The First of Many Relationship Lessons - Cohabitation

One of the things I pride myself on is the fact that I try to stay up-to-date on whatever information is current regarding relationships. In so doing, each year I attend the SmartMarriages Conference where all of the top players in the field come together to share their research and insights on just about any topic you might imagine pertaining to relationships.

I also believe it is my duty to bring this knowledge to you. Therefore, in the next several postings, I will be covering information that I learned during the various workshops or general sessions I attended. There is no special order to these ... they are all important. In this blog, I'd like to share some points about cohabitation.

Go figure

Let's first take a look at some numbers. Overall, people are delaying the choice to get married. In the United States for a first marriage, the average age for women is now 25 - 26 and it is 27 - 28 for men. Certainly our society has accepted the concept of cohabitation. 60 - 75% of people live together before they are married. And ... there are a greater number of children born to unmarried parents. In fact, 40% of cohabitating couples have kids.

Please understand that I am not a judgmental person and I am only passing on the statistics which I heard at the Conference. That being said, sadly, when couples cohabitate, there is a much higher risk of divorce. The reason, however, is due to a multitude of factors. A main one is that the couple "slides" into the decision rather than decides. In other words, they have chosen to live together for convenience and since they've lived together so long, they might as well get married.

Contrary to this negative Cohabitation Effect, as it is called, when a couple has made a clear commitment to one another (vis-à-vis getting engaged) and then decided to live together, the same statistic does not hold.

There's more ...

Now, all this information was not really new to me. Perhaps, you are familiar with it, too. However, further points were made that I did find very significant.

Men and women view cohabitating very differently. When interviewed, men saw this arrangement as far less of a commitment than their other half did. As a matter of fact, some even said that it was a convenient set-up while they were still looking for their soul-mate!

Further, many women had the belief that if they could only get their guy to the altar, all will be fine. A long time ago, I wrote a blog about the fact that you can't expect to change who someone is. Well, it turns out that that rule of thumb applies here as well. The findings indicate that though the lady may get her man to the altar, once in the "committed" relationship, he's not really dedicated to it.

Quite sobering!

I guess it all boils down to this: Relationships are hard work. And if you start them with two strikes against you, they are going to be that much more difficult. Yes, being in a relationship is wonderful -- but it has to be the right relationship entered into for the right reasons.

Stay tuned: lots more to come!

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