A new survey claims couples who live together before tying the knot are are more likely to get divorced than their counterparts who don’t move in together until marriage, a new study suggests.
Upwards of 70 percent of Western couples are cohabiting these days before marrying, the researchers estimate.
The study, published in the by the Journal of Family Psychology, indicates that such move-ins might not be wise.
And it’s not because you start to get on one another’s nerves. Rather, the researchers figure the shared abode could lead to marriage all the wrong reasons.
“We think that some couples who move in together without a clear commitment to marriage may wind up sliding into marriage partly because they are already cohabiting,” said lead researcher Galena Rhoades of the University of Denver.
Couples might also might be forced to marry because of a joint lease or shared ownership of a property.
Participants were asked “Have you or your spouse ever seriously suggested the idea of divorce?”
Overall our of over 1,000 people surveyed, about 40 percent of participants reported they didn’t live together before marriage, 43 percent did so before engagement, and about 16 percent cohabited only after getting engaged.
Those who moved in with a mate before engagement or marriage reported significantly lower quality marriages and a greater potential for split ups than other couples.
For instance, about 19 percent of those who cohabited before getting engaged had ever suggested divorce compared with just 12 percent of those who only moved in together after getting engaged and 10 percent of participants who did not cohabit prior to the wedding bells.
“We think there might be a subset of people who live together before they got engaged who might have decided to get married really based on other things in their relationship, because they were already living together and less because they really wanted and had decided they wanted a future together.”
Those who listed “testing” as the primary move-in reason were more likely than others to score high on measures of negative communication, such as, “My partner criticizes or belittles my opinions, feelings, or desires.”
Such testers also had lower confidence in the quality and stability of their relationships.
Overall, those who want to test the commitment might want to think again, according to the study.
“Cohabiting to test a relationship turns out to be associated with the most problems in relationships,” Rhoades said. “Perhaps if a person is feeling a need to test the relationship, he or she already knows some important information about how a relationship may go over time.”