Christian evangelist Chuck Colson once preached, "Cohabitation - it's training for divorce.

While I'm sure I would disagree with him on any other issue, Colson actually has a point on this one.

My boyfriend of two years, who doesn't want to say, "I do" for at least another decade, thinks living together is a great idea.

"You have to find out if you can live with someone before you marry them," he said.

But, as usual, he's wrong.

Those who live together before marriage are twice as likely to divorce than those who don't, according to a study done by sociologists Morgan and Russell.

Despite this reality, couples are still brainlessly deciding to be roomies without rings.

In 2000, 11 million Americans were unmarried and living together.

The Census Bureau reported this was a 72 percent increase from 1990.

So, does this mean that 10 years from now the idea of marriage will be obsolete?

Casual attitudes toward commitment are a growing trend, especially in college students.

The book "Unmarried to Each Other" reports the shocking statistic that two out of five college-aged people are shacking up before tying the knot.

Just because it seems that "everybody's doing it," doesn't mean it's the best idea for you.

This is a tough decision that a lot of students make with out thinking it through.

There are advantages and disadvantages of turning into a twosome, so if and when you decide to, make sure you go over all the angles.

One reason why couples consider moving in together is because they think like my boyfriend.

Mistakenly they hope putting themselves in that situation will be a preview to that marriage, helping them prepare for better or worse.

It may sound like a good idea because if you realize you can't live with your significant other, then you shouldn't get married.

However, there are more unnecessary break-ups because the commitment factor doesn't seem as strong, making it easier to call it quits.

But, even if you are able to stick it out, the chances of divorce increase later because you did in fact move in together before taking the plunge.

Moving in with your other half may be a sensible idea economically.

Having a roommate and getting to share the bills is a great way to save money.

But, as quickly as lovers could walk out on each other, it's also a great way to get stuck paying bills for two and going broke all alone.

Besides, if you are already living with the person you are going to marry, what does marriage really even mean to you?

The only real difference in your relationship is a piece of paper saying that you are, in fact, married.

Either, or both spouses might still have a mindset of being only in a dating relationship and not a marriage.

This may account for problems such as continuing to go out and party, neglecting your new responsibilities as a husband or wife. You may even be more prone to cheat becauseyou don't really feel like you're married.

Another big disadvantage of living with someone before you are married is that if you ever break up, they are still there.

You can't get rid of them right away like you could if you weren't living together.

They will still be sharing a home with you for at least a few more days or so.

I wouldn't live with my significant other before being married.

I would want such a big commitment to bring a lot of good changes into my life, like being able to move in together.

This is a big choice that one shouldn't make too quickly. Make sure that you go over every angle of the situation. It' s a huge life decision, so make the best choice for you.

If you decide to make the move to his and her hand towels then don't worry, I don't think you're living in sin.

But be careful, you might end up living in home sweet hell.

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http://blog.news-record.com/staff/frontpew/archives/2005/07/the_divorce_rat.html

July 19, 2005

"Shacking' up in vogue

The divorce rate is dropping, but so is the number of people tying the knot. People are living together more often. Is that a better solution? What about the kids in these relationships?

Posted by Nancy McLaughlin at July 19, 2005 09:24 AM

Comments

It's certainly a societal trend that needs watching. I think that people often avoid marrying because of the legal pains that accompany divorce. And I think that you're correct that a huge part of the issue is child welfare.

Is just living together a better arrangement than getting married? In some cases, I expect so. When children are involved... adults need to be willing to commit to a minimum of 16 or 18 years to support any child they help bring into the world, regardless of the legal status of the relationship.

Posted by: Eric at July 19, 2005 01:00 PM

This is an interesting topic. A former roommate of mine who was born and raised in Quebec and I used to agreeably agree to disagree on this subject. She felt that you could be committed for life and not be married. My stance is if you want to share a life, a family, a household, debts etc., then you should marry me. Otherwise, stay in your house and I'll stay in mine. I always thought it was interesting when people (interesting side note: I never got this question from people of my own race/ethnicity) would find out my beau and I had been together for 4 years and say something like "so you guys live together" and I would say no and they would just be floored that we had been together that long and weren't living/would not live together.

Posted by: govtwriter at July 19, 2005 03:06 PM

Since this is the frontpew...

I often wonder why God designed marriage and especially the sexual boundries involved in marriage. Sex is a major reason for marriage according to most Christian doctrines.

It seems so many bad things can come out of having sex outside of marraige. Disease, unwanted pregnancy, abortion- not to mention emotional problems....

Posted by: chip at July 19, 2005 04:29 PM

Chip, a better question is, why did God design our bodies to be ready to procreate long before we are emptionally ready to engage in sexual relations? I mean it makes no sense to me that all these hormones kick in when we are least prepared to deal with them.

Posted by: govtwriter at July 19, 2005 04:42 PM

I have asked this many times. Of course, our highly educated aand wealthy culture is the main reason we wait today. However, this an extremely modern problem.

Posted by: chip at July 19, 2005 04:55 PM

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http://earstohear.net/Kingdom/shackingup.html

  Shacking Up & Abstinence

Abstinence Pledges Curtail Teen Out-of-Wedlock Births
By AFA Journal
June 10, 2004

(AgapePress) - A new report released by the Heritage Foundation reveals that efforts recommending abstinence to teens can pay off in reducing out-of-wedlock births.

The report, which was based on data gathered by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, found that "[y]oung women who take a virginity pledge are about 40% less likely to have a child out of wedlock when compared to similar young women who do not make such a pledge."

Kirk A. Johnson, senior policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis, wrote in the Heritage report that the finding "strongly suggests the potential for abstinence education programs to reduce teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock childbearing."

The benefits of reducing such outcomes of early teen sexual experimentation are more than just theoretical. The report noted that children raised by single parents are "seven times more likely to live in poverty than are children raised in intact homes."

The Heritage Foundation study considered other factors such as the girls' family status, religiosity, income, race, etc., and still determined that "the virginity pledge itself was found to have a strong independent effect in predicting lower levels of out-of-wedlock childbearing."

This article appeared in the June 2004 issue of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.

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The Hard Line
Shacking Up? Consider this...

By R. Cort Kirkwood
July 26, 2002

(AgapePress) - Like the “news” we hear from most other sociological studies, the latest from the Centers for Disease Control isn’t news at all. Shacking up before marriage, the federal disease detectives say, increases the chance of divorce.

However predictable, CDC’s new data on marriage merely ratify an obvious truth:We live in a divorce culture that says marriages were made to be broken.

The Reasons
The statistics from CDC are just what we’d expect:

While little or no religious faith and low income portend divorce, which at the 43% rate is a contagion, CDC found that 40% of marriages that grow from “cohabitation” ended within ten years. In contrast, divorce occurs in 31% of marriages wherein the couples did not shack up.

The reason, one observer told Associated Press, is that “many people enter a cohabiting relationship where the deal is, ‘If this doesn’t work out we can split up and it’s no big loss because we don’t have a legal commitment,’ " she said. “The commitment is tenuous, and that tenuous commitment might carry over into marriage.”

No kidding. But the commitments are “tenuous” because they are joined to gratify concupiscence, not to offer unconditional love to another with the goal of becoming one. People shack up for the convenient sex. You don’t have to go home on a cold night after it’s over.

And once the shoes are under the bed permanently, ending the “relationship” is much more difficult than if the shoes had not moved in. Retreating from an ill-considered “engagement” during “cohabitation” requires Herculean emotional and psychological strength.

So one or both parties are channeled toward that “tenuous” marriage. Result? Divorce.

The Wrong View of Marriage
But the CDC inadvertently identified another “factor” that explains the divorces where the spouses did not live together before marriage.

Quoting a “marriage expert” who toils for the federal government, AP reports, “part of the problem may be attitudes toward cohabitation are different than attitudes about marriage .... When living together, [the “expert”] said, the attitude is ‘I vow to stay together with you as long as you make me happy.’

“In a marriage, people focus on making their partners happy. ‘If you’re used to viewing being together as a test of the other person’s ability to take care of your needs, once you get married it’s hard to just switch that,’ ” the “expert” said.

Happy? Needs? The “expert” just doesn’t get it. No wonder the federal government hired him.

Marriage was not ordained to make you happy. It was ordained to make you better. The main duty for each spouse is not fulfilling the “needs” of the other, however selfless the effort.

The principal duty for spouses, at least in a Christian marriage, is to help each other get to heaven. This is what should make us happy, and even married atheists or others who don’t share the Christian view of marriage should strive to become better human beings -- not gratify egoistic urges.

A Sacred Bond
Which brings us back to the beginning.

The prevailing, legalistic view of marriage as a “tenuous commitment” is ripened in a culture that no longer views marriage as an indissoluble and sacred bond or sacrament joined by God. Today, marriage is a “contract” either husband or wife can break because they aren‘t “happy.”

Until that changes, until society understands marriage the old-fashioned way, the CDC reports won’t much improve.

R. Cort Kirkwood is a syndicated columnist and managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He can be contacted at kirkwood@....

© 2002 AgapePress all rights reserved.

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http://www.newsobserver.com/662/story/462833.html

 

Judge rules against cohabitation law
A 201-year-old law barring unmarried couples from living together is ruled unconstitutional

 

Andrea Weigl, Staff Writer

Those of you shacking up, have no fear: A judge has thrown out a 201-year-old North Carolina law making it illegal for unmarried couples to live together.

Superior Court Judge Benjamin Alford of New Bern struck down the law as unconstitutional in a handwritten ruling released Thursday. A final order has not yet been written.

Debora Lynn Hobbs, a Pender County emergency dispatcher, filed the constitutional challenge last year after Sheriff Carson Smith discovered she had a live-in boyfriend and gave her an ultimatum: marry, move or leave her job. In 2004, Hobbs' lawsuit says, she was "forced involuntarily to terminate her employment." Hobbs didn't sue to get her job back but for a ruling on the law.

"I am absolutely thrilled with the court's decision," Hobbs, 41, said in a statement. "I just didn't think it was any of my employer's business whether I was married or not, as long as I was good at my job, and I am happy that no one else will ever have to be subjected to this law. I couldn't believe that I was being given this ultimatum to choose between my boyfriend or my livelihood because the sheriff was enforcing a 201-year-old law that clearly violates my civil rights."

Others were less thrilled. "I think it's terrible," said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina.

"It was simply judicial activism at its best. That knocked down the law that is a cornerstone of state marriage policy. The law emphasizes that marriage is the family structure that ought to be encouraged because that is the best institution for family, children and society."

"What the judge actually did was undermine marriage," said Creech, who cited studies that concluded that those who live together first before marriage are less likely to stay married.

She represents many

Hobbs is one of about 148,000 people living as part of a couple out of wedlock in the state, according to the U.S. Census. North Carolina is among about half a dozen states with a law forbidding unmarried couples to live under the same roof. The law was rarely enforced. Between 1997 and 2003, 35 North Carolinians were charged with violating it, but only seven were convicted.

"I think it's an archaic, vestigial piece of ridiculousness," said Jay O'Berski, a lecturing fellow at Duke University who teaches drama.

O'Berski, 36, has lived with his girlfriend in Durham for one year and dated her for a year before that.

"We have no intention of getting married," he said. "We are committed, and we live like married people."

Sheriff Smith could not be reached for comment Thursday. Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Attorney General's Office, said its lawyers are reviewing the ruling and no decision has been made about whether the state will appeal it. Pender County Attorney Trey Thurman said the county is not likely to appeal.

"There is nothing that has said Sheriff Carson Smith has done anything wrong," Thurman said. "There has just been a declaration that a statute was unconstitutional. Now, it wouldn't be anything he would enforce."

Both sides appeared before the judge earlier this week in Pender County. The state's lawyers had argued that Hobbs couldn't challenge the law because she hadn't been charged with a crime.

Hobbs' American Civil Liberties Union lawyers had argued that the law conflicted with a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down Texas' sodomy law and created a right to sexual privacy.

"The Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas stands for the proposition that the government has no business regulating relationships between two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home," said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina, which represented Hobbs. "North Carolina's cohabitation law is not only patently unconstitutional, but the idea that the government would criminalize people's choice to live together out of wedlock in this day and age defies logic and common sense."

Staff writer Andrea Weigl an be reached at 829-4848 or aweigl@....

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Marriage is good for you, but living together isn't

I do not think it wise to live together without that firm commentment. ... activist mentality to believe that if only shacking up got you the same medical ... www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/011396.html - 21k -     December 16, 2004 Marriage is good for you, but living together isn't A new study shows that married people have better health than single or divorced people. Experts can only speculate as to why this is. But mere companionship is not the answer. In a finding that is getting edited out of many news reports of the study, couples just living together out of wedlock have poorer health. Unmarried cohabiting couples have the worse rates for smoking and drinking than any of the other groups, including the single, divorced, and separated. From the Associated Press story, quoting Charlotte Schoenborn of the National Center for Health Statistics: "For most negative health indicators, adults living with a partner had higher rates than married adults: they were more likely to be in fair or poor health, to have some type of limitation of activity for health reasons and to have experienced low back pain and headaches ... and serious psychological distress," Schoenborn reported. The report found that married people were least likely to light up a smoke, at 18.8 percent, compared with 22.9 percent for all adults. The most likely to smoke were those living with an unmarried partner, 38.4 percent, and divorced and separated people, 34.7 percent. Some 4.7 percent of adults reported they had become heavier drinkers than previously, with the lowest rate among marrieds at 3.7 percent. Again, those living with an unmarried partner had the largest share reporting more drinking, 8.2 percent, followed by the divorced and separated, 6.4 percent. Overall the study found that 58.2 percent of adults are married, 10.4 percent are separated or divorced, 6.6 percent are widowed, 19 percent are never married and 5.7 percent are living with a partner. Posted by Veith at December 16, 2004 09:58 AM | TrackBack Comments 1 Hmmm...Maybe God was onto something with that whole "marriage" idea. Posted by: James at December 16, 2004 10:42 AM 2 OF COURSE! For we who are married (Gods way) this is a NO BRAINER! Posted by: Jeff at December 16, 2004 10:46 AM 3 That doesn't surprise me at all. I do not think it wise to live together without that firm commentment. Posted by: Adam Beckham at December 16, 2004 10:46 AM 4 The article I read on CNN.com said that the lower health rates of co-habiting adults might not have anything to do with their lifestyle. These findings could just show that people with good health are more likely to marry and people with poorer health don't get married. I just find it interesting that they have to look at every other possibility other than one's lifestyle and moral decisions can affect one's overall health. Posted by: michele at December 16, 2004 10:48 AM 5 Here's a great example where science would benefit from an overlap with philosophy and religion. Science alone struggles to explain this, now documented, correlation between the factors of health and marriage vs. cohabitation. The presentation of the research seems to muddle the difference between cause and effect vs. mere correlation. From a Biblical world-view, this IS a "no-brainer." In a vacuum of science with no moral, philisophical or religious context, its a puzzle. Posted by: Scott S at December 16, 2004 11:14 AM 6 -- Science alone struggles to explain this, now documented, correlation between the factors of health and marriage vs. cohabitation. -- I am not a scientist but I can come up with some pretty good ideas that aren't "it makes Jesus happy so he pushed the 'good health for you!' button." Cohabitation without a commitment to marry (i.e. - "let's try this and see how it works") is indicative of a relationship that is not fit to have 24/7 interaction. A bad relationship will lead to more stress and self-destructive behavior. Stress is one of the biggest factors in poor health and self-destructive behavior can include excessive drinking, eating and smoking. Posted by: Adam Beckham at December 16, 2004 11:37 AM 7 True, Adam, but that does not exclude the prime hypothesis from a Christian perspective; that Adam and Eve were created for one another, and that therefore anything which works against that union will be detrimental. Put another way, the sociological argument you present does not negate the argument from Creation. Posted by: Robert Perry at December 16, 2004 11:44 AM 8 In the words of Kathy Ireland, God doesn't make rules to protect us from fun, but to protect us from pain. Posted by: Fyne Jr. at December 16, 2004 11:45 AM 9 Yawn. Duh, that's why I'm getting married. :) Every shred of evidence found in the physical and psychological structure of the human person points to a need for long-term companionship with a member of the opposite sex, from plumbing designed to create offspring to our intrinsic relational needs. This is apparent whether you believe in a divine creator or not. The Christian perspective is that this is God's design, and that the trend of better health among married people is not an automatic blessing in exchange for obediance (though God certainly may bless some people in this way) but merely the result of human beings functioning as they were designed to function. Remove Christianity from the equation, and you still have people functioning as the evolutionary process has dictated. Either perspective supports the concept of one male and one female in a monogamous relationship being the ideal. Posted by: Peter at December 16, 2004 01:13 PM 10 Peter, I'd hope and guess that your marriage goes well beyond mere biological compatibility and health! :^) I know I'd be happier married even with a lot of sickness--and I wish/pray for you as much or more joy in marriage than I've had so far. Posted by: Robert Perry at December 16, 2004 02:00 PM 11 -- Put another way, the sociological argument you present does not negate the argument from Creation. -- Who said it did? Posted by: Adam Beckham at December 16, 2004 02:47 PM 12 This reminds me of other statistical arguments I've seen. It appears to be a fact that there is a correlation between marriage vs. cohabitation and a lot of habits/practices that can have a large impact on health. The cause is open to interpretation. It also reminds me of a comment in "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction" by Eugene Petersen. People who go against the grain of the universe should expect to get splinters. Posted by: Gene Y. at December 16, 2004 03:00 PM 13 This isn't really very helpful as a study: were there factors about people who tend to marry that make them more healthy than those who tend to shack up? Certainly the difference here isn't a nebulous concept of "commitment" but rather a specific sort of commitment and the psychology and morality of people who tend toward that. Posted by: Christopher Taylor at December 16, 2004 03:12 PM 14 Adam, to quote you: "I am not a scientist but I can come up with some pretty good ideas that aren't "it makes Jesus happy so he pushed the 'good health for you!' button." I was simply pointing out that your representation of Christian theology on the issue was a straw man, and that the real theology lies in the created order. Posted by: Robert Perry at December 16, 2004 04:02 PM 15 they might also want to look at factors concerning access to health care for married versus non-married people. Posted by: Luke at December 16, 2004 07:22 PM 16 health care? married people have more. Posted by: Luke at December 16, 2004 07:23 PM 17 I think that has to be something considered as a contributing factor - although typically younger people don't bother with health care access and this deals mostly with younger people from what I saw. Posted by: Christopher Taylor at December 16, 2004 08:15 PM 18 Access to health care is not a big issue in a nation with Medicaid available to the indigent, Luke. Never mind that even if it were, other issues like smoking, drinking, drug use, and lack of exercise dwarf access to health care as an indicator of health. Posted by: Robert Perry at December 17, 2004 12:02 PM 19 well don't discount the little things rob, we are dealking with small percent differences. Posted by: Luke at December 17, 2004 07:09 PM 20 Plus it fits Luke's activist mentality to believe that if only shacking up got you the same medical benefits as marriage everything would be peachy. Posted by: Christopher Taylor at December 18, 2004 10:40 AM 21 No chrissy, it fits my activist mentality that if everyone had unfailing access to health care everything would be more peachy than they are now. But hey, sometimes things just work out. Posted by: Luke at December 18, 2004 02:41 PM 22 6956 Thanks for it