Marriage vs. Cohabitation

            Families, communities, and nations are strengthened when couples marry rather than just cohabitate with the intent to eventually marry. Marriage is a commitment one makes with a spouse, with families on both sides, and with society as a whole. Cohabitation is an agreement between two people to live together until one decides that the relationship does not work. Marriage brings stability to the couple and their family, while cohabitation has no boundaries.

            I remember playing “house” as a child and watching my children and grandchildren to do the same. There is always a “wife” and a “husband” – not two people that just decide to live together. Couples who cohabitate remind me of children playing house.

            Matt Walsh wrote an interesting article titled “5 reasons why living together before marriage will kill your relationship” that has a lot of interesting information in it. He begins his article with these paragraphs.

It’s often said that living together before marriage is a good way to “practice.” Oddly, though, as more and more Americans “practice marriage” in this way, fewer and fewer Americans are actually getting married. It seems everyone is practicing but nobody is playing. And if the cohabitating couple ever does tie the knot, studies have repeatedly shown that their chances of divorce have only increased. This is a very strange sort of practice, indeed.

It appears that cohabitation is more likely to be divorce practice than marriage practice. But why?

            Walsh then proceeds to give the following five reasons why he thinks that living together before marriage kills relationships: (1) There is no commitment [without marriage].

(2) Cohabitating puts the emphasis on the wrong things. (3) Living together before marriage makes it too hard to leave [if you discover that the relationship is wrong]. (4) You can figure out everything you need to know about someone without living with them. (5) Cohabitation is modern [and not time-proven].

            Many young people are afraid of marriage because they have seen marriages fall apart. Maybe it is the marriage of a friend or sibling, or even their own parents. They decide to forego marriage in order to avoid divorce. The better thing is to find some couples who have been married 40, 50, or even 60 years and interview them to discover why their marriage worked.

            Most people with long-term marriages will say that they have had their ups and downs, their good times and bad times, and some of them may have even considered divorce a time or two. Most of them will also say that it is the commitment they made to be there for each other “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.” Some couples, like many that I know personally, make that commitment for “time and eternity.”

            The best advice I have heard is that we should carefully choose the person that we will love and then keep the commitment love that person unconditionally. Couples who make the marriage commitment strengthen not only their relationship but their family, community, and nation.