As someone who chose not to cohabit before marriage, I’d like to touch on the idea of “appearances.” I think the appearances argument is a poor one to justify not cohabiting because anyone can see a couple together at what could be considered a “questionable time” and blow everything out of proportion. Not to mention, it places the responsibility of others’ thoughts and perceptions onto the couple which is not theirs to take. An example would be going out on a date and it’s late at night. Anyone could see the couple arrive at either the boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s home and assume something.
The problems are more about issues with mindset and temptation. I hate to say it, but when you are in love with someone and you spend an extended amount of time together-- there are times where you want to get frisky
because it’s that difficult to hold back. I’m not talking about a week or a few days, but extended amount of time, such as a few months. There is nothing holding you back from indulging in that temptation except good judgment. We all know that the flesh is very strong and the drive to sate those desires is extremely strong, and even addicting. When I hear of a Christian couple who move in together before marriage, I wonder why they would put themselves through such physical torture. The Bible flat out says “flee from temptation”-- moving in together is the opposite.
There’s a lot of stats that show cohabiting couples divorcing at a higher rate than non-cohabiting couples. We need to look at these stats critically. For one, the stats of the cohabiting couples show them divorcing
sooner than non-cohabiting couples. If we were to draw a timeline comparing these groups, we would be able to see that the non-cohabiting couples end up getting divorced, but later down the line. So to say that living together before marriage
causes later divorce would be a poor use of science, but cohabiting heavily contributes to later divorce more so than not doing so.
However, many stats show that couples who cohabited have less marital satisfaction, have poorer communication skills, and are more likely to experience domestic violence than couples who did not cohabit. Communication skills are extremely important to the success of a marriage early on, and without this vital skill couples are likely to go down a drain of failure. Living together before marriage also places more pressure on the couple to stay together, even when one or both people may recognize that the relationship is failing. But when you’ve invested your time and energy into getting a place together, pooling your resources, and sexual activity it’s much more difficult to leave the relationship and get into a more healthy pattern of living. There is also lots of reputable research out there that shows cohabiting before marriage can be more harmful for women because women have a lot more to lose than men.
Also another truth about marriage-- living together does not guarantee you
anything about the character, habits, expectations, etc. of your partner. People are subject to change in the way they perceive the world, the way they act, how inhibited (or uninhibited) they choose to be around certain people, and what they expect from others. Life changes can cause drastic changes in others. I am speaking from experience and also from the experience of others. To say that living together will allow you to run a “trial” of what the other person will really be like is no different than saying you should have sex before marriage to “test drive” the other person so you know you are sexually compatible.
-- was.