This week in my Family Relations class we discussed some statistics pertaining to relationships where people cohabitated prior marriage verses not living together prior to marriage. The statistics pretty much stayed in line with things I have already heard when I was back in high school and they make a lot of sense in a lot of areas. It’s typical when people cohabit prior to marriage, to have a less fulfilling marriage, and a marriage that tends to be less than traditional. It was discussed through examples, that when people have a cohabit mentality prior to marriage, they tend to think of themselves as separate people and less of belonging to a family. It seemed to me that the resulting marital issues would be the result of improper family definitions rather than the fact that they cohabitated. In other words, it seemed to me that people with certain mentalities towards family and relations ships, would prefer to cohabit prior to marriage, and its these types of mentalities that lead the couple to having difficulties. It seemed to me that it was more of a devaluing of the family bond that was causing the issues verses the act of cohabitating in the first place. Granted this is not always the case and there are outliers. But the statistics showed that those who cohabitated were more likely to divorce that those that were married first then moved in together. We discussed interesting stories of how some couples, would cohabit, then marry and yet still keep all of their lives separate, which to me was very weird. Not sure why they got married in the first place. To me it would seem that if you loved someone and you then married then, you would build a life together and be a single-family unit. But this was not the case for several examples. Very weird in deed. So, I would think that it has less to do with the act of cohabitating and more to do with the mentality of the individuals that engage in this behavior. Meaning that the behavior is merely an outward display of the inward feelings towards the togetherness that families represent. This would also explain why the divorce rate is so high especially after children arrive on the scene. Why people would choose to live separate lives when they have chosen to commit to each other is quite baffling. It’s like having an out or a backup, incase this whole, let’s start a family thing doesn’t work out. Why would you half way invest into something so important? Seems like those who cohabit, lead themselves into marriage for the benefit that marital status brings tax wise perhaps? Maybe it saves the couple money in insurance. There must be an explanation as to why people would cohabit for years and then get married only to get divorced shortly thereafter. It would depend on a case by case basis for sure, but there seems to be other variables in play. Having never been married I can only speculate. Though it is funny to listen to an old married couple argue and fight over the funniest and most trivial of things.