Thursday, July 31, 2008

Living together before marriage?


USA Today wrote an article about non-married couples living together and the divorce rate in "Living Together No Longer 'Playing House'". Recently, studies show that divorce rates are lower for couples choosing to live together before marriage.

After reading this short article, I'm actually a bit shocked. I think every marriage has many diverse tangents and angles that affect every couple differently. In my experience, my soon-to-be-ex-husband and I did not move in together until we were married. And ta-da, our marriage ended in divorce. There is no formula as to what makes marriage last, it just has to endure many obstacles that sometimes cannot be hurdled.

My advice: follow your intuition and believe in what your heart tells you. Sometimes it is extremely hard to abstain from allowing someone else to make your decisions, but in the end, it's you who you are left with. Reading some statistic that says cohabitation is right or wrong for a marriage is no way of measuring this outcome - ask anyone who's been divorced!

6 comments:

Tiffany said...

Interesting article. My opinion is coming from time spent at a fairly conservative school like Bethel. I can see how cohabitating would decrease the divorce rate: Many unmarried couples break up after discovering they cannot live together. The couples (or elite) that survive this "make or break" time will eventually get married...

I guess the article didn't stun me too badly. Does that make me jaded?

Anonymous said...

I have to admit it all sounds fine and good to live with someone you plan on being with the rest of your life before being married, but you have to remember it is a sin. You are not respecting the sanctity of marriage. If people have more respect for this then there would be less divorce because people would not only respect themselves, but they would respect something they couldn't see and something they couldn't touch. I think a bigger deal is a respect for religion.

Belle Marie said...

i second tiffany's comment. And i got to say, i've lived with a boyfriend and i got to say that i think what part of it is (though i am yet to eb married) that the title of being married does add a tension or indirect stress point to the relationship. you almost feel like your tied down and can not leave where as when living together unmarried you know in the back of your head how easy it is to just get up and leave and not have to deal with any extra details to end the relationship as far as divorce goes, so in this case the couple tends to take it with a more non-chalant attitude. Maybe not the case with everyone, but HEY, it was the case with me at least and many i know lol :D

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