An interesting study published in The Journal of Family Psychology says couples who choose to live together before tying the knot are more likely to get divorced.
The study, which surveyed more than 1,000 couples who have been married for 10 years or less, showed that 70 percent of couples who lived together prior to their engagement had marriages that crashed and burned.
Why?
According to Live Science, the reasons for the high divorce rate is from couples marrying for the wrong reasons, such as a joint lease or share ownership of a pet. In these scenarios, it’s more likely for the couple to rationalize, “Well, we’re already living together so let’s just get married.”
But the situation that most led to divorce were couples who moved in together to “test” the relationship.
“Cohabiting to test a relationship turns out to be associated with the most problems in relationships,” lead researcher Galena Rhoades told Live Science. “Perhaps if a person is feeling a need to test the relationship, he or she already knows some important information about how a relationship may go over time.”
The results of the study are quite surprising, to be honest. I don’t think I know any couples who didn’t live together before getting engaged, so these results are quite alarming! The whole thing sounds more favorable to traditional unions where babies and sex come after marriage. But since most people aren’t that conservative anymore, what does that mean for today’s more modern relationships? Does this mean we’re all doomed?
As always, remember to sound off what you think in the comments section.
I had heard that divorce was more likely for couples who lived together first, but I couldn’t remember where the study came from. In my opinion there is no testing marriage, and there are all kinds of things that you need to work out before getting married that you don’t need to work out if you’re only planning to live together. Many of the couples that I know that lived together were in some ways like roommates with benefits but they never really tackled the “forever issues” like couples that are planning marriage. That’s the biggest reason that I’ve personally seen for why living together didn’t help when it came to marriage.
wow..interesting article…i’ll be honest and say that i once did live with my now fiance. i was young, and i definitely fell into the category of “well why not we live together, so let’s get married” but THANKFULLY the lord had other plans. when we broke up, i moved out and we got our lives right with God and that’s when we truly learned what God’s love could do for our relationship. it completely changed our hearts towards each other from being centered on ourselves to each other. i don’t believe it’s any coincidence that in 1 corinthians 13 the first thing love is said to be is patient. my fiance and i were certainly both tested with this when we gave the relationship a second shot (and during our time apart, we both decided to not date anyone else-this lasted for 2 years) talk about patience:) and patience also meant that when we did get back together there would be no more living together and of course all that goes with that…and i can say with all my heart, that we have a love that is unbelievably different, that is true, and that is so deeply rooted in a firm foundation that nothing could shake our future marriage together. it is only because we came to the dead end of realizing that our love alone was not enough to sustain a marriage, we needed God, and i can’t say enough of how beautiful it’s been since.