those who adjusted to living with each other in the months leading up to marriage.

That's exactly what I've done. Once you decide to be married, the extra $1000 or so spent to remain in separate living accommodations starts to seem silly. A year of saving that money will help accumulate a nice downpayment...

[LibertyGirl77]

Or pay for your wedding.

[tortoise]

After my own illustrious track record (which is all over the map), I've started giving the following advice to people:

Young people should be encouraged to cohabitat once as a pragmatic matter. You learn a ton of things about the opposite gender that you could never learn otherwise, and it gives you a chance to get a bunch of relationship damaging mistakes out of the way (assuming you are the kind of person that learns from your mistakes). I can say personally that doing so made me vastly better prepared for future relationships in terms of knowing the correct way to deal with things instead of shooting in the dark.

But after the initial experience, I don't recommend it. It is harder to make appropriate relationship decisions when the environment around you makes you lazy and comfortable. The inertia makes people stay in relationships they shouldn't.

A crucial point I think most people miss is that you should date your best friend, your best friend should NOT be whoever you are dating. It seems that most people with really happy marriages got lucky and accidentally discovered that the person they were dating/married was their best friend.

These are the rules for the general case though. For example, I currently live with my girlfriend (or whatever you want to call her) but we had been close friends for many years prior, and weren't even a couple when I moved in with her (I have my own room). As it turns out, we are very complementary as roommates, so there is a synergy to living in the same place anyway, something I never found true of most girls (even the nice marriagable ones). But that may be an artifact of what made us close friends for so many years prior (through many relationships for both of us).

Hell, if I knew everything I know now when I was young, I could have avoided a lot of mistakes. But then, those mistakes properly prepared me for now.

[Amelia]

I can't imagine shacking up in college or the parents condoning it.

A lot of parents are doing it too, so what can they say?

[madprof98]

Couples who are already engaged who move in together to save on living expenses before the wedding, for example, are just as likely to stay together as couples who wait until their wedding day to share a home. In fact, some studies have shown that the early days of marriage are actually happier and easier for those who adjusted to living with each other in the months leading up to marriage.

Source?