The Living Together Lie

• By 2000 well over half of all first marriages were preceded by cohabitation Now it is 76%.
• Cohabitation doesn’t reduce the likelihood of divorce; in fact it leads to a higher divorce rate. One study showed it has a 46% higher risk than the normal divorce rate.
• No positive contribution of cohabitation to marriage has ever been found, not even sexual compatibility, as usually suggested.
• Cohabitants tend not to be as committed as married couples, or prepared to work on their differences. Generally it is unusual for cohabitation to last more than five years.
  
• Particularly problematic is the area of serial cohabitation. It generates a greater willingness to dissolve later relationships.
• 60% of cohabitations end in marriage.
• In general, cohabiting relationships tend to be less satisfactory than married relationships, with cohabiting couples reporting lower levels of happiness, lower levels of sexual exclusivity and sexual satisfaction and poorer relationships with parents.
• Cohabitation has been consistently associated with poorer marital communications, lower marital satisfaction, higher levels of domestic violence and a greater probability of divorce.
• After five years only 10% of cohabiting couples are together. Their relationships do not tend to permanency.
• Married couples have substantial benefits over the unmarried cohabiters in terms of labour force productivity, physical and mental health, happiness and longevity.
• Annual rates of depression among cohabiting couples are more than three times the married rate.
• Physical and sexual abuse of the female is much higher. One study showed at least twice as high; another study nearly three times.
• Abuse is 20 times higher for children with cohabiting, biological parents, but 33 times greater if parent is cohabiting with non-parenting male partner.
• 1996 poverty rate was 6% with married parents, but 31% with cohabiting parents.
• Cohabiters have, on average, lower incomes and less education.
• Australian National University found unmarried people need an income of $70,000 to display the same happiness as married persons with income of only $20,000.
• One of the annoying features is that there is growing evidence that tax reforms make it beneficial to stay single. This has been blamed for falling numbers of weddings.

Many cohabiting couples waste their young adulthood in relationships going nowhere. It may contribute to later pregnancies than personally wanted and research has shown cohabitating relationships are becoming more unstable and less likely to lead to marriage.