People cohabiting before marriage often contracept, both of which are dangerous for the relationship.
By Anthony Barich
The majority of Australians believe the lie that cohabitation will improve their chances of a good marriage, the national Catholic Society for Marriage Education president said.
Over 70 per cent of Australians believe that cohabitation is likely to improve their chances of having a good marriage, Derek Boylen, who is also the Perth Archdiocesan director of Catholic Marriage Education Services (CMES), told local Billings educators on 16 July at the Doubleview Catholic pastoral centre.
This social trend exists despite Australian Government statistics released in Australian Families 2008 showing that de facto couples are three times as likely to end their relationship within a five-year period as those who are married.
More disturbing, he said, was the fact that between 76 and 80 per cent of couples marrying in the Catholic Church are cohabiting, and many more than that, he says, would already be sexually active.
Coupled with this, 80 per cent of natural family planning users are non-Catholic. However, through NFP promotion around the Archdiocese that ratio is now 60 per cent non-Cathoics – doubling the number of Catholics that Natural Fertility Services (the Archdiocesan agency of which Mr Boylen is also director) are seeing. Catholics are also encouraged to promote NFP themselves.
“It’s disturbing that it’s such a trend and sad that, in many ways, being Catholic hasn’t made a difference on their choice; (the rate) is on par with the general community. Choosing to get married in Catholic Church clearly hasn’t impacted their decision,” Mr Boylen later told The Record.
Mr Boylen said that the percentage of CMES clients already cohabiting reflects the societal trend that has seen the number of couples cohabiting before marriage rising sharply from five per cent in 1960 to 78 per cent in 2009.
“Couples just aren’t aware of the constraints they put on their relationships by cohabiting, and that often in these circumstances, when they get married it’s not for the right reasons,” he said.
These constraints are reflected in Australian and US data showing that premarital cohabitation is associated with more negative communication in marriage, as issues like shared finances are often not discussed as de facto couples often find themselves “sliding into” the live-together scenario, having slept together already.
Cohabiting couples on average score lower on a wide range of indices of marital quality compared to those who only lived together after marriage. These associated risks have not abated over the last 20 years, Mr Boylen said.
Premarital cohabitation is also linked to lower levels of marriage satisfaction, while higher numbers of premarital partners are associated with higher risks of divorce.
Through his own experience at CMES and data reflected in Australian and US studies, Mr Boylen has found that couples experience “wedding day blues”, as nothing has changed in their lives after the big day when they’ve already lived together, as opposed to higher satisfaction levels among couples who did not cohabit prior to marriage.
Such evidence of the link between premarital cohabitation and poorer marital outcomes has become known in the social science fraternity as “the cohabitation effect”, he said.
Premarital cohabitation is also associated with lower levels of dedication to one’s spouse for men, but not for women, who often had a high level of commitment prior to the marriage.
The very poor, he said, also tend to believe it’s better to have financial security before getting married, “so they tend to cohabit longer before possibly entering marriage”.
Understanding commitment
Understanding the nature of commitment and the crucial difference between ‘deciding’ and ‘sliding’ in relationships is key to understanding the ‘cohabitation effect’, Mr Boylen said.
He addressed Billings educators on 16 July about ‘commitment theory’, an emerging area of marriage and relationship study that differentiates between factors that motivate connection (called dedication) and factors that increase the costs of living (called constraints).
The talk was organised by Billings LIFE WA – an education service assisting couples to achieve or avoid pregnancy using the Billings Ovulation Method of Natural Family Planning.
“Researchers are now asking questions about the difference dedication and constraint makes,” he said. Couples who share a higher level of dedication tend to have a strong sense of ‘couple identity’, or a ‘we-ness’ that pervades how they approach life, he added.
Constraints, meanwhile, help explain why some people remain in unhappy relationships.
Men, however, on average see marriage as a bigger decision than women as it requires a greater change in their identity and way of living. Studies show, he said, that, after marriage, cohabiting men rate their level of commitment well below women and non-cohabiting men, whose commitment level shoots up after marriage compared to before.
The concept of ‘relationship inertia’ is also key to understanding the phenomenon of the ‘cohabitation effect’, he said – the idea that some couples who otherwise would not have married end up married partly because they cohabit and have much to lose, as Australian law says they can still lose half their possessions after living just six months as de facto.
“Cohabitation, however, may not cause risks for the relationship as much as make it harder to terminate a riskier union, thus constraining the search for a better partner fit,” he said.
“Many couples do not consider the effect of increasing constraints prior to a more dedication-based relationship being formed.”
Derek’s tips for young
lovers:
l Get to know the person very well before deciding to marry. Think about it and discuss your core expectations to see how compatible you are
l Do not make this crucial decision in a period of emotional infatuation
l Observe how the person treats not only you but his or her friends
l Learn as much as you can about the person’s priorities and values
l Give more weight than your heart may want to how closely the person shares your most essential values in life
l Wait until you are 22 or older to make such an important decision. What you think you are looking for can change a lot through post-school university time and starting in the workforce
l Get the opinion of friends and family who are not likely to tell you only what you want to hear.