Couples who lived together before
marriage
were 48% more likely to divorce than couples who moved in together after being
engaged or married
, according to a new study.
Cohabitation, or
living together before marriage
, has become a
prominent and growing
mode of relationship development. About 70% of
marriages start with cohabitation
, and around 50% to 65% of the country believes living together before marriage will actually improve the likelihood of staying together.
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“Although many believe that living together before marriage will lower their odds of divorce, there is no evidence that this is generally true and a lot of evidence that it is not true,” an Institute for Family Studies report states.
The IFS study, by University of Denver psychology researcher professors Dr. Scott Stanley and Dr. Galena Rhoades, reviewed the 2022 status of first-time marriages that began from 2010 to 2019 and showed cohabitating couples more likely to have their marriages end than those who did not.
While that is consistent with most studies on the matter, the new study shows a “robust” connection between the timing and circumstances around when cohabitation began and the success of the marriage.
The key to a lasting relationship, the report suggests, is “either not to cohabit before marriage or to have settled the big question about marital intentions before moving in together.”
Accordingly, 34% of married couples who moved in together before getting engaged divorced, whereas 23% of couples who cohabitated after engagement ended in divorce.
The study points to the “controversy” surrounding the topic, in which disagreeing parties will debate whether the association of cohabitation with divorce is due to the personalities involved or the actual experience of cohabitation. Stanley and Rhoades believe it is both.
However, the
experience of cohabitation
can change one’s perceptions about marriage and divorce, making those involved have more negative views about marriage and be more comfortable with the idea of divorce.
Another factor is the idea that relationship “inertia” can make it easier for incompatible couples to stay together.
“The inertia caused by moving in together will create resistance to someone moving back out,” the study states. The resistance created can be things like signing a lease together, sharing a cellphone plan, or other “restraints” that make it harder to break up but “does not do anything to increase commitment to a future together.”
These restraints, Stanley and Rhoades suggest, are why there is a disparity between couples who cohabitate after engagement and those who do so before: There is clarity about the commitment to the relationship.
“Those who move in together after getting married or after being engaged have settled a big question about the path they are on prior to moving in together, while those who move in together before clearly settling marital intentions risk getting stuck or losing other opportunities to choose a spouse,” the study says.
There is also a mentality disparity between those who are “planning to marry” and those who are actually engaged before cohabitation, showing engaged couples 11% less likely to end in divorce.
“Having a low-commitment option available means that many couples move in too quickly, without establishing the kind of jointly committed love that is the foundation of a good marriage,” University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project director, W. Bradford Wilcox, and IFS editor Alysse ElHage
wrote
for Deseret.
There is a debate among sociologists about whether the cohabitation effect will or has diminished over time.
Older research has suggested that the divorce risk associated with cohabitation would
decrease as the practice became more popular
or even that the
association no longer exists
, while others have found evidence that the
effect remains unchanged
. Sociologists, “using the same data set (but different methods),” have come to different conclusions.
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The IFS study maintains that the timing of cohabitation and the effect of clear marital intentions are significant factors in the conversation about the risk of divorce. It also states that similar findings have been replicated multiple times in multiple decades and that the risks “have not disappeared.”
Nor are they likely, according to the study, because the perception of acceptability of cohabitation in society does not affect factors like restraints making it harder to break up or the level of actual commitment to the relationship.
