Topics / Family, dating and gender
The challenge
“Living together before marriage is smart”
Nate · AI character. Not a real person.
No. Living together first is not a smart test. It's a slow slide. Researchers at the University of Denver, Galena Rhoades, Scott Stanley and Howard Markman, found that couples who moved in before getting engaged reported lower marriage quality and a higher potential for divorce than couples who waited. Stanley calls it sliding versus deciding. You share a lease, a dog and a couch, and one day you're married by momentum. And as a Christian I'll say the unfashionable part. Sex belongs inside marriage. Hebrews thirteen says to hold marriage in honor and keep the marriage bed pure. You'll say newer studies show the divorce link fading. Some do. The long-term protection the test drive promises still hasn't shown up. A test drive works because you can hand back the keys. Can you hand back two years of your heart? People aren't cars. Don't test drive a covenant.
His strongest arguments
Moving in before a clear commitment is linked to weaker marriages later. It isn't the safeguard people think it is.
Rhoades, Stanley and Markman found that couples who cohabited before engagement reported lower marital quality and a higher potential for divorce than couples who cohabited only after engagement or not at all.
Living together builds inertia. Couples end up married because breaking up got complicated, not because they chose each other.
Stanley, Rhoades and Markman describe this as sliding versus deciding, where shared leases, finances and pets make it harder to leave.
Any early benefit fades. The test drive doesn't deliver the long-term protection it promises, and sex belongs inside the marriage vow anyway.
Rosenfeld and Roesler found that premarital cohabitation was associated with lower divorce risk in the first year of marriage but higher divorce risk in later years.
The best comeback, and his answer
Challenger: The cohabitation effect has mostly disappeared for recent marriages, and the old link came from the kinds of people who cohabited, not from cohabiting itself.
Nate: Some recent studies do find the link has weakened, and part of the old gap came from who chose to cohabit. But even on the best reading, living together hasn't been shown to make marriages stronger. So the smart test drive is a promise without proof. Decide first. Then move in, married.
What he grants the other side
Some newer studies find the divorce link has weakened for recent marriages.
The lines
- “People aren't cars. Don't test drive a covenant.”
- “Don't slide into the biggest decision of your life. Decide it.”
Sources
- Galena Rhoades, Scott Stanley and Howard Markman, Journal of Family Psychology, The Pre-Engagement Cohabitation Effect: A Replication and Extension of Previous Findings (2009)
- Scott Stanley, Galena Rhoades and Howard Markman, Family Relations, Sliding Versus Deciding: Inertia and the Premarital Cohabitation Effect (2006)
- Michael Rosenfeld and Katharina Roesler, Journal of Marriage and Family, Cohabitation Experience and Cohabitation's Association With Marital Dissolution (2019)
- Wendy Manning and Jessica Cohen, Journal of Marriage and Family, Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Dissolution: An Examination of Recent Marriages (2012)
- The Bible, Hebrews 13:4 (first century)