Why Marry First?

Jet Lag is the pits, but I guess waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning does give me time to reflect. And this morning after laying there for awhile reflecting about my daughter's marriage versus the cohabitation habits of her peers, I finally got up and did a search for the Reader's Digest article I wanted to send to young Mr. Yanagi and company after the seminar John and I did for university students a year ago last summer.

I didn't find that, but I found a number of articles that, while lacking the neat columns of statistics, did point out "that cohabitation itself was shown to account for a higher divorce rate, rather than factors that might have led to cohabitation, such as parental divorce, age at marriage, stepchildren, religion, and other factors. In other words, other factors being equal, you are much more likely to divorce if you live together first." That's from Living Together Before Marriage Letter # 2 - an article which also suggests that "If you like to spend your evenings hidden among the periodicals of your local library, here are some other studies that show how risky it is to live together before marriage."

I had never heard of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers, but Living Together — a Cart Before a Horse - statistics show that living together before marriage does not necessarily lead to happy marriages - guidelines are included - Brief Article wasn't the only reference I found. "A careful review of the available social-science evidence suggests that living together is not a good way to prepare for marriage or to avoid divorce," write sociologists David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe White, who are directors of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, which is devoted to the study of the state of our unions.

The Inertia Hypothesis: Sliding vs. Deciding in the Development of Risk for Couples in Marriage was my favorite - though a bit dry for the general public I imagine. It reads like a thesis - maybe it is? - but in among all those quotations and bibliographies it has some pretty good hypotheses.

The best find was an article published by the National Marriage Project itself, SHOULD WE LIVE TOGETHER? What Young Adults Need to Know about Cohabitation before Marriage "We offer four principles that may help. These principles may not be the last words on the subject but they are consistent with the available evidence and seem most likely to help never-married young adults avoid painful losses in their love lives and achieve satisfying and long-lasting relationships and marriage."

l. Consider not living together at all before marriage. Cohabitation appears not to be helpful and may be harmful as a try-out for marriage. There is no evidence that if you decide to cohabit before marriage you will have a stronger marriage than those who don't live together, and some evidence to suggest that if you live together before marriage, you are more likely to break up after marriage. Cohabitation is probably least harmful (though not necessarily helpful) when it is prenuptial - when both partners are definitely planning to marry, have formally announced their engagement and have picked a wedding date.

2. Do not make a habit of cohabiting. Be aware of the dangers of multiple living together experiences, both for your own sense of well-being and for your chances of establishing a strong lifelong partnership. Contrary to popular wisdom, you do not learn to have better relationships from multiple failed cohabiting relationships. In fact, multiple cohabiting is a strong predictor of the failure of future relationships.

3. Limit cohabitation to the shortest possible period of time. The longer you live together with a partner, the more likely it is that the low-commitment ethic of cohabitation will take hold, the opposite of what is required for a successful marriage.

4. Do not cohabit if children are involved. Children need and should have parents who are committed to staying together over the long term. Cohabiting parents break up at a much higher rate than married parents and the effects of breakup can be devastating and often long lasting. Moreover, children living in cohabiting unions are at higher risk of sexual abuse and physical violence, including lethal violence, than are children living with married parents.

Well, that's all my middle-the-night-research this time. And now that its finally time to wake up I'm beginning to feel tired again... <> Jet Lag is the pits!