Sliding Into Marriage: Why Living Together Before Matrimony Can Hurt Your Relationship

Research shows premarital cohabitation is linked to higher divorce rates and lower marital satisfaction. Here's why.

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Dr. Phil is ruining my life.

His reels keep showing up on my Facebook feed, upon which I waste far too much time. I have been particularly fascinated by the episodes featuring clearly incompatible engaged couples trying to work out their problems. And I yell, “Just break up! Don’t get married! Run!!!”

And then I learn that they have three kids together. And a house, a dog and probably a side business. So leaving is no longer an easy option.

Last time we discussed the low divorce rate among couples who save sex for marriage. Now I want to take it one step further and talk about the impact of premarital cohabitation on marriages.

Spoiler alert: it is not good. Couples who cohabit before marriage report both higher divorce rates and, for those who stay together, lower levels of overall marital satisfaction.

We need to begin with the caveat that not every couple who cohabitates before marriage is going to end up divorced or unhappy. Heck, some of my favorite couples lived together before they were married. These days, pretty much every couple does.            The consequences may not be dire in every relationship. But the overall trends are not good.

But why?

Dr. Stanley Scott, who has studied the effects of premarital cohabitation extensively, summarizes the problem succinctly. He says that cohabiting couples tend to wind up “sliding, not deciding.” In other words, they move to the “next step” not because they have made a deliberate, calculated, prayerful decision, but rather because they are prematurely entangled — they have built too many barriers to exit, and thus it’s easier to move forward than to try to disentangle themselves.

One of the most important decisions most people make is the choice of a marriage partner. This is the person who will wake up next to them for the rest of their lives, who will parent and form their children, who will know them and whom they will know more intimately than anyone. That decision will color every aspect of the rest of their lives.

So naturally, it is a decision that needs to be made objectively, with great care and forethought. When someone is contemplating marriage, they need to weigh the alternatives carefully and pray for guidance.

Even in the best of circumstances, it can be difficult to be objective — to recognize incompatibility or red flags in a relationship — when we have strong feelings for someone. I remember once breaking up with someone I cared about, and I literally had nightmares for a month. But we were neither living nor sleeping together, which gave me the objectivity to recognize that we were not a good match.

How much more complicated would it have been if our lives had been more deeply intertwined, if we had followed the modern script? For so many couples, this is how it goes: First, they start leaving things at each other’s places. Then, when their leases are up, they realize it would be much more cost-effective to move in together. They probably haven’t really thought much about “Is this the person I want to spend the rest of my life with?” In fact, they may figure that living together will help them “test” whether marriage would be a good idea. Or maybe one of them wants to get married, but the other doesn’t, so they figure living together would be a good way to “audition” for the role of spouse. The reasons can be as varied as the people involved. But regardless, none of this “testing” and “auditioning” tends to work well in the long run.

Meanwhile, they have combined their households. They share an address. They pool their money. Eventually, they want nicer stuff, so they buy some furniture together. They get a dog because dogs are cute. They may buy a house together, because everybody knows that buying makes more sense than renting. And often, they wind up with a kid or two, because the rate of pregnancy increases among cohabitating couples.

Each of these steps creates a barrier to leaving. If they break up, they’ll have to give up their home — perhaps even sell it — and find a new place to live. They’ll have to separate the money and fight over custody of the sofa, the dog and perhaps even the kids. It becomes a lot easier to just go with the flow. Couples marry, not because they have done the work separately and reached the objective conclusion that they are called to join their lives together, but rather because marriage is the next stop on the train, and exiting would be too complicated at this point. It would essentially be a divorce without the legal protections.

And so they wind up married to someone they perhaps otherwise wouldn’t have chosen.

What’s worse, studies also show that the habits and attitudes that often come with living together can follow the couple into marriage. Without the permanent commitment of matrimony, cohabitating couples often operate with a more temporary mentality. “If this doesn’t work out, I can leave.” The back door is open. And it doesn’t always slam shut just because they sign a marriage certificate. Making a marriage work requires an “all in” mentality. Spouses can’t live in fear that the other partner might have one foot out the door. When that temporary, conditional thinking follows a couple into marriage, it undermines the commitment they need to give themselves completely to each other, and to get through the hard times.

Thus, lower levels of marital satisfaction and a higher divorce rate.

Again, this is not all couples. Some wind up with someone they would have chosen and remained with, cohabitation or not. Others move in together much later in the relationship, after they have done the work and made the decision to marry. Those couples tend to fare better, although still not as well as those who wait to move in together until they are sacramentally united in marriage.

For these and many other reasons, the Church always discouraged premarital cohabitation. It’s not prudery. It’s just an understanding of human nature, along with a profound respect for the institution of marriage, and for the reality that as marriage goes, so goes the society. And that marriage goes much better when the marriage decision is made carefully and deliberately.

Marriage proposals should come from a place of deep love and commitment, not convenience, pressure or necessity.

When it comes to choosing a spouse, please make sure you are truly deciding, and not just sliding.