Should We Live Together?

By Deacon Nick Schwartz

Like it or not, cohabitation is replacing marriage as the first living together experience for many young men and women. When blushing brides walk down the aisle at the beginning of this new millennium, well over half have already lived together with a boyfriend.

For today’s young adults, the first generation to come of age during the divorce revolution, living together seems like a good way to achieve some of the benefits of marriage and avoid the risk of divorce. Their thinking is that if they live together they can share expenses and learn more about each other. They can find out if their partner has what it takes to be married and, if things don’t work out, breaking up is easy to do because cohabiting couples do not have to seek legal or religious permission to dissolve their relationship.

For them the traditional view of no sex outside of marriage has been largely replaced by the idea that complete sexual freedom is a given, as long as all parties agree. Even many young Christians accept the notion that anything that stands in the way of sexual fulfillment must be wrong. They reason that God wants us to be fulfilled; sex is an essential component of relational fulfillment, therefore the Church can’t really mean what it says about restricting sex to marriage.

So it comes as no surprise that young adults favor cohabitation. According to a recent survey over 61% of high school seniors say it is a good idea to live with a person before marrying. If immorality is no longer a deterrent to cohabitation, perhaps the consequences of this new worldview might be.

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. What’s more, it shows that the rise in cohabitation is not a positive family trend. Cohabiting unions tend to weaken the institution of marriage and pose special risks for women and children. Specifically, the research indicates that:

1) Living together before marriage increases the risk of breaking up after marriage. Couples that live together before marriage have a 46% higher divorce rate than couples that do not.

2) Living together outside of marriage increases the risk of domestic violence for women, and the risk of physical and sexual abuse for children. Abuse-prevalence studies show far higher levels of child abuse in cohabitating couples than is found in intact families. The evidence suggests that the most unsafe of all family environments for children is that in which the mother is living with someone other than the child’s biological father. This is the environment for the majority of children in cohabiting couple households.

3) One of the greatest problems for children living with a cohabiting couple is the high risk that the couple will break up. Three quarters of children born to cohabiting parents will see their parents split up before they reach age sixteen, whereas only about a third of children born to married parents face a similar fate. Also, several studies have found that children currently living with a mother and her unmarried partner have significantly more behavior problems and lower academic performance than children in intact families.

4) Finally, unmarried couples have lower levels of happiness and wellbeing than married couples. Although it may be politically incorrect, the truth is that married couples experience overwhelming benefits in physical and mental health, sexual intimacy, and financial security than their unmarried counterparts. For example, married couples have more meaningful sexual relationships. They have sex as frequently as cohabiting couples, but report higher emotional satisfaction in their sexual relationships.

The vast majority of young people today want to marry and have children. And most see living together as a way to test marital compatibility and improve the chances of a long-lasting marriage. But as we have seen, the evidence challenges the idea that cohabiting ensures greater marital compatibility and thereby promotes stronger and more enduring marriages. In fact, the opposite is true. It seems God does not give us laws to punish us or to make our lives miserable. On the contrary, he gives us rules so we can be truly happy, even when we are too blind to see.

Because this generation of young adults is so keenly aware of the fragility of marriage, it is especially important for them to know what contributes to marital success and what may threaten it. May we continue to teach our young people that not only is God’s way is the right way, it’s the best way.