“The belief that living together before marriage is a useful way “to find out whether you really get along,” and thus avoid a bad marriage and an eventual divorce, is now widespread among young people. But the available studies on the effects of cohabitation are mixed. In fact, some evidence indicates that those who live together before marriage are more likely to break up after marriage” (Marquardt, 78).
It seems to me that everywhere I look marriage is fading away and cohabitation is increasingly becoming the “norm.” In the State of our Unions article published for 2012 it explains that more and more young people are accepting that living together before marriage will increase chances for happy marriage and will have no real negative effects. We learn, however that it is possibly very detrimental to the future of the couple and certainly to the children that may come about from this cohabitation.
Not being so very young, I don’t understand this. My parents have always taught both in word and action that marriage is the stability we need. Some marriages struggle, but there are so many consequences we are just beginning to see, because people are no longer getting married.
My husband and I have had struggles, some that I would say could justify divorce (according to worldly standards), but we stuck it out. We learned to communicate, we learned to recognize that we are all imperfect beings and when we are no longer so focused on ourselves we are better off. If my husband and I had not recognized that our marriage was a commitment we would have given up.
Had we been only living together it would have been very easy to just say, “Okay, we are done. We obviously don’t work well together and should just find people who are better suited.” This is nonsense. We are perfect for each other, and because we are committed, we now have an even stronger love and a stronger bond than when we were first married, and thought we were both going to live Happily Ever After. Now, we know we will, because it has been tested.
I am just starting out on the path of parenthood, and I hope to be able to teach my own children, like my parents did, that marriage is wonderful, beneficial, and necessary to be truly happy. Sometimes there are real reasons that marriage won’t work, but barring that, it is worth it. If we are selective in our early choices of those we date and are friends with, it will be easy to find a worthy eternal companion!
Source:
Elizabeth Marquardt, David Blankenhorn, Robert I. Lerman, Linda Malone-Colón, and W. Bradford Wilcox, “The President’s Marriage Agenda for the Forgotten Sixty Percent,” The State of Our Unions (Charlottesville, VA: National Marriage Project and Institute for American Values, 2012).
For further readings on the family see:
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