In the 1980s, I sort of get the levels of confusion and distress at rising cohabitation levels from older people, since the practice was, if not new, rapidly expanding and entering the radar of people had barely even heard of that. But this is 2009, and reading articles that treat we who live in sin as if we’re a weird alien species with shockingly debauched practices doesn’t make a lick of sense. Hell, in some communities, being married is the weird thing to do. Not like “can’t fathom it” weird, but certainly I’ve had moments where I was shocked to find out some couple I know is actually married, since it seemed like too much trouble for laid back folks like themselves. But people will surprise you.
But back to this article. It’s debunking a myth that I don’t think actually existed, which is that people live together without the benefits of marriage because they’re practicing marriage. No one actually believes this, as far as I can tell. But there’s an aggressiveness to the article that inclines me to think either the author or the researchers are trying to debunk the idea that cohabitation is good for marriage, because it gives you a chance to practice it.
Most unmarried U.S. couples who live together aren’t trying to test their relationship—they just want to spend more time together, a multiyear study found.
Most couples also didn’t consciously decide to live together, the federally funded University of Denver dating and cohabitation study found.
In fact, two-thirds of cohabitors say they either “slid into it” or “talked about it, but then it just sort of happened,” said the study, presented Thursday at a Smart Marriages/Happy Families conference of marriage and family experts in Orlando, Fla.
This entire situation is complicated, but here’s what I see is going on: When the panic over rising cohabitation started, there were attempts by patriarchy-supporters to argue that couples who live together before marriage have a higher divorce rate and that the relationship between the two is causal. It was a simplified, cherry-picking argument with a ton of flaws, including the fact that they cut off the number of years studying relationships, if I recall correctly, meaning that cohabitants who then married had a couple extra years to break up more than people who just married. In turn, defenders of the sinful fornicating lifestyle, while also pointing out that you don’t have to live together to fuck, argued that cohabiting before marriage could function as a trial marriage, a chance to decide if you want to take the plunge before you set yourself up for a massively failed marriage. This is harder to measure, I suppose, because who knows how many couples live together and break up without getting married?
This is is why I’m suspicious of this article. It sounds like they’re trying to refute the trial marriage argument by saying that’s not the intention, and also using scary language about lack of intention altogether. There’s also more than a hint of trying to make cohabitation look trashy. But no one ever argued that couples live together intending to try on marriage, and in fact, I would say that it’s more than a little creepy to see all romantic behavior in such mercenary terms. It was always assumed by pro-sin forces that you live together because you want to, and that the compatibility test thing is just a side effect. It’s much like how you learn to drive because you want to go to places in a rapid amount of time, but your driving skills improve as a side effect.