Cohabitation before marriage

I decided to write an article to describe my opinions regarding cohabitation before marriage. I am very excited to write this because I have very strong views about this subject and I always wanted to share them with people. I believe that people deserve to learn the truth about different subjects. This is the very reason why I created my website, because I wanted to spread to people the truth.

So, let’s start. This is mainly a philosophical article, so I will not mention many religious arguments. I will just say one thing about religion. Christianity teaches people that premarital sex is wrong and we shouldn’t have it (I may write a future article to explain why this is the case). It is also bad for us, by the way. Research shows that people who wait to have sex after marriage are 22% happier than people who don’t (Watson, 2015).

In addition, premarital sex, as well as cohabitating with more sexual partners than someone’s husband/wife, result in a 33% higher chance of divorce (Alvare, 2004). Increased divorce rates for people who cohabitated prior to their marriage have also been found in other studies (Lillard et al., 1995; Dush et al., 2003). Thus, cohabitation before marriage may not be as great as the media is trying to tell people and present this as a role model. I have my own philosophical thoughts on why this may be the case and I wanted to share them with you.

Cement

To begin with, I want you to think about cement. Cement is a material that is needed to bind other materials together. You can’t make a construction without cement. It would fall. It would not be stable. It would not last.

Marriage and cohabitation before marriage follow a similar philosophy. Imagine for a moment that you cohabitate before marriage. What happens then? You live together with someone and your whole interaction with this person and the everyday connections in the environment of a house are built during a situation when there is no strong bond (marriage) to stick you to this person. This is supposed to be good. This is the whole purpose of cohabitation based on the media: live with someone before actually sticking strongly to them, so that you can leave them whenever you see that you aren’t actually compatible. Is this truly good though?

Imagine for a moment that you do not cohabitate before marriage. First of all, this means that your interactions and everyday connections will be built during a situation when there is a strong bond (marriage) to stick you to this person. Is this truly bad? Well no! It is equivalent to using a stronger type of cement versus a weaker type of cement. The building blocks of the construction have a stronger binding material to connect them and the construction has lower chances of falling e.g. lower chance of divorce!

There is one more thing about cohabitation before marriage. Except for the fact that the interaction is built outside marriage, marriage also comes later to further strengthen how close the two people are. It just comes like the cherry on the cake, to further strengthen a connection that IS ALREADY THERE. However, the good type of cement needs to be the foundation itself. It cannot be the cherry of the cake. Being only the cherry of the cake would be insufficient.

What I am trying to say is that a marriage with better cement has higher chances to last than a marriage with worse cement, even if two people are less compatible to each other than they could be. It would also cause more happiness because divorce decreases happiness, even if you were more compatible to the other person and there were certain sad events that you didn’t face.

Of course, if two people are not compatible, they shouldn’t have married in the first place and someone may argue that you need to use weaker cement to determine that. However, using weaker cement does impact your marriage adversely and you shouldn’t use it unless you really need to. You need to weigh your options carefully and think before you make this decision.

Is there any way for me to have any idea of whether I would be compatible with this guy/girl without cohabitating with him/her? What are the odds of two people to be so incompatible that they really can’t coexist? How often has this happened to people who cohabitated before marriage (how often they left each other due to coexistence incompatibility)? Is there anything in our behaviours or things that we do that could change, so that we can avoid using weaker cement? Thoughts like these need to cross your mind before deciding to use weaker cement. You can’t just use weaker cement easily without thinking about it. It may prove bad for you. Finally, you shouldn’t forget that marriage is supposed to last forever. How easy is it for weak cement to last forever? Could this be one of the reasons why the number of divorces has increased over the last few decades?

Finally, there is one more thing that I wanted to say. My mum is not happy that she married my dad and she is a fan of cohabitation before marriage. She says that if she had lived with him and knew how he was, she may not have married him. The same person, by the way, has often described me bad things about my dad that she saw before marriage. Some extremely red flags that, honestly, someone with basic self respect would not have tolerated. You can’t predict exactly how a person will be after marriage or how living in the same house as someone else would be, but honestly, stop shifting the blame of your decisions to other things. She had enough red flags to decide not to marry him and she was responsible for her decision. She could have known better. Lack of cohabitation is just an excuse. She should have known better, even though she did not cohabitate with him. I also know someone else who faced a similar problem. People just need to see their mistakes. This isn’t helping. If you have done or think you could do something similar, stop accusing cohabitation before marriage as being the problem and start seeing your own mistakes.

True love

Argument number 2 is about true love. Now, I want you to listen to this carefully. What do you say to the other person when you cohabitate with them before marriage? Well, you say to this person that I am not willing to try enough for you and this means that you don’t feel true love to this person. No marriage without true love can last forever. It has actually higher chances to lead to betrayal or divorce… Why does your behaviour mean that you don’t feel true love to this person? For different reasons.

First of all, people are often very narcissistic and tend to break up or take divorces for silly reasons. Giving them permission to live with you before marriage can strengthen that. Let’s say that I am sensitive to cold and I want to be in in a warm room. My partner/husband may actually like it cold and want to be in a cold room. If we truly love each other and truly value being together more than we value being in a specific temperature, we can work this problem out. We WILL find a solution if we truly want to be together. People who truly want to be with you don’t abandon you for such reasons. They will find a solution and will sacrifice things, simply because they truly value you and want to be with you.

Of course, there are certain cases when people objectively cannot match to each other and a great example of this is when they have different values. You can’t sacrifice your values just to be with a person. There could also be other simpler cases of objective incompatibilities too. I bet, however, that the cases when there is objectively no solution are actually low and most of the problems caused when people are trying to coexist are caused by the inability to have true love for the other person and try to sacrifice some things for him/her. Without truly loving the other person, however, there can’t be a stable or long lasting marriage.

People are trying to trick themselves into thinking that if they find someone very similar to them, they won’t need to have much true love and sacrifice. They will be similar enough to be able to coexist without making many sacrifices for this person to be coexisting well with them. This is nonsensical and it even looks like a Disney movie. It looks like an imaginary fairytale where love is presented like a magic thing that just exists and you don’t need to work for it or whatever. The real world isn’t like this, and you know what? It shouldn’t be like this. What is the point and the beauty of having a feeling of love that just flows around without needing to build it yourself or sacrifice and show to the other person that you love them? This is the whole beauty and point of love. Otherwise, you don’t truly care. This is what makes love meaningful and worth living.

I am amazed by how much people think that they can live in a fairytale without much love and sacrifice to another person. Being in such a fairytale has no point and beauty and is also infeasible in the actual world. Do you honestly think that the fact that you seem relatively compatible in living with someone (based on the results of your cohabitation experiment) means that there could be no important event in your everyday life with that person that could arise during the rest of your life that would mean that you need to make an adjustment e.g. in your habits to accommodate the needs of another person? How will this happen if you are not good at making sacrifices for people that you are supposed to love? Do you think that the inability to do this could result in a divorce?

There is one more reason why I believe that cohabitation before marriage shows a lack of true love. Have you ever thought what you are actually saying to this person when you ask them “Do you want to live with me before marriage?”? You are telling them “Currently you happen to be better than anything else that I would be able to trick. However, I would like to reserve a right to trade you in, if a better person happens to appear in front of me” (Peterson, 2022). They are not going to commit to you, so they do not put more value to you and the relationship than they put to other things. You can draw your own conclusions from that.

Cohabitation is an offer that results from lack of love and respect. No relationship can last forever without love and respect. Thus, there are higher chances of divorce. Having true love and respect is actually essential for a relationship. Without these, you are going nowhere (forever wise). I don’t care how compatible the cohabitation experiment has found you to be.

Conclusions

All in all, cohabitation before marriage has been widely advertised as a good thing. However, it has many disadvantages and it actually leads to a higher divorce rate.

References

Alvare, H. (2004). Saying "Yes" before Saying "I Do": Premarital Sex and Cohabitation as a Piece of the Divorce Puzzle. Notre Dame JL Ethics & Pub. Pol'y, 18, p.7-88.

Dush, C., Cohan, C. and Amato, P. (2003). The Relationship Between Cohabitation and Marital Quality and Stability: Change Across Cohorts?. Journal of Marriage and Family, 65(3), p.539-549.

Lillard, L., Brien, M. and Waite, L. (1995). Premarital Cohabitation and Subsequent Marital Dissolution: A Matter of Self-Selection?. Demography, 32(3), p.437-457.

Peterson, J. (2022). This is why 80% of relationships DON'T LAST. [online] Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eG1QZqPKm5g?app=desktop&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR35pIN3OUm6k0oPgVE5BBJHFLUtITt_jfaRfc4sPF3J_oorYzLx7ZOTsgA [Accessed 1 August 2022].

Watson, P. (2015). Why Are Men Frightened of Marriage?. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afu1Rwlggf8 [Accessed 26 January 2022].