Why Not Take Her for a Test Drive?
Thinking of moving in with your significant other, just to see if marriage is a good idea? Turns out living together isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The Census reports a 72 percent increase in the number of cohabiting couples since 1990. Unfortunately, research shows that cohabitation is correlated with greater likelihood of unhappiness, and domestic violence in the relationship.
Cohabiting couple report lower levels of satisfaction in the relationship than married couples. Women are more likely to be abused by a cohabiting boyfriend than a husband. Children are more likely to abused by their mothers’ boyfriends than by her husband, even if the boyfriend is their biological father. If a cohabiting couple ultimately marries, they tend to report lower levels of marital satisfaction and a higher propensity to divorce.
Recent reports and commentaries on cohabitation tend to downplay these difficulties. I suspect this is because people do not know how to make sense of the research findings. Many people imagine that living together before marriage resembles taking a car for a test drive. The “trial period” gives people a chance to discover whether they are compatible. This analogy seems so compelling that people are […]
Sandy Bober shares her personal testimony about being raped in college, her infection with an STD and her struggles and ultimate victory to regain her self-esteem, healthy relationships and a successful marriage.
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12 QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE MARRIAGE
1. Is the person your best friend or at least becoming so?
It is easy to get excited about a new person. But if you cannot say that the person you are considering marrying has become or is becoming your best friend, you need to figure out why before you decide to marry. This is probably the single most overlooked question among couples, especially young ones.
And for good reason. Many people cannot not answer this in the affirmative. But you have to answer it. Over time, friendship is the greatest bond between a couple. If the person you marry does not […]
Premarital Sex and Divorce
A new research article reaffirms previous research that the relationship between premarital sex and divorce is highly significant and robust. Compared to people with no premarital partners other than eventual spouses, those with six or more partners exhibit the highest divorce risk, followed by those with one to two partners. There is no evidence of gender differences. (Read whole research article at https://osf.io/preprints/