Cyzick 1

Mindy Cyzick
Professor Nathan Hellmers
Eng. 1201- Online
Final Research Essay
16, November 2014

Is the Leading Cause of Divorce Higher for Partners Who Cohabitate Before Marriage?

While in other countries many individuals are being forced into a marriage where
they do not know the other person they are going to spend the rest of their lives with.
On the other hand in America, couples get the opportunity to choose their partner, get to
know them, and then decide if they are compatible. How does an individual really see
who they are choosing for a life partner? There are many ways individuals get to know
one another. Some get married and settle down, some choose to just date and live in
separate places, while others may choose to cohabitate before they start thinking about
wedding bells. In todays society cohabitation before marriage is becoming very popular.
However, is cohabitation before marriage the leading cause of divorce? Cohabitation
before marriage is what many Americans fear are the cause of a higher rate of divorces,
meanwhile studies have proved otherwise.
What is Cohabitation? Cohabitation according to dictionary.com means to live
together as if married, usually without legal or religious sanction. What is the big deal
about cohabitation? Nothing, is wrong with it per say, it just depends on who you ask.
Cohabitation before marriage and the statistics of the divorce rate grabbed my
attention. I wanted to learn if cohabitating before marriage with my Fianc now would
develop a higher risk rate for a divorce? I have experience in both marriage before

Cyzick 2

cohabitating, and cohabitating before marriage. In my marriage, I dated my ex-husband

for 7 months before becoming engaged to him. A year and a half had past and we were
saying our I Dos. I was the happiest person alive, or at least I thought I was. After he
had found a house and decided that was where we were moving to, I noticed some
other changes. He would not discuss matters with me. I felt left out and alone. I had no
friends of my own. His friends were my friends. My point is I did not know who he was
around other people. When we were alone and dating it was someone completely
different. Here is the information that intrigued me.
In the 1960s, there were 439,000 unmarried cohabiting couples in the U.S. By
2013, that figure has reached 8.1 million people. In the article, "Dear Mona, Does
Living Together Before Marriage Increase the Risk of Divorce? Mona Chalabi, the lead
writer for the DataLab shares some points on Cohabitation. Chalabi explores and
references many statistics on whether cohabitation will in fact cause a hire divorce rate
before marriage. In a survey that was conducted by the Center for Disease Control
showed that, 57 percent of men are still husbands 20 years after their first marriage. If
they lived with their partner before getting married, those chances fall to 49 percent.
This survey was based on three groups of individuals, cohabited and engaged,
cohabited and not engaged, and did not cohabit.
Dr. Phil is not only a TV Personality, he has also gained two of his biggest
degrees, M.A in experimental psychology and his Ph. D. in clinical psychology from the
University of North Texas. Phil, uses references from different sources that is sited
throughout the advice column on the statistics of Marriage and Divorce. He states from
the Annual Review of Sociology, that 55 percent of cohabiting couples get married

Cyzick 3

within the five years of moving in together. Forty percent of couples who live together
break up within that same time period. Also Phil revealed, A recent study on
cohabitation concluded that after five to seven years, only 21 percent of unmarried
couples were still living together. Are children involved? How do they suffer? Taken
from the Journal of Marriage and Family, on Phils site, Children of divorce have a
higher risk of divorce when they marry, and an even higher risk if the person they marry
comes from a divorced home. One study found that when the wife alone had
experienced a parental divorce, her odds of divorce increased to 59 percent. When both
spouses experienced parental divorce, the odds of divorce nearly tripled to 189
percent.
Living together before marriage may not be the life someone wants to live;
however, it may be the life they seem comfortable in. Howstuffworks.com, the website
Molly Edmunds writes for, Edmunds shared a study that was conducted by the
University of Denver in 2009, Couples who lived together before marriage often thought
about divorce compared to individuals who were married and living together.
Analyses showed that same-sex cohabitation often ended in dissolution than
different-sex cohabitation and martial unions. This is a publication that appeared in
Volume 74 of The stability of Same-Sex Cohabitation, Different-Sex Cohabitation and
Marriage, by Charles Q. Lau. On March 10, 2014 Stephanie Pappas revealed her
findings on Foxnews.com that Cohabitation Doesnt Cause Divorce after All. Pappas
has relied on studies conducted by Arielle Kuperberg, Sociologist from the University of
North Carolina to prove some of her points. It was stated that the average age of people
seeking a life partner is at 23 years of age. Although moving in together are not always

Cyzick 4

the grounds for a divorce, it more of the couple trying to speed up the process of
marriage before they truly know if that is the partner they are destined to be with.
Foxnews.com also took a study conducted by Kuperberg. Kuperberg decided to
try something new: Kuperberg compared the relationships using the date of first moving
in together. That date is when a couple really takes on the role of marriage, regardless
of whether they have a legal certificate or not. The research is complicated by the fact
that the people who cohabite and the people who do not are ever-changing. The first
group of cohabiters in the 1960s were more highly educated than their peers and likely
more conflict-prone, given their willingness to flout social convention, Kuperberg said.
Today, the highest-educated people are the least likely to cohabit, likely because they
face fewer financial pressures than the less-educated.

The above study was taken from USA today. Showing that living together before
marriage does not make a big difference. Therefore, cohabitation before marriage may
not be for everyone. On the other hand, living with someone before marriage gives a
perspective on how that person lives compared to the way someone else might live.

Cyzick 5

Those are key facts to know about a person before a lifelong commitment is set into
play.
Sharon Sassler, a sociologist at Cornell University wrote. "Knowing more about
how relationships are formed and how they develop such as how long couples are
romantically involved before moving in together may help us make better predictions
about the chances that a relationship will dissolve, whether before the couple marries or
after they do so," Sassler interviewed over 150 couples for a book called, 5 Facts About
Cohabitating Couples. Which was conducted in the United States. Sassler also found
that most cohabiters with college degrees move in together after dating for many
months. More than half were couples for more than a year, with an average of 14
months dating before cohabiting. More than half of the cohabiters without college
degrees move in together after the six months of dating.
The experience of living together before marriage is different for different
people, said Richard Settersten Jr., an Oregon State University professor of human
development and family science. Some young people put off marriage because they're
pursuing a college education and starting a career. For them, cohabitation is a trial
marriage, usually without kids, that often ends in marriage," Settersten said. Others in
many cases, people not on a college track move from one living-together relationship
to another, some of them producing children, he said. Commitment has made a
difference. In interviews with some women who have been married 20 years or more
after living with their spouse first, firm belief in a future together was a common theme.

Cyzick 6

Working Bibliography
Chalabi, Mona. "Dear Mona, Does Living Together Before Marriage Increase The Risk Of Divorce?"
DataLab. ESPN Internet Ventures, 13 Oct. 2014. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
"Dr. Phil.com - Advice - Marriage and Divorce: The Statistics." Dr. Phil.com - Advice - Marriage and
Divorce: The Statistics. Peteski Productions, LLC, 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
<http://drphil.com/articles/article/351>.
Edmonds, Molly. "Does Living Together before Marriage Lead to Divorce? - HowStuffWorks."
HowStuffWorks. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. <http://health.howstuffworks.com/relationships/advice/livingtogether-before-marriage.htm>.
Kuperberg, Arielle' "Reassessing Differences in Work and Income in Cohabitation and Marriage."
Journal of Marriage & Family 74.4 (2012): P. 688-.707. Print.
Lau, Charles Q. "The Stability of Same-Sex Cohabitation, Different-Sex Cohabitation, and Marriage."
Journal of Marriage & Family 74.5 (2012): P.973-988. Print.
Pappas, Stephanie. "Cohabitation Doesn't Cause Divorce after All." Fox News. FOX News Network,
10 Mar. 2014. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. <http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/03/10/cohabitation-doesntcause-divorce-after-all/>.
Press, the Associated. "Cohabitation before Marriage? It's No Greater Divorce Risk." The Christian
Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor, 22 Mar. 2012. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
<http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2012/0322/Cohabitation-before-marriage-It-s-nogreater-divorce-risk>.