I’ve slowly come to the opinion that cohabitation without the explicit intent to move on to marriage is not ideal. If you are not going to marry someone- either because you are not ready to be married or you just know they are not the one- it is advantageous to be more independent and mobile. Every relationship limits your life options in one way or another, and live-in relationships have more inertia because when things are not awesome but not bad, it’s so much easier just to stay. Unfortunately, when you do that you put yourself at risk of missing (and maybe not even conceiving of) any number of life opportunities.
If you think it’s all going to add up to something like a lifelong partnership, it’s a good investment. But moving in with a non marriageable partner is investing in a loss what you could be investing in yourself.
I’m not at all sure that the lock-in effects are all or mostly financial or that gender equality or economic security has much to do with it. If two people combine their incomes , they can afford a nicer place to live , better furniture,nicer vacations, etc than either can individually - even if each of them makes a six figure income and can get by just fine on their own.
I think the lock-in has more to do with the convenience of staying,the inconvenience of leaving , and the fact that marriage may be important enough to one half of the couple to end the relationship over.
Maybe her boyfriend wasn't really committed to her. Maybe he got married only because he didn't want to break up right then.Maybe if they hadn't lived together, she wouldn't have spent five years in a relationship with someone she didn't believe was committed to her. My sister-in-law lived with a guy for about 10 years-they bought a co-op together, bought furniture together, had a dog. She thought everything was fine-until she suggested that after 10 years of living together , maybe it was time to get married. He told he he had never wanted to marry her and she ended the relationship altogether.As much as I disliked him, at least he told her he didn't want to marry her, instead of "going along to get along". I suspect most men in that position would have gone along rather than entirely give up a relationship and a life he was presumably at least comfortable with. That's the real exit cost, not the money.
The “sliding in to marriage without actually making a decision” can and does happen when a couple isn’t living together , but I suspect it’s a lot more common when they are.
That was sort of the point I was obliquely trying to make - without being “culturally insensitive” and saying it was a horrible institution. Most of the Indians I know - male and female - have mixed feelings about it - but most of them think Mom picked pretty well. But most of them say that its partially about expectations. They don’t expect marriage to bring happiness - marriage is something that was ‘set up’ for them.
I think its - non-judgmentally - very odd. I imagine some of the women I know who met their husbands a few days before the wedding - spent a few weeks in India with the family - then left and came here where they knew no one except that guy they met three weeks ago and married. From my Western perspective, I always think it must be emotionally trying, but I get the feeling when I express this that I’m being naive…
As a long time cohabitor, I’m wondering where I fit into your equation. I have cohabited with only the man with whom I have lived, traveled and faced many challenges, for over 25 yrs.
We were always more ‘married’ than most of our peers with the paperwork, when we were younger. (We didn’t cheat, abuse, manipulate, weasel around, and were clearly more committed!) We have outlasted most of the couples who’s weddings we danced at.
What does that all mean? I think it means that these things are not measurable and people are different. Would we still be together if we’d walked down an aisle? I doubt it very much. Not feeling shackled was important to us both, and knowing we were together because every day we chose to be anew, is what brought us through, in some ways.
It takes all kinds, and marriage only suits some kinds, to my mind.
It takes all kinds. Some people have marriages that look on the outside like a trainwreck- and somehow they work. Others have what looks like the perfect marriage and it just doesn’t work at all. The only thing anyone can do with relationship advice is figure out what bits of it work for them
For me, though I wish I had heard a secular, non-judgmental, non-anti-sex argument against cohabitation. I sort of eased into cohabitation when I was younger. It meant cheaper rent and seemed like the obvious “next” thing to do. But going into any step of a relationship without a longer plan or an idea of what you want is a bad move in general.
No doubt there are other factors that contribute to lock-in – social stigma about being alone, loss of sexual outlet, anxiety about being “back on the market” while older and out of practice, inertia, etc. – but I think you’re fooling yourself if you don’t think economics make a huge contribution. Many people in long term relationships – overwhelmingly but not exclusively women – give up their careers and professional networks when they’re in long term relationships (true of marriage and non-married cohabitation). Five years later if these people want to move out, how do they pay the rent? Plus, one member of the partnership frequently (typically?) takes over maintaining the household accounts. So even if you have the dough, knowing where it all is, what bills you have due when, etc. is out of your purview.
And of course you’re right that two incomes can buy a lot more than two living separately. Which I think proves my point – you can’t get out of a relationship without giving up standard of living. We might not be that sympathetic to people who are both making six figures, but what about people who are each making $18 grand? Splitting up will change their ability to afford places individually much more difficult.
SWMBO and I just celebrated our 19th anniversary together. We aren’t married, although the offer has been on the table for a long time. The issue is that she’s Catholic and takes it seriously. She’d have to get an annulment and that means she’d have to have contact her ex-husband and the only way she wants to do that is with a sharp knife in her hand.
In my case, I did cohabit for about a year, and Mrs. Map and I did feel the “inertia” – just the effort required to change habitation – lowered the threshold to marriage compared to if we hadn’t been living together, and so when a “stressful event” (to quote a previous poster) occurred, we did get married, which we might never have done without both things in place…
BUT, for us, this was a GOOD thing. It’s obvious to us and everyone around us that our marriage is solid, and we’re generally happy, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
So, the study mentioned in the OP sounds interesting, and does surely account for some cases, but then there are cases like me – people who were too “chicken” to commit to marrying (which in practical terms means “marrying a specific person”), BUT for whom this avoidance of marriage was an objective MISTAKE, and so the lowered-threshold, stepwise commitment level effect of cohabitation was a GOOD thing.
ETA: In other words, a missing statistical category is “good marriages which never took place”. Impossible to measure a hypothetical like this directly, of course, but maybe you could get at it by asking people who married late in life (perhaps late to do something they wanted to do, e.g., have kids), or never married at all, about their regrets, if any.
But regrets about what didn’t happen isn’t the same as the (unknowable) what WOULD have happened, so I guess that’s not such a good proxy measure, after all.
According to the RCC, yes. According to the Bible, only Clothahump is committing adultery (presumably) because he’s lusting after a woman in his own heart and he’s taken apart a relationship that was made one flesh. It’s funny the level of cognitive dissonance a Catholic can use to justify their own indiscretions while maligning those of others.
For instance, I know someone vigorously opposed to gay marriage for textual reasons and he claims he doesn’t want any government recognition of marriage. However, he married a divorcee and is thus regularly committing adultery by the standards of Jesus. Not to mention he registered his marriage with the state.
I don’t think a study like this tells us much unless it corrects for religious or cultural influences. My parents and in-laws were faintly horrified when my (now wife) and I moved in together, but they were over it in about 10 minutes. By the same token, they’d be upset, but hardly in a conservative-social-values frenzy, if we were to divorce. The parents that would be are the ones who would be equally frenzied about cohabitation, and that means people who will cohabit are the sort who don’t think divorce is eeevil.
Indeed, one need only look at the stated criteria for arranged marriages to see that they’re less about making your kids happy and more about making sure their spouses are socially acceptable. Granted, the kids almost invariably have veto power, but it’s not as though Mum and Dad are filtering brides through 29 dimensions of compatibility or something.
“Tall?”
“Fair skinned?”
“Educated? And by that I mean at least one graduate degree, darling.”
“Right caste?”
“Okay, he’ll do.”
Well, you have to keep in mind one thing: the sort of Indians you know are generally going to be well-educated professionals with significant earning potential. We’re not talking about mail-order brides who will be locked into the marriage by fear of penury. When my parents divorced (they were a “love match”, for what it’s worth), my mother wasn’t exactly destitute, being able to fall back on her career as an anaesthetist (anesthesiologist).
Isn’t she committing adultery according to RCC rules and regulations?