Clinical psychologist Meg Jay penned an editorial published in Saturday's New York Times entitled "The Downside of Cohabitation Before Marriage," in which she writes that cohabiting largely leads to future unhappiness, including divorce.
"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," Jay writes. "These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect."
Jay supports her point with anecdotes from her therapy practice. One of her clients, "Jennifer," is going through a divorce less than a year after she tied the knot, despite living with her boyfriend for four years before they got married. Jennifer told Jay that moving in with her boyfriend "just happened" without any real conversation, and admitted that "she never really felt that her boyfriend was committed to her."
Aside from the fact that the "cohabitation effect" Jay sites has been debunked by recent research (which Slate's Hanna Rosine pointed out), I take issue more with her use of anecdotal evidence. Because she's a psychologist, Jay's client's are likely coming to her because they already have a problem -- therefore skewing the argument that Jay lays out against cohabitation in her op ed.
I'm no doctor, but I would wager that Jennifer may have gotten divorced whether or not she lived with her boyfriend first. Why? Because her relationship didn't have what is arguably the most essential component of a successful marriage: effective communication. I would argue that when cohabitation is entered into by two people who talk frankly about what the decision will mean for their relationship, there is less of a chance that those people will feel like they made a mistake -- as Jennifer did.
Like Jay, I come to the cohabitation conversation with my own experience. As one-half of a happily cohabiting couple (who's surrounded by a dozen couples who live together or did so before they got married), I see cohabiting not as a convenience or something that just "happens," but as a valuable step toward marriage.
My boyfriend and I moved in together after a year and a half of dating and a serious conversation about our shared goal to marry each other one day. We have now been living together for almost as long.
We decided to progress our relationship in stages, and living together first without being engaged was part of that. We combined our furniture (I sold the bed I'd slept in for over 10 years), and we work together to pay our bills (I buy groceries, he pays when we go out). While I would be beyond devastated if our relationship ended, I know that it is far easier for us to break-up than it is to call off an engagement or go through a divorce. Not to mention that moving in together without the stress of planning a wedding, or the post-nuptial post-partum, allows us to focus solely on our day-to-day relationship dynamics. For us, cohabitation is both a step and a test: a step toward a more solidified commitment, but also a test to see if our relationship can indeed continue to progress in a way that makes us both happy.
Some may scoff at cohabitation by calling it "playing house," demoting it from the important role it serves relationships like mine. For my boyfriend and I, there's an altar in the distance, but we're not rushing toward it. Our relationship is a romance, yes, but it's also a partnership that we're continuing to build on commitment and trust. Isn't that something worth cultivating and protecting by taking it step-by-step?
I don't see any harm pausing in the "living together" phase before taking what I hope will be a permanent leap into marriage, especially when so many young people (myself included) worry we'll become another divorce statistic. According to a research by demographers at Cornell and the University of Central Oklahoma, two-thirds of cohabiting couples between ages 18 and 36 are hesitant to get married because they fear divorce, even if they don't have any personal experience with it.
The bottom line is this: While Jay seems to want to save twentysomethings like me from making life-ruining relationship mistakes, pointing the finger at cohabitation won't save us. Nothing will. It's not whether or not (or for how long) you live with someone that determines divorce; it's whether or not you're ultimately right for each other, which is something that only time (and your gut) will tell.
I would love an easy solution to help prevent future divorce, but forgoing cohabitation isn't it. Every couple needs to do what works for them, and fits with their values and goals. The fact is, you can do everything "right" and your relationship still might fail (as a recent Atlantic article warned, even happily married couples aren't immune to divorce). Every step we take in solidifying our relationships -- whether it's shopping for a promise ring, deciding to move in together or getting married -- is just another leap of faith.
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I maintained my own apartment and we had a relatively long engagement because we knew we should not jump into things, but in our hearts I think we knew by at least the second date that we belonged together.
As I said, there is no magic formula except maybe that however and whenever you marry, be committed to the marriage with your whole mind and soul. Without that, it does not matter if you shacked up first or not - it will fail.
On an unrelated note, the number of comments condemning your cohabitiing with your boyfriend is astounding to me. I thought we'd moved past this.
Pot, meet kettle.
I don't see the point of being engaged to be engaged. That is just dumb to me and seems as though they both want a get out of jail free card while enjoying almost all of the perks of being married. If you are engaged to be married then be engaged to be married. If you just want a roommate that you split the bills with, with the perk of getting naked with them then just say so.
Listen ladies, if you ever want to get married to your boyfriend DO NOT "test" the waters by moving in with a man unless and until there is an engagement with a wedding day set. Its just that simple.
It would make sense that a couple that dates for some time, talk about spending the rest of their lives together and getting married, then moves in together, eventually gets engaged and then married would do fairly well. It also seems sensible that for those that moved to cut expenses or for convenience, maybe were not too sure about their long term future (just seeing if this worked), and found themselves too dependent on each other to walk away might have a higher risk for problems.
Still, it is hard to really know what was going on in retrospect. If a couple is still in love, they see the past through rose-colored glasses. Once they are splitting up, they seem to deny ever having ever been love to begin with.
Note, also, that Meg Jay doesn't say that every couple who cohabits gets divorced. If you've decided to live together, fine, but be aware of the risks and work hard to avoid being part of the statistics.
I know a little about marriage, having been married to the same woman for over 46 years. We spent 30 of those years, helping couples prepare for and succeed at marriage I can tell you that living together before marriage will not contribute much toward making your marriage work. It might keep you from marrying the wrong guy, but even that is doubtful. What makes a marriage work is the commitment by both people to do whatever it takes to make it last. Many people just aren't interested in the work involved. Love is a decision; a decision that must be made over and over again every day of your lives together. If you really love and want to marry each other then don't waste time playing at it. Take it from someone who knows, life is far shorter than you think.
Let me give you the short course in how men think... "A Man in Love is a Man in a Hurry."
A man who loves you and wants you is worried that you will walk away from HIM. Find someone better. He doesn't care about the Big Wedding... a Justice of the Peace works fine for him if it means getting the girl of his dreams off the market.
So if you have a man who either wants to delay things... or goes along with your own go-slow plans (i.e. shacking up vice getting married) then you have all the information you need on the state of your relationship.
But that's not Marriage's fault.
It's the fault of the people who don't take it seriously and doesn't understand what it means.
"My boyfriend and I moved in together after a year and a half of dating and a serious conversation about our shared goal to marry each other one day."
If written as, "My boyfriend moved in...." the sentence is grammatically correct. If written as, "I moved in..." it is also correct, although the adverb does not remain in agreement since we now are using a singular subject. The use of I as a subject pronoun works.The use of me does not work. Listen. "Me moved in..."
In the next example, the use of me is appropriate. "Would you like to go with Barb and me to the park?" If you drop Barb, the question only works with the pronoun me. when phrased, "Would you like to go the park with I?" the question sounds off. "Me" is best used as an object pronoun.
This says it all. When a couple moves in together they should speak frankly with one another about the whys, their future together, shared and individual responsibilities, financial and otherwise.