Does Living Together Mean Doom?

Dr. Laura makes it sound like your marriage is doomed if you two cohabitate (“shack up”) with each other before you two marry. Well, chances are, it IS doomed, because it’s marriage and most marriages fail. Anyway, she also makes it sound like you won’t get married if you cohabitate while unmarried.

She’s highly likely to be basing that on very old data. But let’s grant that current data indicates “couples who cohabitated before marriage divorce at a higher rate than couples who didn’t cohabitate before marriage.” I don’t even know how anyone could word the second point. “Couples who cohabitate are less likely to marry than couples who don’t” is clearly not the case. Most couples don’t marry. Most people who marry had been a part of a different coupling multiple times before they ever married.

It’s possible to say AN INDIVIDUAL who shacks up tends to marry later or never marry in comparison than those who don’t. 

If the data takes couples who have plans to marry and tracks them over time, and sees that those who cohabitated before marrying had a higher rate of never marrying than those who didn’t cohabitate before marrying, that would be something. But since we don’t know the control group being used for the claim “couples who cohabitated unmarried were less likely to marry,” it’s a suspect claim. It’s far easier to make the first claim, as that is objectively, to some extent, observable: they married. They either lived together before they married or they didn’t. And over a certain amount of time, they either divorced or they didn’t. 

But what even counts as cohabitation? Even married people who didn’t officially share an address might have frequently spent days, weeks, even months in the same place. Back in my youth, I often spent 3-4 nights per week at my girlfriend’s place. I had my own place. I never claimed a girlfriend’s address as mine. Does that count? What if they spend almost every night together, some at his place and some at hers?

Keep in mind divorce is just one way a marriage can be terrible. A marriage can be legally intact but awful. Dr. Laura would claim the data also shows the quality of the marriage is better for couples who didn’t first shack up, but I’m not so sure. It could be that couples who didn’t cohabitate before marriage are less likely to be honest - with a sociologist or even themselves - if their marriage is crappy, and that could be for religious reasons, among other explanations.

Here’s the reality today whether anyone likes it or not:

-Most couples who marry cohabitated. (Twisting Dr. Laura’s tactic on its head, we can say shacking up leads to marriage, since most people who married shacked up.)

-Most people won’t marry someone they didn’t cohabitate with first.

-There are couples who’ve been together for decades, including officially or unofficially living together, who’ve never had even a courthouse wedding.

-There are people who’ve been married for decades who lived together before they married.

-If you want to be in either of those groups, there are things you can do to make it more likely.

One of the “dirty secrets” of the data Dr. Laura is using is that it lumps all unmarried cohabitation together, including people who never intended to marry or be permanent in the first place, and people who “fell into” living together. Data that separates out independently established, stable people who PLANNED out their cohabitation in advance, discussed and sincerely agreed about goals, intentions, rules, etc, and had a high level of general compatibility will show much better results.

Maybe you don’t want to marry.

Maybe you do.

Either way, cohabitation will be more likely and even may most likely work out if:

-It’s thoroughly planned out ahead of time, with sincere, honest, realistic discussions and agreement about goals, timelines, intentions, rules, etc. (Dr. Laura says there are no rules, but she doesn’t get to decide that for you.)

-It is done out of mutual intention, not incrementalism or “falling into it”, and an informed, experienced desire to live with each other, not out of desperation or zombie relationship escalators.

-You’re both responsible, established, independent adults who can generally handle life well and are fundamentally compatible.

Dr. Laura claims the intentions are different in shacking up, and that it is to avoid commitment. She was a trained, licensed, experienced therapist but she is not a mind reader. She doesn’t know what a caller she’s been talking with for 20 seconds really intended, and she certainly doesn’t know what their partner, who isn’t on the call, intended. She can make an experienced guess. Sometimes. 

Most of her listeners probably have no idea she did “everything” wrong. She shacked up for years with an older man who was a married father when she took up with him. She got pregnant at least once. And yet they subsequently married (as he had, she had been married before) and stayed married for decades, until he died. It apparently worked out for them. Although she’d say they beat the odds, if you could ever discuss it with her (she’d never let such a discussion about herself make it to air). If she’d discuss it and be honest about it, she’d probably say there was much misery because of how things started. 

I am compelled by my conscience not to end this post without stressing that  I think most men should avoid shacking up/cohabitating. It’s almost as bad as marrying. It’s costly and puts you at risks, shifting much of your power to her, and you can get kicked out of your own home. But if you’re going to do it, there are ways, as I explained, that make it more likely to work out.