MAMA TOLD YOU NOT TO SHACK UP

This weekend I read an interesting story in the NY Times about the reality versus the common beliefs about cohabitation before marriage and the divorce rate.  More than half of us now live with our partner before marriage in the belief that it will be the best testing ground for the match. In fact, some young folks today refuse to marry unless they live together first.

However, this new study shows:

... that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.


So that part of the study has been the headline on the news with very little else discussed.  But the study had more to disclose about the reasons people began their cohabitation - and that is the real explanation for the higher divorce rate.

...what researchers call “sliding, not deciding.” Moving from dating to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to cohabitation can be a gradual slope, one not marked by rings or ceremonies or sometimes even a conversation. Couples bypass talking about why they want to live together and what it will mean.


What the researchers found was the couples had differing, unspoken ideas about what living together meant and over time their lives became more and more entwined (furniture, pets, friends) to the point that they married as a sort of default.  When marriage didn't satisfy it isn't because of living together per se, it is because :

What men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse.

Many young people in therapy wish they hadn’t sunk years of their 20s into relationships that would have lasted only months had they not been living together. Others want to feel committed to their partners, yet they are confused about whether they have consciously chosen their mates. Founding relationships on convenience or ambiguity can interfere with the process of claiming the people we love. A life built on top of “maybe you’ll do” simply may not feel as dedicated as a life built on top of the “we do” of commitment or marriage.


When Tom and I decided to live together there was a mixture of the slipping into it (he was broke and needed a new place to live) and the commitment to marriage.  We knew that was were we headed but  it was too soon to jump there.  I think it is important that couples really talk about the reasons they are moving in together.  It should be a step, not a slide.

AL & TIPPER GORE SEPARATION

I wasn't all that surprised when I heard about the Gore separation after 40 years of marriage. After all, he has launched a new career, one outside of politics that takes him all over the world. She no longer needs to be at his side and has likely been pursuing her own interests for the past 10 years. Growing apart would be natural. That they chose not to remain married in light of the new reality of their lives is probably unusual, but so are their lives.

Most people in their 60's are slowing down, cycling out of work and into retirement, not ratcheting up into new careers. I know statistically that divorces later in life are initiated by men when they find a new partner (said not to be the reason here) and by women when they are "tired of putting up with stuff." I suspect that having the financial means to live separate lives and the ability to see another 20 years of life ahead of them makes it look like a good enough reason to go their own way.

Much has been said about the fact that "until death" marriages were one thing when life expectancy was shorter and asking a lot of two people with the current longevity. Perhaps we need to look at later in life divorces not as a failure of a marriage, but as a good run and a new opportunity to live the later years either on our own or with other partners. Forty years seems like a good long run to me.