Eric shoots off some thoughts on marriage and cohabitation, citing an American Experiment Quarterly release on the benefits of marriage. I'm certain there are some feminists and ardent bachelors out there who will disagree with validity of the facts AEQ puts out, but I certainly can't disagree with them and applaud Eric for pointing them out. Rather, it's what he had to say about cohabitation that caught my eye:

I also think living together is the only sensible thing to do for people who are considering marriage

This is probably the only part that I strongly disagree with, and I only strongly disagree with the only. My friend Silk has told me that I have got to be the only person in the world who is against pre-marital cohabitation but not pre-marital sex. That's not an entirely accurate description, but my views on the two do seem to be a somewhat contradictory combination of idealism and realism to the point that I rarely preach to others to practice as I would.

I am, generally speaking against premarital cohabitation, but not on moral/ethical grounds as much as practical ones. To be sure, there are a number of practical reasons why two people would move in together before getting married. In theory, it only makes sense. You learn all about the male socks-carpet artistry and female restroom imperialism and can either choose to live with it or not. The argument then goes that couples getting married will then be better prepared for what lies ahead. Logically, it all makes perfect sense. It's the perfect try-before-you-buy argument. Unfortunately, statistics don't support this theory. The truth is that couples that live together are, in fact, more likely to divorce than those that don't live together.

However, I don't live my life according to the statistics of others. Behind every set of statistics there is a set of underlying reasons that may or may not match a study taking at face value. These statistics (often used by pro-marriage groups) suggest that if you love your boyfriend or girlfriend, you should marry rather than move in together because your chances of succeeding will then improve. That is counterintuitive, to say the least, and probably at the very least an incomplete analysis. The questions that immediately pop to my mind are "What kinds of people are more inclined to marry first? What kinds are more inclined to move in first?" The answer to the first question is, of course, marriage-minded people. The answer to the second is, by extention, less married-minded people. So then it becomes circular. Marriage-minded people will marry and likely stick through a marriage through the hard times because it's more important to their sense of identity. The others are more likely to be focused on their autonomous identity and therefore, during hard times (or boring ones), will simply jet. A marriage-minded person will be no less marriage-minded if they cohabitate first, so then the chances of a divorce would theoretically still be lower than non-marriage-minded people. So, by that logic, the cohabitation and divorce are not cause-and-effect but rather both effects of a different cause (the disposition of the participants).

So then, if you're marriage-minded, does it then make sense to go ahead and cohabitate first? Maybe, but quite.

I suspect that a big problem with many cohabitators is that they don't enter the situation with the same ends in mind. It's not a mile on the road to marriage, but rather a pit stop where many cars stall. If there isn't some sort of timeline it's easy to stay there indefinitely or until things fall apart (due to lack of mobility or more substantial problems). In case of a breakup, each of the participants then go into another relation with someone else, with whom they may or may not move in together with. The more partners they have, the more they can compare and contrast and critically evaluate their current roommate as compared to their last. Then a man is more likely to start looking for a woman who cleaned like Mary, would surprise him with midnight sex like Rhonda, cooked like Beth, and was as accomodating as Suzie. Eventually he decides Candace is enough, but during the marriage isn't as accomodating as he could be cause gosh darnit, she could be as patient as Tammy and flexible as Samantha.

This all sounds exceedingly hypothetical and, to be fair, can apply to any aspect of a relationship whether they live together or not. However, what begins to set in is the serialization of the mechanics of marriage. Except for a piece of paper and an oath to god and/or country, what is the procedural difference between cohabitation and marriage (until kids enter the picture)? There isn't terribly much. Marriage is largely symbolic, but the mechanics of it are the socks on the floor and the invasion of cosmetics on the bathroom sink. Many of the large attraction points that make a cohabitational (married or not) so much more poignant than a non-cohabitational one: waking up in the morning with your beloved by your side, opening a can of chicken soup when they are sick, knowing that they will be there when you get home from work or anticipating you being there when they do. It's not all roses of courses, but those are some of the magic moments that keep a relationship together while they adjust to the toilet seat that is up and the clothes that aren't where he's always kept them. As the joys become routinized, so does the nature of the relationship. As they become serialized, it becomes easier to start looking elsewhere.

I've never much cared for divorce statistics. They are, in my view, inherently pessimistic. A successful marriage lasts indefinately while unsuccessful ones can run in succession. If between three brothers, one marries only once, one marries twice, and the other marries five times, the marriage rate between them is 38% (if their final marriages were successful) even though one of them got it right the first time and another the second. My best friend's mother is on her fifth husband. She's a wonderful and very, very family-oriented. At the same time, people who get divorced tend to do so repititiously. If divorce rates were distributed randomly, everyone would marry twice. Instead you get people marrying once and five times. You get many in between, but once a person has divorced, it becomes easier to do it again. And again. Marriage-minded people become disillusioned and become unmarriage-minded. The same, I think, is true of cohabitation except that it's inherently easier to do that even more times because there are less messy legal issues involved. With each one, the marriage they seek (if they seek one) becomes less unique and special on an experiential level. Sometimes spiritual connections run deeper, more apparently however they do not.

There are a number of people who get it right the second time. Eric and my mother are included among them. Eric is obviously (by his post) a marriage-minded person and he and Dawn obviously share a special bond. Therefore, when he said they lived together before getting married my response was not "they shouldn't have done that" or "that means it may not last," because I recognize things do work differently for different people. Some people can rebound several times and come off from serialized cohabitation with a renewed sense of purpose. A lot, I'm interpret many of the statistics to say, apprently do not. Eric and Dawn found each other and hit the jackpot. I'm less inclined to gamble (even while it appears that I am taking a bigger one).

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Since Eric is open enough to share his experiences, I'll share a little bit of mine. After three years with my ex-girlfriend, I started thinking about our future. I started contemplating an engagement ring, asked her parents for permission to propose and covertly started making plans. Moving in together was not an option, really. It would have actually solved some problems that were actually pushing me into engagement, but for a variety of reasons I looked directly at marriage. It was only then that I could really start to see some of the problems that we had (and that I had when I was with her). The more I contemplated, the more doubtful I became. We rarely ever argued and to this day are good friends, but if we had gotten married I know it wouldn't have worked out. If we had moved in together, I wouldn't have realized it so starkly. I might have shuffled in, one step at a time, to a perilous marriage and subsequent and painful divorce. For me, marriage was a leap of faith and it was not one I was willing to take, and the wondering why lead me to some answers that an easier transition would not have revealed until it was too late.

After the end of our fourth year, we split up. She has been with a mutual friend for over a year and he is right for her in many of the ways I wasn't. It's been a slightly more rough transition for me, but I am optomistic about my future and experiencing all the things I have yet to experience.