By MEG JAY
AT 32, one of my clients (I’ll call her Jennifer) had a lavish wine-country wedding. By then, Jennifer and her boyfriend had lived together for more than four years. The event was attended by the couple’s friends, families and two dogs.
When Jennifer started therapy with me less than a year later, she was looking for a divorce lawyer. “I spent more time planning my wedding than I spent happily married,” she sobbed. Most disheartening to Jennifer was that she’d tried to do everything right. “My parents got married young so, of course, they got divorced. We lived together! How did this happen?”
Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500
percent in the past half century. In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried
couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. The
majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner
at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by
cohabitation. This shift has been attributed to the sexual revolution
and the availability of birth control, and in our current economy,
sharing the bills makes cohabiting appealing. But when you talk to
people in their 20s, you also hear about something else: cohabitation as
prophylaxis.
In a nationwide survey
conducted in 2001 by the National Marriage Project, then at Rutgers and
now at the University of Virginia, nearly half of 20-somethings agreed
with the statement, “You would only marry someone if he or she agreed to
live together with you first, so that you could find out whether you
really get along.” About two-thirds said they believed that moving in
together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.
But that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit
before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise
clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and
more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative
outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.
Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection,
or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and
thus more open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, however,
studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by
individual characteristics like religion, education or politics.
Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in
cohabitation itself.
As Jennifer and I worked to answer her question, “How did this happen?”
we talked about how she and her boyfriend went from dating to
cohabiting. Her response was consistent with studies reporting that most
couples say it “just happened.”
“We were sleeping over at each other’s places all the time,” she said.
“We liked to be together, so it was cheaper and more convenient. It was a
quick decision but if it didn’t work out there was a quick exit.”
She was talking about what researchers call “sliding, not deciding.”
Moving from dating to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to
cohabitation can be a gradual slope, one not marked by rings or
ceremonies or sometimes even a conversation. Couples bypass talking
about why they want to live together and what it will mean.
WHEN researchers ask cohabitors these questions, partners often have
different, unspoken — even unconscious — agendas. Women are more likely
to view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, while men are more
likely to see it as a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment,
and this gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and
lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to
marriage. One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their
standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse.
Sliding into cohabitation wouldn’t be a problem if sliding out were as
easy. But it isn’t. Too often, young adults enter into what they imagine
will be low-cost, low-risk living situations only to find themselves
unable to get out months, even years, later. It’s like signing up for a
credit card with 0 percent interest. At the end of 12 months when the
interest goes up to 23 percent you feel stuck because your balance is
too high to pay off. In fact, cohabitation can be exactly like that. In
behavioral economics, it’s called consumer lock-in.
Lock-in is the decreased likelihood to search for, or change to, another
option once an investment in something has been made. The greater the
setup costs, the less likely we are to move to another, even better,
situation, especially when faced with switching costs, or the time,
money and effort it requires to make a change.
Cohabitation is loaded with setup and switching costs. Living together
can be fun and economical, and the setup costs are subtly woven in.
After years of living among roommates’ junky old stuff, couples happily
split the rent on a nice one-bedroom apartment. They share wireless and
pets and enjoy shopping for new furniture together. Later, these setup
and switching costs have an impact on how likely they are to leave.
Jennifer said she never really felt that her boyfriend was committed to
her. “I felt like I was on this multiyear, never-ending audition to be
his wife,” she said. “We had all this furniture. We had our dogs and all
the same friends. It just made it really, really difficult to break up.
Then it was like we got married because we were living together once we
got into our 30s.”
I’ve had other clients who also wish they hadn’t sunk years of their 20s
into relationships that would have lasted only months had they not been
living together. Others want to feel committed to their partners, yet
they are confused about whether they have consciously chosen their
mates. Founding relationships on convenience or ambiguity can interfere
with the process of claiming the people we love. A life built on top of
“maybe you’ll do” simply may not feel as dedicated as a life built on
top of the “we do” of commitment or marriage.
The unfavorable connection between cohabitation and divorce does seem to be lessening, however, according to a report released last month by the Department of Health and Human Services. More good news is that a 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center found that nearly two-thirds of Americans saw cohabitation as a step toward marriage.
This shared and serious view of cohabitation may go a long way toward
further attenuating the cohabitation effect because the most recent
research suggests that serial cohabitators, couples with differing
levels of commitment and those who use cohabitation as a test are most
at risk for poor relationship quality and eventual relationship
dissolution.
Cohabitation is here to stay, and there are things young adults can do
to protect their relationships from the cohabitation effect. It’s
important to discuss each person’s motivation and commitment level
beforehand and, even better, to view cohabitation as an intentional step
toward, rather than a convenient test for, marriage or partnership.
It also makes sense to anticipate and regularly evaluate constraints that may keep you from leaving.
I am not for or against living together, but I am for young adults
knowing that, far from safeguarding against divorce and unhappiness,
moving in with someone can increase your chances of making a mistake —
or of spending too much time on a mistake. A mentor of mine used to say,
“The best time to work on someone’s marriage is before he or she has
one,” and in our era, that may mean before cohabitation.
Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist
at the University of Virginia and author of “The Defining Decade: Why
Your Twenties Matter — and How to Make the Most of Them Now.”
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