Understanding Cohabitation and Fidelity

Cohabitation is one way in which to demonstrate that marriage is unique and that its benefits really are derived from a specific social understand that is beyond the simple idea of men and women living together, enjoying a physical, sexual relationship with one another.

Couples who cohabitate rarely accumulate as much wealth as those who are married do. They are actually a lot more tentative about their relationship, which makes them a lot less disposed to invest in things like homes, stocks and furniture together. Instead, they are more likely to have separate bank accounts and take separate vacations. There is also a much higher incidence of physical and sexual abuse of children who live in cohabitating families instead of where the parents are actually married.

Nevertheless, there are still a lot of people who believe that by living together prior to marriage they will be able to tell whether they can sustain a long-term, healthy marriage. Four decades of sociological research show that the exact opposite is actually true. It also shows that cohabitation fails to prepare couples for marriage and contributes to decreased marital stability in the future. So, cohabitation actually substantially increases divorce rates (from 50% to 100% higher).

Clearly, cohabitation does not have anything to do with marital happiness. Instead, it is actually related to a lower level of marital satisfaction, a higher level of marital disagreement and an increased rate of marital instability too. In fact, those women who do not cohabitate with their spouse prior to marriage have an 80% more likely opportunity of success within their marriage.

One of the possible reasons for the instability that is inherent within cohabitation is the lack of social reinforcement for fidelity, which is something that is implicit within marriage itself. Once again research reveals that those who are currently cohabitating with one another are actually less committed to their current partner whenever it comes to having a possible sexual encounter with someone else who is outside of their current relationship.

Whenever it comes to same sex couples that are cohabitating, fidelity is also a myth. Studies have been done in this regard too. They show that only 7 out of 156 males who are in such relationships, which last between 1 to 37 years, are totally exclusive with one another. All of these men had been together for less than 5 years when this study was done. This means that all of the couples that had a 5 year relationship had incorporated some way in which to involve outside sexual activity within their relationship.

Of course, it is important to understand that the closest thing that same sex couples have to marriage right now is cohabitation. Nevertheless, we can still clearly see the adverse affects that this modification of marriage and the natural family unit has had upon the deterioration of the family and the essential benefits to society that come with such families.

Marriage and the natural family unit function as the cornerstone of civilization as we know it. Even the slightest change from the real definition of marriage will destabilize it. This is when a lot of harmful effects begin taking place within our society. Redefining marriage in much more radical terms is not going to improve this situation at all.