Marriage and Cohabitation

There is a lot to be said about marriage, and cohabitation. Marriage is such a wonderful thing, but some people believe that it is not for them, and they would rather just cohabit. Which statistics show that cohabitation has a higher rate of ending in divorce. When two people cohabit before marriage, there is a stigma of what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours. They end up living parallel lives and don’t share finances, and other things. This can cause a riff in the relationship. Even after they get married, they aren’t likely to blend their finances because they have been living a certain way and they think it is easier to just keep them separate. In class, my professor gave an example of a couple who came into his counseling office with a problem. They were married, but they previously cohabited. Everything was perfectly fine, and life was working out just great, until the woman got pregnant. That is when problems started happening. Because they didn’t share finances and had separate bank accounts, the man thought he didn’t have to help pay for the baby and the woman didn’t know how to ask him to. He thought since she was having the baby, it was her job to pay for diapers, doctor visits, all the baby bills, the clothes, everything. My professor explained that the man was so worried about her because he didn’t know how she was going to pay for everything. He didn’t once think about how he needed to help out. This is just one example of how cohabitating before marriage creates that stigma of separate finances and how they continue to live parallel lives from each other. When you don’t cohabit before marriage, it is easier to mesh lives into one when you do get married. You will be more likely to depend on each other than try to stand alone and not have anyone to lean on. I’m sure there are couples that help each other out every once in a while, but not all the time. Also, when it is time to pay the bills, there will always be a fight on who pays what and how much. Especially if it is your partners house, then you will think that it is their job to pay the rent even though you live there as well.

There are so many different factors of why people are not getting married. Some men think that they need to marry a woman who is a couple years younger than them, which limits the pool of women they are willing to date. There are also those men who believe that they need to marry a homemaker, when there are more and more women receiving college degrees and searching to be in the career field. That limits their choices drastically. No woman wants to marry a man who is just going to want her to sit at home, cook, clean, and take care of kids. Woman are needed in the work force more and more and have a lot to offer the world. Some men expect to be the breadwinner of the family or at least the primary provider of income for their family, and are less likely to marry until they feel like they have reached their goal, or responsibility.

There is such a need for intimacy in marriage. Us as human beings crave being intimate with our significant other and need to feel loved. In ancient Greece, it used to be that people were getting married for political and financial reasons instead of love, but that shifted, and people started getting married with love being the first reason. I believe that is the correct reason to get married. Yes, it is so important to be financially stable within your marriage, but love and intimacy is what I believe to be the most important part in a marriage. Without that, there is no deep connection between spouses and there needs to be. The marriage will not last if the two partners do not feel intimately connected to each other. Marriage is such a wonderful thing. I hope to one day have a successful marriage.