Experience Project MobileCohabitation
“I shared with you guys how a few months ago the guy I was seeing suggested we move in together. I have a housemate and kids here so it would seem that adding one more person would just decrease costs and add to the overall fun at our house. But I really didn't feel ready for that and the idea of making a step like that just to split bills seemed like a bad idea.I shared my concerns then with a friend in real life too. He forwarded me a link to a NY Times piece about cohabitation today that I thought explained well the importance of exploring oneself and one's partner and our/their intentions quite thoroughly before cohabitation or marriage.
I have to wonder if the problems didn't start in our relationships when someone got mad about the garbage or money issues crept in... or when someone's libido decreased... or when someone got stressed out and thought sex is one thing I can cut out to make my life easier (?!?!?!?! that one really bothers me). Maybe those problems started way back when we picked wrong and didn't ask the right questions of ourselves and our potential mate. That there was a basic mismatch we ignored.
I think there is a lot of evidence for simple incompatibility being at the root of many of our sexless marriages. Or if it wasn't incompatibility in the first place, then the two people definitely grew apart but already had so much buy-in that they felt committed already. Possibly without ever having a truly committed conversation where they decided what they were both trying to accomplish. It's disheartening to think that we may have set ourselves up for this as far back as then but I suppose not all the surprising... who among us wouldn't look back to that person at that age for a million reasons and not want to shake ourselves for all the stupid things we were yet to do?
I don't know if EP will let me post the link so I'll copy it here also.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/the-downside-of-cohabiting-before-marriage.html
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The Downside of Cohabiting Before Marriage
By MEG JAY
Published: April 14, 2012
AT 32, one of my clients (I’ll call her Jennifer) had a lavish wine-country wedding. By then, Jennifer and her boyfriend had lived together for more than four years. The event was attended by the couple’s friends, families and two dogs.
When Jennifer started therapy with me less than a year later, she was looking for a divorce lawyer. “I spent more time planning my wedding than I spent happily married,” she sobbed. Most disheartening to Jennifer was that she’d tried to do everything right. “My parents got married young so, of course, they got divorced. We lived together! How did this happen?”
Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. The majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by cohabitation. This shift has been attributed to the sexual revolution and the availability of birth control, and in our current economy, sharing the bills makes cohabiting appealing. But when you talk to people in their 20s, you also hear about something else: cohabitation as prophylaxis.
In a nationwide survey conducted in 2001 by the National Marriage Project, then at Rutgers and now at the University of Virginia, nearly half of 20-somethings agreed with the statement, “You would only marry someone if he or she agreed to live together with you first, so that you could find out whether you really get along.” About two-thirds said they believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.
But that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.
Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself.
As Jennifer and I worked to answer her question, “How did this happen?” we talked about how she and her boyfriend went from dating to cohabiting. Her response was consistent with studies reporting that most couples say it “just happened.”
“We were sleeping over at each other’s places all the time,” she said. “We liked to be together, so it was cheaper and more convenient. It was a quick decision but if it didn’t work out there was a quick exit.”
She was talking about what researchers call “sliding, not deciding.” Moving from dating to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to cohabitation can be a gradual slope, one not marked by rings or ceremonies or sometimes even a conversation. Couples bypass talking about why they want to live together and what it will mean.
WHEN researchers ask cohabitors these questions, partners often have different, unspoken — even unconscious — agendas. Women are more likely to view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, while men are more likely to see it as a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment, and this gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage. One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse.
Sliding into cohabitation wouldn’t be a problem if sliding out were as easy. But it isn’t. Too often, young adults enter into what they imagine will be low-cost, low-risk living situations only to find themselves unable to get out months, even years, later. It’s like signing up for a credit card with 0 percent interest. At the end of 12 months when the interest goes up to 23 percent you feel stuck because your balance is too high to pay off. In fact, cohabitation can be exactly like that. In behavioral economics, it’s called consumer lock-in.
Lock-in is the decreased likelihood to search for, or change to, another option once an investment in something has been made. The greater the setup costs, the less likely we are to move to another, even better, situation, especially when faced with switching costs, or the time, money and effort it requires to make a change.
Cohabitation is loaded with setup and switching costs. Living together can be fun and economical, and the setup costs are subtly woven in. After years of living among roommates’ junky old stuff, couples happily split the rent on a nice one-bedroom apartment. They share wireless and pets and enjoy shopping for new furniture together. Later, these setup and switching costs have an impact on how likely they are to leave.
Jennifer said she never really felt that her boyfriend was committed to her. “I felt like I was on this multiyear, never-ending audition to be his wife,” she said. “We had all this furniture. We had our dogs and all the same friends. It just made it really, really difficult to break up. Then it was like we got married because we were living together once we got into our 30s.”
I’ve had other clients who also wish they hadn’t sunk years of their 20s into relationships that would have lasted only months had they not been living together. Others want to feel committed to their partners, yet they are confused about whether they have consciously chosen their mates. Founding relationships on convenience or ambiguity can interfere with the process of claiming the people we love. A life built on top of “maybe you’ll do” simply may not feel as dedicated as a life built on top of the “we do” of commitment or marriage.
The unfavorable connection between cohabitation and divorce does seem to be lessening, however, according to a report released last month by the Department of Health and Human Services. More good news is that a 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center found that nearly two-thirds of Americans saw cohabitation as a step toward marriage.
This shared and serious view of cohabitation may go a long way toward further attenuating the cohabitation effect because the most recent research suggests that serial cohabitators, couples with differing levels of commitment and those who use cohabitation as a test are most at risk for poor relationship quality and eventual relationship dissolution.
Cohabitation is here to stay, and there are things young adults can do to protect their relationships from the cohabitation effect. It’s important to discuss each person’s motivation and commitment level beforehand and, even better, to view cohabitation as an intentional step toward, rather than a convenient test for, marriage or partnership.
It also makes sense to anticipate and regularly evaluate constraints that may keep you from leaving.
I am not for or against living together, but I am for young adults knowing that, far from safeguarding against divorce and unhappiness, moving in with someone can increase your chances of making a mistake — or of spending too much time on a mistake. A mentor of mine used to say, “The best time to work on someone’s marriage is before he or she has one,” and in our era, that may mean before cohabitation.
Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of “The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter — and How to Make the Most of Them Now.” ”
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Recent Comments
The problem is the inevitability of the rewrite of who did what and why
In retrospect, when it's already ****** to the point of extinction, you can see people's natural tendency to just drift in a so-so status quo and sweep whatever under the carpet.
But if a daily emotional diary had been kept, there would be ample (and now conveniently forgotten) daily (hourlyr) evidence of the angst, dissatisfaction, and anger that comes with trying to wish a '5' into a more acceptable '8' over a l-o-n-g period of time. Like ol' Jacob Marley, you forged your miserable chain link by link with a million rationalizations and cop outs.
These therapy moaners in this article gave up on themselves, settled for a mess, and got hosed -hey, it takes one to know one. This business of "I woke up one morning to find...." is only really believable for suddenly awakened coma victims.
I'm a kamikazi cohabitation success story, and I find myself rewriting my backstory too. Me and Penelope jumped from our sexless marriages into 100% living together. Amazingly, it worked out and we're getting happily married (but we would think that, wouldn't wer).
Our story these days is that we just always "knew".
Uh-uh. I knew she was a quality person and that my own head was on at least medium-straight, but I knew nothing.
We both had plenty, plenty of doubts. We were honest and altruistic here first before meeting and then we were the same when we hooked up.
But all our good deeds and moral evolution were not a guarentee of anything. It's hard to be with another person.
Posted by vaguestbaby on Apr 19th, 2012 at 12:37PM | 2 recommendations
I do not agree with this artical i believe a relationship is 50/50 in my life i seen to many people who get married or live together with the attitude like oh what mine is mine and what yours is yours i think every thing in a relationship should be split down the middle too many people i seen in my life are all ways complaining about there other half in sted of talking it out and communication is the this my personal oppion.
Posted by technogeek1969 on Apr 18th, 2012 at 11:51AM | 0 recommendations
Cohabitation agreement / Marriage contract - it's a commitment, it requires frank discussions, eyes wide open, and 10% of couples who attempt it break up before achieving a written contract. No "sliding into" it.
Posted by Chai07 on Apr 17th, 2012 at 9:27PM | 5 recommendations
There is even a simpler explanation.
All relationships have a finite life.
If you live together for say 5 years, then get married, then it goes guts up after another 5 years, the divorce stats will reflect that the marriage lasted 5 years. When in fact the relationship lasted 10.
Tread your own path.
Posted by bazzar on Apr 17th, 2012 at 7:11PM | 4 recommendations
Couldn't agree more.
Posted by FraidNot on Apr 17th, 2012 at 4:48PM | 1 recommendation
Have you ever wondered why, all other things being equal, that marriage, such as it is, should ever workr I mean, if someone suggested it to you objectively as a recipe for success for whatever, would you think you might burst into demented laughter at the sheer madness of the proposal as you ran out of the room, just in case it was infectiousr
Posted by paxetlux on Apr 17th, 2012 at 4:03PM | 1 recommendation
I think I'd want to date someone for nearly a year...just sliding into living together is never a good plan. I do doubt the validity of this argument, but I do not doubt that, if living together is done with no thought to commitment, that it is a waste of time. I'd only live with someone if I already knew I wanted to marry them.
Posted by FilteringMachine on Apr 17th, 2012 at 1:42PM | 3 recommendations