What's Up With Cohabitation?
Cohabiters experienced more difficulty in their marriages with adultery, alcohol, drugs, and independence than couples that had not cohabited. Apparently this makes marriage preceded by cohabitation more prone to problems often associated with other deviant lifestyles—use of drugs and alcohol, more permissive sexual relationships and abhorrence of dependence—than marriages not preceded by cohabitation.(1)
• Compared to married couples, cohabiting couples have less healthy relationships. They have lower relationship quality, lower stability and a higher level of disagreements.
• Cohabiters are much more violent than married couples, the overall rate of violence for cohabiting couples is twice as high as for married couples and the overall rate for “severe” violence is nearly five times as high. (2)
• One of the most respected studies in the field of psychiatry, conducted by the National Institutes of Mental Health, found that women in cohabiting relationships had rates of depression nearly five times higher than married women, second only to women who were divorced.(3)
• The National Sex Survey reports that cohabiting men are nearly four times more likely than husbands to have cheated on their partner in the past year and while women are generally more faithful than men, cohabiting women are eight times more likely than wives to cheat.(4)
• Research strongly and consistently indicates that marriage is a wealth building institution. Married people typically earn and save more than their unmarried counterparts.(5)
(1) David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Should We Live Together? What Young Cohabitation Before Marriage, The National Marriage Project, Rutgers University, 2002, p. 8.
(2) Deborah Graefe and Daniel Lichter, “Life Course Transition of American Children: Parental Cohabitation, Marriage, and Single Motherhood,” Demography 36 (1999):205-217.
(3) Popenoe and Whitehead, 2002, p. 8.
(4) Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, (New York: Doubleday 2000) p. 93
(5) Waite and Gallagher, 2000. p110-123