Cohabitation before Marriage

The purpose for cohabitation is to discern further if you and your chosen (or to be chosen as the case may be) mate are compatible on various levels. Assuming the vows have not been exchanged, there is only the consequence of heartbreak and renting a mover should the insight of cohabitation provide for results counter to expectation. Cohabitation provides insight to all of the following, with arguably no major draw backs:How clean is my partner? How well do they maintain the residence? How interested are they in sharing the load of finances? How interested are they in sharing the load of household chores? Do they budget well for emergencies? More over, it gives you the ability to review how well you do the above for your own improvement, and may even help you to prioritize that in future relationships, or learn to compromise on those priorities in the current one. These are all examples not readily found in the traditional model alluded to by Con. Since my opponent has opted to lay out a few prominent arguments in the opener, I feel no remorse about moving to dispel and ask for further clarity what has been mentioned:"can increase the risk of divorce by as much as 40% and leads to marital unhappiness". -- I am confident, however, the number one risk to ensure a divorce may occur is getting married in the first place. Yes, I am aware, that sounds a bit silly, however I would like to entreat the readers to the point of cohabitating in the first place: trial run. What of all the couples whom didn't divorce because they never married in the first place, having realized that after living with some one for an extended period of time, they were in fact incompatible? This of course assumes the numbers in question are not asserted and cited at a later time. " There is no coincidence that when cohabiting before marriage became normalized (around the mid to late 60's) that divorce rates peaked (in the 70's). " --- At the same time, the gender inequality in the work place started to evaporate as well. In short, people continued to use the traditional view of marriage in a working and societal environment that was not traditional at all: women were developing just as much in the way of means as men. There was no reason to stay married if the situation became unbearable for the woman, there were now options available to her in terms of being her own breadwinner as opposed to dependent. I agree, the divorce rates climbed, but specifically it was -clinging- to traditional courtship, not adjusting it. " One of my reasons for believing this is because cohabiting is a pseudo-marriage, in that it is trying to have everything a marriage has without the final and necessary commitment of marriage. When marriage does come along it then becomes difficult for a couple in the same situation with the same habits and living style to try to change their way of thinking about their relationship from everything but commitment to a relationship now with everything. This causes marital tension and is one of the causes of an increased risk of divorce. " --- this statement doesn't in any way exclude how the 'just jump in post marriage' would suffer from the same pitfall. The couple is going to not only have to change how they view their relationship, but also their living space, finances, etc. All of that now has ramifications, as opposed to eased in cohabitation in which disagreements can be ironed out, or the relationship dissolved before any further issue can arise. Now, please allow me to divert to exactly what might be the actual cause of divorce rather than assumed cause: age. Currently, the societal model of get out of the house, go to college, get a place, find a mate, and settle down appears to be killing the idea of the happily married young couple. We are getting married to young. Associate Professor Arielle Kuperberg weighs in: ". .. Kuperberg explained that couples who shack up before marriage tend to be younger, and because marrying at a young age increases the likelihood of divorce, it appeared in previous research that cohabitation did as well. But Kuperberg says that's not the case; once you control for the age variable, the correlation between divorce and cohabitation disappears. " [1] When you sit down to think about it, this makes the most sense. When we are young, we are prone to impulsive decisions, and at the same time want to maintain a semblance of independence. Marriage is the worst combination of those ingredients. Kuperberg continues: "For decades research has shown that cohabitation leads to divorce, and for the first time we can definitively say that cohabitation doesn't lead to divorce and never did -- that those earlier findings were a result of an incorrect measurement. ". This sentiment is echoed in an article from The Atlantic regarding whether co-habitation can make you a divorce statistic: "A new study from the nonpartisan Council on Contemporary Families says no. Moving in before marriage doesn"t automatically make you a divorce statistic. Choosing a partner too early, however, just might. " [2]Granted, I tossed out some assertions about women in the work place previously, as well as the traditional model of marriage and how it relates to women in the work force, but to iron down both that and the "Age" variable, here is an article from the New York Times weighing in on some of the various factors, and admittedly, the title of the article is "The Down Side of Cohabitation" : "Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. The majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by cohabitation. This shift has been attributed to the sexual revolution and the availability of birth control, and in our current economy, sharing the bills makes cohabiting appealing. But when you talk to people in their 20s, you also hear about something else: cohabitation as prophylaxis. " [3]I stress the age in which these negatives seem to be centered around. With that in mind, I would like to see what my opponent has on the matter. Take it away Con. [1] . http://www.huffingtonpost.com...[2] . http://www.theatlantic.com...[3]http://www.nytimes.com...