Growing Evidence That Cohabitation Harms Chances of Successful Marriage

[PaulConventionWV]

<vent>

chastity until marriage?



You seriously want 1940's morality?
FYI: Chastity until marriage is fine if it's what you really want, but please don't try to 'force' it on others.
Same w/ cohabitation: You really think the world needs "studies" and articles suggesting cohabitation is harmful.

• This movement is about freedom; Let people be free.

</vent>

What's wrong with 1940s morals? People were more civil back then.

[PaulConventionWV]

Some of us have no desire to ever marry. We're agnostics, what would be the reason for us to get married? We have no god to profess our faith to one another before. If we were to get married, it wouldn't be for us - it would be because of outside pressures to do so, (how can that possible be good for a relationship?) We've co-habitated for several years now and we're happy this way. So I suppose co-habitating hurts marriage, because it further proves the uselessness of the legal process of "marriage."

I don't feel that I need to pay for a marriage license or have a wedding ceremony. This does not mean I lack morals - it just means I don't adhere to this arbitrary man-made rule, simply because it is tradition. I see no connection between morality and marriage, or between morality and religious faith.

ETA: I don't think most people who come in contact with us, really know whether we are a married couple or not; nor has anyone asked as far as I can recall.

If you are agnostic, doesn't that mean you don't know whether there is a God to profess your faith to? It seems you have a bias toward the "no God" side of the agnostic (without knowledge) spectrum.

[idiom]

Biblically... Sex was the binding marriage contract... so unless you are having a very boring cohabitation you are biblically married.

So the argument is that people who get married before the government licenses their marriage are more likely to get divorced. When stated this way it becomes a lot clearer that the OP's argument is specious and overlooking a tonne of correlated indicators. Like maybe people who are willing to submit to the government are more willing to submit to each other.. etc...

[PaulConventionWV]

that's kind of like saying "the goal of business isn't to avoid bankruptcy."

i hope you would agree that divorce is an undesirable end to a marriage, much as bankruptcy is an undesirable end to a business. of course, divorce is preferable to murder, so it does have its place. however, if you can select a mate and conduct a relationship with the most desirable outcome in mind, who wouldn't do that?

of course marriage isn't for everyone, but neither should divorce simply be accepted as the inevitable outcome of marriage. i assume that you don't accept fatal traffic accidents as an inevitable outcome of driving?

sure, it can happen to anyone, but by taking proper precautions, you can, at least, reduce the odds of the highway fatalities, bankruptcies, and divorces happening to you.

The goal of driving isn't to avoid traffic accidents.

In other words, driving, marriage, and business are supposed to get you something.

[PaulConventionWV]

Cohabitation IS marriage.

To suggest otherwise is to say that nobody outside of a specific faith can be married.

And some people will argue that. In fact, it's not that far-fetched to suggest because sometimes words do refer to practices only within certain faiths or other cultural communities. Christians will tell you that "marriage" is one of those words, and I would agree. That's always been the definition, and I don't see why it needs to be altered in any fashion to include people who are simply living together. Why not just call it living together? Why not call it a civil union or some other nonsense? Why does the word marriage have to mean whatever people make of it?

The definition has come under such scrutiny and such contention that, now, it means basically whatever you want it to mean, according to your cultural or religious beliefs. Do we do that with other words? Why are we doing this with the word 'marriage'?

[idiom]

Its actually pretty hard to find very many marriages in the Bible that only involved one wife...

The often hypocritical fight to define 'marriage' is mostly a fight for control.

It stops Hindu's, bigamists, Mormons, miscegenatists, the polyamorous and currently homosexuals.

Clearly people were not getting 'married' in India for the past 5000 years. Marriage is for white Christian heterosexuals in binary pairs who have not only not cohabited but never had sex. With anyone. Well, the woman should not have had sex with anyone. If her freshness seal is not intact clearly the marriage is void.

I wonder how many on this forum are aware of how prevalent hymenoplasty is these days? It is notably popular among muslim women in France.

[KingNothing]

Why get married? Where do I gain from signing a piece of paper? I don't get it, as an institution. I'm neither for it, nor against it. As a rational adult, I just don't see why it is significant.

[KingNothing]

What's wrong with 1940s morals? People were more civil back then.

No, people were people then just as they are now.
This myth that times or humans were less evil/sexual/selfish/ignorant and better in some previous era is total nonsense.

[LimitedGovernment]

Why get married? Where do I gain from signing a piece of paper? I don't get it, as an institution. I'm neither for it, nor against it. As a rational adult, I just don't see why it is significant.

The legal reasons are pretty important.

http://debatepedia.idebate.org/en/in...._gay_marriage

http://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/pub...s-marriage.pdf

[KingNothing]

you're being evasive.

what it boils down to is this: cohabitation is a "better deal" for males than for females (yes, I'm intentionally using the immature descriptor for adult humans), because it's cheaper than dating, and provides easier and more frequent access to sex. for females, it "promises" a segue to marriage (yes, i know I'm generalizing).

My LAYdeee and I view it as a cost-effective means to spend time together. We enjoy each others' company, and living together affords us the opportunity to optimize our personal time and our finances. Marriage is something that would neither add nor subtract from that, other than the absurd expenses of a wedding.

[Liberty74]

Am I the only one who doesn't believe in cohabitation, married or not?

[TonySutton]

I thought it was gay marriage that was destroying the institution of marriage, now we find out it is only shaking up

[idiom]

Am I the only one who doesn't believe in cohabitation, married or not?

Marriage does work fairly well when living in separate cities. I know a few people like that. You miss each other a tonne and don't see each other enough to get angry over anything.

[ProIndividual]

The only time I was happy with my Ex after year two was when we were both sleeping in the same bed (warm in the winter, somehwat comfortable in the summer)...and I do mean sleeping! Cohabitation isn't the problem, being awake while cohabitating is the problem. Monogamy isn't natural in the longterm (short term it's very natural). Biologists have shown that the "7 year itch" actually occurs about 24 months after child birth occurs, meaning that two years after your last kid is born you can't stand each other for a reason...nature. Males were never meant to raise kids all the way from birth to adulthood...that's just an artificial construct of repressive religions. Only about 3% of species are monogamous, and most of those are monogamous for one mating season. We're supposed to breed, raise the kid until the female can take care of him/her on their own (in other words hunt/gather/go to work while the child is not with her for needed breast feedings), and them move on and repeat the process. That's how the human species perpetuates itself. In other news, love is a chemical reaction (mostly in mammals) in the brain and is purely a product of our physical brain, not an objective thing that all species feel. It's nature's little trick on those species with higher functioning brains (unlike, for example, reptiles) that enables them to rationalize their irrational actions...like breeding before they can afford to. It's fun, love, but it's just a chemical reaction. There really is no such thing. But that doesn't make it any less enjoyable, or worth pursuing for about 2 years. Just be aware, it goes away. Don't fight nature...you'll lose (either by them leaving you, or by you limiting your life experiences and genes to one mate).

BTW, the free love movement wasn't started by leftist hippies...it was started by individualists in the 19th century (the fore fathers of today's libertarianism).

[Lindsey]

If you are agnostic, doesn't that mean you don't know whether there is a God to profess your faith to?

Absolutely. I really didn't want to get into the specifics on the agnosticism, so I simplified, but you are absolutely correct here.

[osan]

Why get married? Where do I gain from signing a piece of paper? I don't get it, as an institution. I'm neither for it, nor against it. As a rational adult, I just don't see why it is significant.

There are immediately practical reasons for tolerating this petty tyranny (thought not so petty in many cases if ones uses his imagination). For example, if you live as a couple w/children for many years and your spouse dies, barring a sufficient will, you could be SOL in terms of the disposition of certain assets that might otherwise very automatically flow to you, were you "married" by the so-called "state". If your spouse ends up in an ICU or on a slab, your inherent right to see them at the hospital, for example, might not be respected as you are not "immediate family". This, of course, is utterly arbitrary bull$#@!, but it is what people must endure when they accept tyranny in their lives - or rather, then enough of their fellows accept it such that "the state" can enforce its will upon you, waggling its tongue in your general direction.

Traveling along lines of this general timbre, one quickly acquires an understanding of just how unfathomably absurd, mean, wicked, and corrupt this brand of arbitrarily tyrannical "governance" truly is. Just imagine your spouse dies, you have no children, the house is in their name only (for whatever innocent reason), is paid in full, and "the state" assumes ownership despite your having lived together there for, say, 40 years. You may inevitably manage in reacquiring the property, but at what cost? Do not consider only the dollars expended, which may be returned to you in some cases (though this seems unlikely to me, recalling the waggling tongue, per above). Consider the losses in time, which can never be recovered under any means known to humanity, and stomach lining just to name two additional factors.

As I am found of pointing out: in our courts, even when you win you lose.

[Yieu]

It stops Hindu's, ...

Clearly people were not getting 'married' in India for the past 5000 years. Marriage is for white Christian heterosexuals in binary pairs who have not only not cohabited but never had sex. With anyone.

Yes they were! And for quite a bit before 5,000 years ago, too.

If you didn't know there is marriage in India, you might be surprised to know that Vaishnavism, which is the sect of Hinduism about 70% of Hindus are, is completely monotheistic.

[osan]

The only time I was happy with my Ex after year two was when we were both sleeping in the same bed (warm in the winter, somehwat comfortable in the summer)...and I do mean sleeping! Cohabitation isn't the problem, being awake while cohabitating is the problem. Monogamy isn't natural in the longterm (short term it's very natural). Biologists have shown that the "7 year itch" actually occurs about 24 months after child birth occurs, meaning that two years after your last kid is born you can't stand each other for a reason...nature. Males were never meant to raise kids all the way from birth to adulthood...that's just an artificial construct of repressive religions. Only about 3% of species are monogamous, and most of those are monogamous for one mating season. We're supposed to breed, raise the kid until the female can take care of him/her on their own (in other words hunt/gather/go to work while the child is not with her for needed breast feedings), and them move on and repeat the process. That's how the human species perpetuates itself. In other news, love is a chemical reaction (mostly in mammals) in the brain and is purely a product of our physical brain, not an objective thing that all species feel. It's nature's little trick on those species with higher functioning brains (unlike, for example, reptiles) that enables them to rationalize their irrational actions...like breeding before they can afford to. It's fun, love, but it's just a chemical reaction. There really is no such thing. But that doesn't make it any less enjoyable, or worth pursuing for about 2 years. Just be aware, it goes away. Don't fight nature...you'll lose (either by them leaving you, or by you limiting your life experiences and genes to one mate).

BTW, the free love movement wasn't started by leftist hippies...it was started by individualists in the 19th century (the fore fathers of today's libertarianism).

Much win in this post. The whole marriage issue is one of the prime examples of the inordinate human "social" drive to adopt absolutely idiotic "values" and force them upon the individual most often to his misery and in some ways and degrees his destruction.

In this case, the classical notions of "marriage", be they Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, or pick your own major subdivision, are idiotic in the perverse extreme in that they do two things. Firstly, they impose what may otherwise be reasonably viewed as a perfectly natural proclivity (limited monogamy) upon the individual for an unnatural duration (until death do you part, i.e., temporally forced monogamy). Secondly, they prohibit you from engaging in certain sorts of free-association with your fellows, if not married. Back in the day, your ass could find itself in very hot water were you to simply shack up - especially if you were a woman (slut! whore!!) - all arbitrary bull$#@!.

Knowing that this was indeed arbitrary bull$#@! that did great violence to the natural right of the individual to exercise his inborn prerogatives along so many lines, the originators had to provide an unbreakable reason in the minds of people as to why it wasn't such. Then came the stroke of genius: "D00ds, this isn't my idea; it is the will of God. Hey, I'd let y'all $#@! any which way until you went blind, but God says it's a no-no and that anyone caught at it without being married is to be punished. If you have an issue with it, take it up with God and see whether he will change his mind." That last bit, being unlikely to happen in any way convincing to the human authority, pretty well sews up that authority to force people into having to decide whether to comply with the law or break it, whether to risk the consequences by breaking it, and whether to be stuck with someone you ultimately decide is no longer (perhaps never was) right for you.

No such authority to impose does any human being hold over another and I believe most firmly that the early empires, having arisen amidst the most ancient anarchistic tribal cultures, were keenly aware of this and that the rest of the population were as well. Therefore, the fiat had to issue from an unimpeachable authority: God. It has worked like a charm, for even in a time where men have sent other men to the moon, fly about the earth in supersonic cigar tubes, and hold in their hands the power to eradicate the world's largest cities with the turning of a pair of keys, we still cling to these wickedly unnatural and I daresay idiotic notions, the momentum of "God's" imprimatur and mandate having carried them through the ages to our time and to our great detriment.

By and large, humans are timid creatures in and of themselves, but wishing to possess the boldness of that miniscule minority that comprises the greatest among them. For the most part, we are a Walter Mitty race. The only path that may even remotely lead beings of so tame and flimsy a weave to such relatively dizzying heights of vicarious experience is to congeal themselves into a great mass that lies willingly at the command and behest of such superior men. They obsequiously lay to bed in such manner with their betters in the hope that they will be dragged along into greatness by the vortex wake that the superior man generates when he moves. It is only through that mechanism that the lowly coward finds the nerve to fly beyond the stunted limits of his own shriveled soul because the bravado and will which he finds as a cog-member of the greater machinery is not actually his own but that of someone else; someone far and away greater than himself. It is the remote command that propels him forward under a sad illusion of his own courage, greatness, and will. This, I am sad to say, is the nutshell summary of the human race as it has devolved since the first empires of antiquity. The species continues this proud tradition to this very day, promising nothing greater or fundamentally different into the foreseeable future.

[osan]

Cohabitation IS marriage.

To suggest otherwise is to say that nobody outside of a specific faith can be married.

Personally I would agree with you here, but bear in mind that the opinion predicates entirely on the working definition. Has one been even offered? I do not recall seeing it, but that means nothing.

[osan]

If you are agnostic, doesn't that mean you don't know whether there is a God to profess your faith to?

Not necessarily. I am an agnostic, but I am also very religious. Some may think this is contradictory, but I assure you it is not.

The nature of my agnosticism stems not from uncertainty about the existence of "god", but of its precise nature. Of god's existence I hold no doubt in my mind. Everything I behold, I stare into god's eyes. Toilet paper: god. Pretty girl: god. Glass of gin: god. Chicken-eating fox whose brains I am about to splatter on the mountain: god. Bum peeing on himself on a sheet in August on the corner of Bowery and Canal St. in Manhattan: god. Images of nebulae, supernova remnants, and quasars from the various orbital observatories: god... and so on down the litany of my life's experiences. I do not doubt god's existence. What is incomplete is my understanding of god's nature. Is god "personal"? Is god aware of self; of me? Is god benign? Malevolent? All of the above? None of the above? Do any of my questions make the damned least sense to anyone or anything beyond the confines of my own skull? These are the sorts of uncertainties with which I do the old dance. The point here is that agnosticism, which is the mere absence of "knowing", is not quite so single-dimensional as some people take it to be.

The world is not that simple a place.

It amuses me that so many people run about like headless chickens in search of "god". I cannot get away from god no matter how I might try, which is not to suggest that I do. To me, God is everywhere, including the bathroom mirror where I am doing myself up in daily gorgeous fashion. How people came to separate themselves from god in the various manners to which I have borne witness seems odd, but I suppose that is the basis of the notion of "sin" - of being without. Of course, my quandaries regarding the nature of god leave me in a position of similar difficulty, so perhaps we have six of one and half a dozen of the other. Who knows.

[DerailingDaTrain]

Are my parents just weird then? They lived together for a year and a few months before they got married and they've been together for 25 yrs.

[bwlibertyman]

I think there are always outliers to every theory but I would say that cohabitation before marriage is probably harmfun. I think one should probably make a committment and live that committment for awhile before getting the fruits of that committment. Now does that mean that people shouldn't be able to make babies before getting married? No I don't think so. I think these studies are interesting to show what is happening or what has happened.

In my opinion I think cohabitation before marriage is a big reason divorce is common. Cohabitation is probably where a lot of these problems begin. I think when people cohabitate before marriage they tend to miss some vital steps that help ensure their marriage will last. Of course, these are all different for different relationships.

But again I'm not sure the op was trying to say that the government should force people to marry before they live together but was just pointing out the study. You can certainly disagree but lets try and be respectful.

[twisted]

I only trust a 3rd worlder as a wife, and only until she gets her US citizenship. That's 5 years. repeat as needed.