An increasing number of couples are choosing to cohabitate rather than get married. According to Pew Research:
As marriage rates have fallen, the number of U.S. adults in cohabiting relationships has continued to climb, reaching about 18 million in 2016. This is up 29% since 2007, when 14 million adults were cohabiting, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Adults aged 25 to 34 are most likely to be cohabiting. However, the fastest growing group of cohabiting adults are those 50 and older. Since 2007, rates of cohabitation among this cohort increased by 75%.
Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson is the author of the 2018 bestseller, 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos. This month, he published a sequel entitled Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life. In Rule X: Plan and Work Diligently to Maintain the Romance in Your Relationship, Peterson expresses opposition to cohabitation as an alternative to marriage.1
You might be tempted to conclude: “Well, how about we live together, instead of getting married? We will try each other out. It is the sensible thing to do.” But what exactly does it mean, when you invite someone to live with you, instead of committing yourself to each other? And let us be appropriately harsh and realistic about our appraisal, instead of pretending we are taking a used car for a test jaunt. Here is what it means: “You will do, for now, and I presume you feel the same way about me. Otherwise we would just get married. But in the name of a common sense that neither of us possesses we are going to reserve the right to swap each other out for a better option at any point.” And if you do not think that is what living together means—as a fully articulated ethical statement—see if you can formulate something more plausible.
You might think, “Look, Doc, that is pretty cynical.” So why not we consider the stats, instead of the opinion of arguably but not truly old-fashioned me? The breakup rate among people who are not married but are living together—so, married in everything but the formal sense—is substantially higher than the divorce rate among married couples.2 And even if you do get married and make an honest person, so to speak, of the individual with whom you cohabited, you are still much more rather than less likely to get divorced than you would be had you never lived together initially.3 So the idea of trying each other out? Sounds enticing, but does not work.
It is of course possible that people who are more likely to get divorced, for reasons of temperament, are also more likely to live together, before or without marriage, rather or in addition to the possibility that living together just does not work. It is no simple matter to disentangle the two causal factors. But it does not matter, practically. Cohabitation without the promise of permanent commitment, socially announced, ceremonially established, seriously considered, does not produce more robust marriages. And there is nothing good about that—particularly for children, who do much worse in single parent (generally male-absent) families.4 Period. So, I just do not see it as a justifiable social alternative. And I say that as someone who lived with my wife before I married her. I am not innocent in this regard. But that does not mean I was right. And there is something else, and it is far from trivial. You just do not have that many chances in life to have an intimate relationship work out properly. Maybe it takes you two or three years to meet the potential Mr. or Ms. Right, and another two or three to determine if they are in fact who you think they are. That is five years. You get old a lot faster than you think you will, no matter how old you are now, and most of what you could do with your family—with marriage, children, and so forth—is from twentysomething to about thirty-five. How many good five-year chances do you therefore have? Three? Four, if you are fortunate?
Reinforcing Peterson’s views, Pew Research also reported that married couples have higher levels of relationship satisfaction and trust than those living with a partner.
Married adults are more likely than those who are living with a partner to say things are going very well in their relationship (58% vs. 41%). They also express higher levels of satisfaction with specific aspects of their relationship, including the way household chores are divided between them and their spouse or partner, how well their spouse or partner balances work and personal life, how well they and their spouse or partner communicate, and their spouse’s or partner’s approach to parenting (among those with children younger than 18 in the household). When it comes to their sex lives, however, similar shares of married and cohabiting adults (about a third) say they are very satisfied.
Married adults are also more likely than those who are cohabiting to say they have a great deal of trust in their spouse or partner to be faithful to them, act in their best interest, always tell them the truth and handle money responsibly.
The link between marriage (vs. cohabitation) and higher levels of relationship satisfaction and trust remains even after controlling for demographic differences between married and cohabiting adults (such as gender, age, race, religious affiliation and educational attainment).
So, should you ‘try each other out’ before tying the knot? Like most things, it really depends. Many couples choose to live together for financial reasons. If this matters to you, perhaps it is worth the potential trade-offs. That said, there have be cases in which people have had to pay their ex-partners spousal support, even though they were never married and did not share a home or children.
For more on Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life, see Beyond Benzos: Jordan B. Peterson’s Trip To Hell And Back.
Footnotes
- Peterson, J. B. (2021). Beyond order: 12 more rules for life. New York: Penguin.
- Statistics Canada, “Common-Law Couples Are More Likely to Break Up,” CanadaYear Book 2011, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/catalogue/11-402-X.
- Excepting, perhaps, in the first year. M. J. Rosenfeld and K. Roesler, “Cohabitation Experience and Cohabitation’s Association with Marital Dissolution,” Journal of Marriage and Family 81 (2018): 42–58.
- US Census Bureau, 2017. Data represent children living without a biological, step, or adoptive father. Also see E. Leah, D. Jackson, and L. O’Brien, “Father Absence and Adolescent Development: A Review of the Literature,” Journal of Child Health Care 10 (2006): 283–95.
