Does "Shacking Up" Spoil Marriage?

Just exchange I don'ts!

That's an idea - what IS wrong with conservatives, anyway?

Something is stuck in the muck there - what is it?

This is bullshit, just because you have sex before your married dosent mean you are more likely to get divorced, This is some kind of conservative jibba jabba

is it me or does anyone else agree that we don't need psychological studies to examine what's really going on with marriage and divorce?

People are scared of being alone, it just takes strength to wait out until you meet someone you could actually tie the knot with. You may never find that person, and that fact scares the crap out of everyone because our society puts so much emphasis on the standard course of life. I'm so sick of the copy and paste.

Being lonely sucks though, especially if you're a difficult person to get along with, but that's why depression and loneliness is good... they are periods of reflection so that maybe you can change for the better to meet your desires.

i can only hope that i find someone who i "shack up" with first, know i can and enjoy living with (and him with me) and can get married and still be in love and get along.

i think marriage ruins things because the people aren't 100% into it or others telling them that marriage is terrible and will ruin it gives getting married a stigma and people just expect things to go downhill once you're married

it's all in what you do with it and how you and your partner view marriage, i think.

YES IT DOES .....If you are getting the milk for free why buy the cow? Don't shack up until you get married. I never married any girl that i shacked up with in the past. I'm happily married now for 3 yrs. and don't think I would have been if I had shacked up before I got married......peace

I think if it is done with respect to the relationship it will work. But to move in together without a real commitment belittles the relationship.
I think the marriage most likely wasn't going to work in most of the cases it didn't.
The thing that makes the commitment last is the preparation and understanding of setting rules and limits and goals to work toward, and most that 'shack up' don't have that going in.

I personally feel that most marriages fail because one or both parties expect things to change after marriage..... Why do we live in a fairy tale dillusion that everything is going to be happy forever?.... What parts of "for better or worse" and "for richer or poorer" have been lost in todays society??

For those that last they are marrying because they truly love the person they have married, they feel no need to change the other person and understand life has its ups and downs, especially when you are with someone near 24/7.... Communication, trust, and faithfulness make for a good marriage, without all of them it will erode.....

There is a very simple solution to divorce. Don't get married. If you want marriage, then by all means tie the knot. If you are cohabitating, be up front, let your termite know, this is the relationship I'm looking for.

Well I like the idea of friends with benefits, but that's just three years of single hood talking. It does make you think though. Maybe this happens because do you really know your current boyfriend or girlfriend. Do you shakc up out of duty or love?

This is a common problem with sociological studies. It is called correlation without causation. Just because people who shack up before marriage tend to divorce more often does not mean that shacking up leads to divorce. It is possible that both things are being caused by a third factor that is not being considered. For example, it seems more likely to me that it is liberal views toward relationships that are causing both. Liberal views toward relationships lead people to shack up before they are married and it also makes them more likely to divorce if there are problems in the relationship. More conservative views toward relationships tend to lead to people waiting until marriage to move in together and also tends to lead people to believe divorce is not an option, or is at least a very distant option.

Wouldn't mind the chance to fail, so please be passing gay marriage sooner rather than later, NY.

And the study isn't really scientifically sound, for reasons already stated. Almost reads as a family-values ploy. O.o

Ugh Ive read a million articles on this and what none of them seem to take into account is the total length that the couple has been together. Often couples that "shack up" put off marriage because there is no rush as they are living together while couples that refuse to live together before marriage tend to get married more quickly (Ive seen this happen a dozen times with friends).

So couple A is together for 2 years and decides that they dont want to move in until after marriage and they get married after being together for two years. They stay together for 8 years and decide to separate.

Couple B is together for 2 years and decides to move in together. They live together for 4 years before finally tying the knot. Unfortunately 4 years after marriage they divorce.

Now on paper, Couple B was married for half the time that Couple A was...but really both couples were together the same amount of time.

The article also goes on about surveying couples to see how happy they are with their marriage and discovering that the ones that did not live together before have greater satisfaction in the relationship...well of course they do because the first few years of their marriage are just like the first few years of the other unmarried couples living together! They are still getting to know each other and their living habits.

From what Ive seen it seems like couples that dont live together before marriage rush into it because they want to live together while couples that opt to cohabit wait longer to wed. IMO this whole "study" is complete bull since it is obviously biased and only examines one side of the equation.

I was married at 18, I'm 28 now and we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary. I'm glad I did it. But I have many friends who have since married and divorced. Being married is a huge commitment and some people just don't have the self discipline and others just change. Marriage is just something people don't look at as a lifetime thing anymore because of the options. You have to be incredibly creative to have longevity and happiness...you also have to accept the fact that everyone changes...sometimes good and sometimes bad....the only rule of thumb I reccomend is when you do find someone you might want to marry, make sure they are open minded and you are too ;-)

VERY interesting comments!

Here's my deal: I'm "shacking up" with my fiancee right now. Frankly I like it. I love it. I love him. In fact we probably spend more time together than anyone else I know; we work together (on the same schedule), share a car, sleep, eat, make music (literally) and everything else you can imagine together. You might think this is some kind of puppy love, but we've been with each other for about 5 years (not an incredibly long time but fair enough!)

I don't see what will change through marriage, even though people half jokingly warn me all the time. But really, what the hell is the big deal? I'm already committed to this man, in heart, home, money, etc. We obviously have hard times and fights and all of that and I also realize that monogamy and marriage isn't for everyone.Damn it though, call me a dreamer- but I think my fiancee and I can make it work, even though no one I know has had a stable marriage and it seems to be "an institution that is in decay" (to quote B. Nowell) ... I don't think there is anything wrong with having a partner to travel through and enjoy life with!

If I understand the article correctly, it was focused primarily on the marriage that followed the decision whether to precede marriage with a period of "shacking up" or going directly from NOT living together to marriage. The walnut-sized (may be overstating the size, but not by much...) bit of gray matter between my ears tells me that it doesn't matter...once the vows are taken whatever happened before is irrelevant.

My EXPERIENCE is slightly different. I "shacked up" for two years in my early twenties and two years in my late-middle 20s. In both cases, I would have bet $1,000 six months into the shack, that we would be married at some point. As you can see, two years seemed to be my limit (reminds me of a recent interview with Greg Allman in Rolling Stone in which he says, "This is my sixth marriage. I am beginning to think it might be ME!").

When I started dating my wife, I was doing an internship with a firm in my hometown and was due back in grad school in six months. She had just left a relationship with a guy whose parents were so controlling that they had already mapped out when she and their son would have their first child, when they would purchase their first home, etc. So she was still a little freaked out and didn't want anything serious. We were both 28.

So we agreed right up front that as "single adults of a certain age" we had the maturity to simply enjoy each other's company for the Spring and Summer. Maybe we would see a few movies, a dinner or three, share some laughs and then part as friends at the end of the summer. Two months later we were engaged, and we will be celebrating our 20th anniversary next May. She is more lovely than the day I met her, while I am a broken down old...well let's not go there...

BUT (and isn't always the BUTs that get you in the end -- see the language there, montesooma? That's what we call a "pun." Yes, I know it's kind of dumb, but you get what you pay for...) I REALLY don't things would have turned out differently if I HAD married either or both of the two earlier women. I just would have gone through two painful divorces (because there IS no other kind) before meeting my current wife.

I look back on the contributors to this thread who were previously married and now advocate avoiding marriage with at least a tiny grain of salt. I have heard those same words from 1,000 divorcees over the years, and 990 of them eventually remarried (admittedly 500 of THEM divorced again...but 450 of THEM remarried yet again..). I think some of the same mechanism that allows women to gloss over the memory of pain during previous childbirths sufficiently to have additional children must work on divorces as well. I am sure I have worked on at least 300 divorces during my career, and I have stories that would literally turn your hair white..and yet an amazing percentage of the parties to the worst of the worst divorces wind up married again -- usually less than five years later...

What a coincidence...

Prenuptial Cohabiting Can Spoil Marriage

http://current.com/items/90417803_does-shacking-up-spoil-marriage.htm#90420996

This is old news...But I do believe that living with a partner before marriage has possible implications to weaken the bond. Moving in together right upon the time of marriage is looked at as an adventure being entered into by the two parties and a bonding experience, doing so before marriage gives the couple nothing more to look forward to after the contracts have been signed.

When my Mom was in her sixties, before she passed away and years after my dad was gone, we became pretty candid friends and she said one day that she would like to hook up but men her age were looking for either a maid or financial security. After a life of conservative church going, she surprised me when she said, 'if anything, I'd prefer to just shack up'.
Oh, ma...

i was talking to a 93 year old lady the other day.just
a fantastic little old lady.i told here about my daughter
getting married. her reaction was why dont they just shack up its a lot easier then they dont have to get
divorced.i thought it was great shacked with my wife for
5 years you have to try it before you buy it. and it goes both ways i would rather my daughter shack first you
cant know a person if you dont live with them.people
lack commitment these days and marriage doesnt
make commitment.

When the relationship is not quite working out the couple attempts to convince themselves that it could still work... The friends think it will work or there is a family pressure... Many couples do not follow their natural feelings and instead relay on the convenience of the situation and search for some kind of conformation, as a result the decision to move in together become the solution. In addition, our society encourages to find someone else at fault of our misfortune and discourages taking responsibility for our own actions and failures.

It's much, much harder to break up when you're married; - and since everybody breaks up, why get married?

That's stupid!

your suppose to test and check everything... if it dosn't work; move and call it a day. theres way to many people out there and so little time to do your thing.

The shack is just a test drive; practice marriage w/out the legal strings.

The reality is most humans are most comfortable with serial monogamy. The whole death do us part crap is the exception, not the rule.

Only the "shack" spoils it. The penthouse,...wellllllllllllll.........

I shacked, then married, then divorced. Should of just shacked, dammit.

It is far better to have a "shacking up" fail then to have a marriage fail. Walking away from my shack up was a piece of cake compared to the nightmares with which I've dealt with friends' divorces. For God's sake! Shack up!

relationships are supposed to be temporary... marriage is a joke institution imposed on us by a dominating 'significant other' and antiquanted social rules made to solve social problems that are no longer relevant.

:/ i Don't see why people need to get married besides the benefits.

If a relatiosnhip stays in its GF/BF stage it tends to last longer than if it moves on to the Marriage stage.

The truth is there is nothing to stop either or both parties from balking and walking on any given whim when you shack. And, being engaged and shacking is definitely no exception to that rule. Sure, you share join responsibility for everything, 50-50. At most, when it's over, you can take a commonlaw partner to court to get what is rightfully yours, so save all yours receipts and financial statements. Right now, most of my buddies and pals who are shacked up are so purely out of economic desperation in these dire recessionary times. And, most confess, in the absence of their shackmates, that the ordeal is only slightly better than the humiliation of having to return to their mommas' basements, replete with the social castration of martial law and curfews. Face it, shacking is not without the confinements of committment issues and fidelity constraints.