Up next is the topic suggested by Haesoo: Living together before marriage. The following articles provide you with insight on where research stands on this important issue, however I would like you all to bring your own cultural and traditional beliefs to the conversation as well. So here are the links:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-07-28-cohabitation-research_N.htm,
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5025_qa.html, and
http://marriage.about.com/cs/cohabitation/a/livingtogether.htm.
Your job is the same as with the previous posts. The deadline for this topic is next Tuesday, October 6.
Have fun,
Kinga
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19 comments:
Living together before marriage was such a taboo if it was twenty or thirty years back. Living together before marriage during that time was considered as an irresponsible behavior in the Chinese community. This was because cohabiting was often link with sexual intercourse and sexual intercourse was deemed inappropriate without marriage. However, as Chinese are more open through the influence of western education, younger groups of people does not mind cohabiting before marriage. This is because cohabiting do improve the level of intimacy and relationship between the two genders even without the presence of sexual intercourse. Couples will get to know more about each other's habits, thinkings and characters. The couples get to know the bad and good of each other for to accomodate each other better in future and not to find faults and reject their initial plan of marriage. If such thinking is present before cohabiting then cohabiting make no sense because there will bound to be things that the couple do not like about each other. Cohabiting before marriage shall be a preparation stage for the couples who are about to enter marriage life and not for couples who are still trying out their relationships.
Well, just like the first article mentioned, unmarried couples who lived together were often derided for “ shacking up”. While these years, according to sociologist Daniel Lichter, the odds of divorce among women who married their only cohabiting partner were 28% lower than among women who never cohabited before marriage. This phenomenon illustrates that cohabitation plays an advantageous role in marriage. I admit that people can learn a lot about someone when he/she lives with him/her. Usually, we can realize more about our future husband/wife by living together than just dating, because we can know all aspects of his/her daily life. But, cohabitation is repelled in my own culture and traditional beliefs in my home country.
I come from China, a conservative nation with 5000 years history and profound culture. In our traditions, we attach importance to the chastity of women. It is not acceptable for two people living together before they get married. Although, living together can help people learn a lot about each other and reduce the divorce rates. Dating can still helps a lot in realizing each other. For example, all of the couples around my life just realize each other by dating and live together after marriage. All of them live a happy life without cohabitation.
So, the attitude toward living together before marriage is totally different between Eastern and Western culture. I just can not accept cohabitation, even though it really helps people know each other very well before they get married.
From my point of view, living together before marriage is a good practice for future marriage.
First of all, if two people fall in love and decide to get married after knowing each other for only two months, what can they do? Two months are not long enough for them to get to know each other enough for marriage, and they are not prepared to tell every friend and relative about their relationship. Therefore, they can choose to "shack up". In this way, they are able to learn more about their partners, and experience the life of living together as a family.
However, survey data shows that the risk for a relationship to break down is higher for those who choose to do a cohabitation before marriage. To live a life together with a partner is slightly different than love or romance. They have to learn how to serve each other well, allocate duties equally, learn positive things from every quarrel, and etc. That is a hard process. Many couples may withdraw their plan of marriage after cohabitation. However, the survivals from this test will certainly do well in their lives after marriage. Personally, I may consider cohabitation as a choice when I get into a relationship in the future.
I remain neutral on this topic. Whether two lovers should live together before or after marriage totally depends on their own decisions. We don't have right to judge whether it is legal or illegal and whether it is moral or immoral. Because marriage is only a contract in law. It binds couples' behavior on behalf of legal sanctions. However, marriage can't reflect whether two lovers' relation is good or bad. If two people have decided to be with each other in their rest of lives, it is rational to live together before marriage. Frankly, I think living together before marriage has a merit, which is that you can know your lover completely. Before living together, your impressions to each other are only based on the experience in dating. You may not know some habits of characters of your lover. After living together for a period, your experience with him/her is not only the one of dating but also the one of living with him/her. It can makes you know a person more deeply. Actually, many couples, who never live together before marriage, got divorce after marriage. They meet disagreement in their lives and neither of them makes compromise. With the increase of their disagreements, their relation turns more and more vicious. Finally they split up. The consequence of that is a scar in their hearts and a huge hit to their children. If they have some experience of living together before marriage, they can choose to end their relation instead of marrying each other. After all, the damage caused by breaking up before marriage is less than after marriage.
I agree with Nancy at the point that the living together before marriage is a chance for the unmarried couple to know each other more and more deeply. But I don’t recommend or opposite such behavior. Because in the modern culture background, a number of people could not tolerate such kind of things.
In my point of view, whether the unmarried couple will live together before marriage is freedom and their choices should be decided by both of them. If they choose to live together before marriage, it will offer each of them a chance to know each other more. Their love may be improved for the reason that they get to know the difference between living together and just admiring each other.
While, another circumstance of unmarried couple living together will cause many troubles. Some girls got pregnant, and they didn’t want to get married then. So the baby may be abandoned. Such circumstance was the society most cared about.
Well, in Korean society, older generation consider living together before marriage as an irresponsible behavior as well. However, youger generation does not mind that much. They are intending to prefer cohibitation.
In my opinion, I do not against living together before marriage, because that can be a great chance to know each other.There are a lot of people who divorced, because of the negative aspects of spouse that didn't realize before.So it is definately good chance to know each other and prpare for the actual marriage.
However, they should be responsible for their behaviour. Some poeple who are not responsible cause bunch of troubles such as pre-pregrnant and that makes bad reputation of living together before marriage.So, my point is living toghether before marriage is up to our decision. Just be responsible for that.
Living together before marriage or not. Many people think that marriage is the last thing that a couple should do to consolidate their love. In my opinion, marriage is an optional why to do it. That is why I remain neutral in this topic. For me marriage is just a formal contract. Nothing else. It does not demonstrate the feelings of a couple. If two people want to life together and have talked about it, they should do it. Then, they will decide if they want to get married or not. It depends on the couple. But for me is something unnecessary because you do not demonstrate your love signing a paper, you demonstrate it with actions. I know people that have lived their entire life with person they love without getting married. In my family, marriage has always been optional. For example, my grandfather never got married and he lived with my grandmother. They never separated. Also, my uncle did the same and he still with the person that he loves. In brief, marriage is not something important because it is just a contract.
It is a custom and tradition for couples to move in together under one roof after they are married. Anytime when a couple is sleeping under one roof is considered rational and irresponsible. This is particularly true, because when a couple lives together it is often affiliated with sexual incentive. In spite of this traditional believe, this is gradually changing, due to the influence of the west. Nowadays it is fairly common among teenagers to practice such believe. Even though some may agree or disagree with whether it is appropriate or not to cohabiting before marriage, but without doubt there is sure pro’s and con’s. I personally believe that it is definitely a good thing for the couple to get to know each other better. It is good in a way that the couple can learn to dealt with problems together and discover the different side of their partner.
Talking about living together before marriage, I think many Chinese people will consider it much more serious than western people since Chinese hold a conservative opinion towards this issue. As a Chinese born after 1990s, I still cannot support the couples who live together before marriage. Somebody think living together before marriage is like an experiment to evaluate whether your partner is suitable for you to marry with. And it is a chance to find out whether you are ready for marriage. However, I think love needs tolerance. If you live with your partner without a written agreement, marriage, you will give up and end the relationship easily while having a conflict. And if you consider living together before marriage as an experiment, you will not take responsibility for your relationship, which is the most important thing when you are managing marriage. Also, I cannot agree with people who consider living together before marriage to be a method of avoiding divorce. At least I will not think about living with my partner before marriage in order to avoid divorce.
As far as I am concerned, accommodating together before marriage is not a good choice. If two people who are falling in love easily shack up, they will never know how holy marriage is and treat it seriously. If they said they live together because they love deeply, why don’t they get married and make it reassuring? If they really love each other, they should try to form a stable combination.
Moreover, the attitudes of a couple before marriage and after marriage are quite different. Before they get married, they regard each other as two different people and think more about their selves. But if they get married, they begin to take the interest of the whole family into account every time they make a decision. They may act differently from what they did before marriage. So the intention to test the relationship by living together is inappropriate and unwise.
I’ve rarely been exposed to the idea of living together before marriage. In my society, living together before marriage is a taboo and is never expected or accepted. From my point of view, I can’t understand why people live together before even getting married. A important question rise in my mind when I think about cohabitation, why do couples who live together even need to get married if they can do everything that married couples can do? Living together shouldn’t be used as a reason to try how marriage life would look like because married couples have different mentality and prospective and feel that their committed to a lifetime covenant. On the other hand, people who just live together can at anytime during this “trail and test” pack their stuff and leave the house. At that same moment they forget the feelings they had to each other and the value of time the spent living together.
I believe that living together before marriage is unethical, because it can cause a lot of problems. Suppose a couple living together before marriage have a child, and the man decides he doesn't want to live with that woman anymore, and doesn't want the child also, then he would just leave away. Only the woman and the child will be left alone. The mother would struggle to raise the child without any support, and the child would never be able to get a father's love. Hence, it not only causes suffering to the mother, who wrongly underwent a live-in relationship, but it also causes trouble to the innocent child, who would always miss his father although he has not committed any mistake.
Not only that, but as mentioned in the second suggested reading, the divorce rate among couples living together before marriage is very high. Divorces cause a lot of emotional stress on a person. Hence, it could be a very stressful experience, which would stay as a bad memory for the couple all throughout their life. Hence, living together before marriage is not a good choice, and couples planning on such a relationship should be counseled about its detrimental consequences.
Cohabitation has long been regarded as a social taboo until recently; there is a change in social structure, more and more people choose to do so before getting married. It has not yet become a social norm, but it is more widely accepted by people than before. I personally think that this idea is not as bad as many people think. Living together with another person before getting marry give you the chance to know more about each other, from character to habits and even some trivial things, which many of those you may not have noticed during dating. Marriage is a lifetime commitment, so better make a wise choice. Cohabitation is like an experiment to test whether you can live with that person or not, if you realize you can’t tolerant such person even when you are just dating with him/her, needless to say for the rest of the life. If there are arguments or disagreement between the two people when they are living together, they can still discuss about them or compromise and see if it works out or not before entering the next stage of their relationship. Many relationships fail because the two people do not know each other enough before getting married. They are not happy with their husband or wife, but they do not want to go through all the procedures of getting divorce, so they are trapped in their marriage and live a bitter life. Even though cohabitation in a way may help people to strengthen their relationship, but I have a better suggestion here. After witnessing my friends who have so many troubles and quarrels while dating, I think it’s really difficult to stay with another person, there are way too many things to sacrifice and compromise. Why don’t we just stay single, which is, in my opinion, convenient and hassle free.
I believe that living together before marriage is unethical, because it can cause a lot of problems. Suppose a couple living together before marriage have a child, and the man decides that he doesn't want to live with that woman anymore, and doesn't want the child also, then he would just leave. The woman and the child will be left alone. The mother would struggle to raise the child without any support, and the child would never be able to get a father's love. Hence, it not only causes suffering to the mother, who wrongly underwent a live-in relationship, but it also causes trouble to the innocent child, who would always miss his father although he has not committed any mistake.
Not only that, but as mentioned in the second suggested reading passage, the divorce rate among couples living together before marriage is very high. Divorces cause a lot of emotional stress on a person. Hence, it could be a very stressful experience, which would stay as a bad memory with the couple all throughout their life. Hence, living together before marriage is not a good choice, and couples planning on such a relationship should be counseled about its detrimental consequences.
I think it’s totally up to the couples to decide whether they should live together or not. Everything has positive aspects as well as negative aspects. I think by living together they will know more about each other and be more prepared for the marriage. I asked my friend why she decided to live with her boy friend. She told me that it is safer for her to live off campus with him. Well that’s her perspective so I say she’s wrong right or wrong. However, I’m a little bit concerned about her because there are so many uncertainties in life. Who knows a couple will break up or not in the future? According to the article, there are a high percentage of couples breaking up after living together. If their relationship doesn’t work out well, they might feel awkward to live together and one of them might need to move out. It causes so much trouble between them. (Housing, furniture and so on) I would recommend a couple that are about to live together before marriage to think once more about the possibility of breaking up.
This is a big issue today. I’m seeing a lot of young couples who are living together before marriage. This troubles me for several reasons, not the least of which is that living together puts a couple in a place of enormous temptation to have premarital sex, which is a sin.
A few years ago, I came across this flier on living together. It’s been helpful to me in explaining some of the other reasons why living together before marriage is not a good idea (when the sin angle isn’t enough of a deterrent ), maybe it will be helpful to someone you know.
Seven reasons why living together before marriage is not a good idea:
1 Those who live together before marriage are least likely to marry each other. Forty percent of couples who live together will end their relationships before marriage.
2 Those who live together before marriage have higher separation and divorce rates.
3Those who live together before marriage have unhappier marriages.
Couples who lived together before marriage also separated more often, sought counseling more often and regarded marriage as a less important part of their life than those who did not live together before marriage.
4 Those living together before marriage have more frequent disagreements, more fights and violence.
5 Those who live together do not experience the best sex.
6 Those who live together before marriage experience more behavioral problems.
7 Living together outside of marriage negatively impacts their children.
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