[stainlessbanner]

Everyone wants to be on "Real World"

[maxwell]

BWAHAHA... First thing that occurred to me was, how come they didn't interview any math/sci majors...

/rhetorical question

[Support Free Republic]

Put a smile on your face, donate to FR today!

(Thanks Chance33_98 for the ad)

[E. Pluribus Unum]

You can't have it both ways.

If you don't want kids to engage in premarital sex, scrap the idea that getting married young is bad.

[areafiftyone]

THAT'S IT - I'm calling HABITAT FOR HUMANITY!!!

[American Soldier]

I think well-intentioned conservatives are often twisting the idea of causation in order to make a point out of all these cohabitation articles that have been written in the last 5 years or so... I don't believe cohabitation causes relationships to fail per se, it just reveals that the two people were compatible enough to maintain a non-cohabitating relationship but were not compatible enough to actually lives together.

If anything I would guess it would prevent divorce, unless the case is that the two people would've developed a better relationship while spending more time apart, which I guess could be the case with certain couples.

[Lizavetta]

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.

[Physicist]

"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."

Ditto for Mrs. P. and I. But in retrospect, we should have been married straight off the bat, since there was no scenario in which I would have let her go in any case. If I weren't her husband, I'd be her stalker.

It seems to me that cohabitations either work out, in which case the couple might as well have been married straight away, or don't work out, in which case both parties end up wishing they hadn't moved in together in the first place. But then again, how many people can say ahead of time which course it will take?

[MEGoody]

This is sad. Every study I've seen says that those who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce. (I know, that's counter-intuitive, but that's what the studies say.)

[NittanyLion]

I think an important variable is how long the relationship existed prior to cohabitation. Couples that live together immediately are very likely to break apart, while those who move in only after a protracted relationship are far less likely to break up. To deal with the issue without making those distinctions is probably not an accurate portrayal.

[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.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[madprof98]

Sometimes I wonder if the pendulum is really swinging back toward social conservatism. On one hand, young people today say they place a greater value on marriage and family life than their peers did in the recent past. But their behavior reflects the pernicious effects of the Sexual Revolution that did so much to undermine our familes and make life harder for our children.

The values that lead people to say it's OK to shack up--and to "move on" when the shacking gets tough--don't just disappear when marriage vows are uttered. In my own 25 years of college teaching, I noticed that most of my own students chose cohabitation over marriage, and few of the marriages they eventually did enter have endured. The victims tend to be small and helpless. The trend is getting worse; look how many people here defend it.

[sneakypete]

Here are some more news flashes:

Thirsty men like beer!

Hungry people want food!

The Clintons are evil!