Living Together Before Marriage - Does It Help Or Hurt The Relationship?

foreign [Music] together before marriage increase a couple's likelihood of divorce this is going to be a controversial topic but I am excited to dive into it because we have research as well as experience that we have seen to help people navigate how to make the best decision in their relationship in order to have the strongest marriage because that's what we care about that's what we care about today I'm joined with Dr Joe beam I am Kimberly Holmes and we are both with marriage helper exactly and because of the fact that we work with marriages maybe we should start with this why would being married be better than cohabitating in the sense of what it does for society and for people yeah well first of all let's talk about what marriage is okay so marriage is a committed Covenant relationship between two people that's my definition I don't know if that's necessary work with that yeah we can work with that and so when we look about how it's a committed Covenant relationship then in the marriage relationship you already have a preset kind of boundary of trust I trust this person because they've said yes to me and no to everyone else right and we know things come along we're not going to talk about that going into marriage that's what's happened but the other thing that happens is it actually protects you in society there's uh because you have that Covenant with each other you now are able to actually when we look at the research people are more likely to take more risks in life when they're in a committed marriage relationship so they're more likely to maybe go for a better job or ask for more money or go travel on a vacation they never have before invest their money in something they haven't before because because this relationship is providing them for their needs that they have yeah and not just for the two people who are married to each other but any children that come out we know for example we study things like attachment Theory and and when you look at attachment basically that studies how secure do I feel when I am an emotional need will you be there for me or will you not be there and if a person is married they've gone a step further saying yes I intend to be here for you and for the children If the parents are married to each other the children have less fear that one of them is going to be leaving and going someplace else and so that commitment that comes with marriage is not just good for the couple and again giving them more freedom to actually live life as you were just saying but also very powerful in the lives of the children because when people feel insecure this person who's significant to me may or may not be there for me then it actually starts affecting everything else they do in life which means they typically are not as successful in other relationships like friendships and not a successful in accomplishing their career goals and things like that because fear becomes a factor of their lives and you know I've heard a lot of people debate too in the past well why do you need the certificate why do you need to actually go through with a legal ceremony if it's just for the government right and I would argue that if there's if if there's a couple that's unwilling to go through the actual process of making it public and and doing all the things to actually intertwine their finances their lives all of those things then they're not actually as committed as they may say they are there's something holding them back I would agree that's exactly right and and if you're married and any couple I don't care who they are on some days it's not going to go well yeah and if I'm committed like through marriage and I think I might want to leave well there's a lot I've got to think about here because of all the intertwining that comes from Marriage legalities finances Etc whereas if we're just living together I can get them walk out the door you always have an easy out easier easier out that's right so let's look at this then and say well what does the research say then about people who cohabitate before they marry yeah I read Six studies a couple of months ago that all focused on specifically the commitment levels and divorce rates among cohabitating couples some of them as compared to married couples and the meta-analysis summary of these six would be that the research in the last decade has indicated less relationship dedication in cohabitating couples versus married and an increase in likelihood that couples will marry instead of breaking up because they intertwined their lives together too early however they are more likely to divorce later so there's kind of a glimpse of Hope a little in that research if someone just listens to it before ending oh cohabitating actually could lead to more couples ending up getting married can't that be a good thing isn't that a great thing well no because those couples because they moved in together and started Living like they were married prematurely they end up committing and then divorcing at higher rates later which is actually leading to way more hurt and destruction relationships and and that's not new research I mean for decades there have been studies after studies that indicate that if you live together before you get married the likelihood of your divorcing increases and why do you think that is they're making big boy and big girl decisions without making big boy and big girl commitments you're having sex together you're probably already buying things together but maybe not have joined your finances so you've been able to have your cake and eat it too and then you get married and all of the sudden it can feel like there's Shackles on me I don't have the same out that I had before and it can feel this is my my estimation uh suffocating like I kind of liked how it was before I liked having being able to have more freedom being able to do things I didn't have to do before we were married I don't want to do this anymore right and they probably made a lot of those decisions to move in together to start being sexual when they were in the throes of limerence when they were in the throes of having a fresh relationship fresh relationship their dopamine response was really high they weren't thinking about consequences and now maybe some of those things have faded away because guess what married or cohabitating you're gonna get to a point in your relationship where you wake up and you're like this isn't how I felt a year ago 10 years ago harder now we have more work that we have to do into it but when you're married guess what you're committed to making it work even when you go through your highs and your lows when you're just cohabitating it's easy to make the decision in that moment of well maybe we're just not right for each other anymore or it's time to move on it's time for something new yeah I want to feel the way that I used to feel so I'm just going to leave this relationship and pursue a new one but it's never going to feel with one person the way it feels at the beginning of most of the time at the beginning of a relationship for your whole life with someone and it's not supposed to you've done way more research on that than I am at all but see somebody's going to throw up a couple like they'll um Goldie Hawn and uh what's that guys Kurt Russell yeah yeah and you know they've been together for 152 years and they never married each other and Etc we can always find examples if you just want to find one out there and one out there and one out there but those examples don't represent the majority of the people they're extremely rare very very unique actually and so what's going to happen is this if you really want to commit your life to another person are you going to make that decision or not not just the decision whether you're going to live in the same building or same apartment or same house but a decision that wait a minute we're actually going to commit ourselves to this which means that we're going to figure out how to stay together into good times in the mediocre times in the bad times because as long as either one of you is not ready to make that decision right now then there's some hesitancy in you and the person that's not ready to make that decision and that hesitancy May at some point Cause him to leave or eventually get married but when the tough times come and they always do you start thinking well we went a long time without being married we can be not married again and and you've actually set a precedent in your lifestyle that would lead you to more quickly make a decision to leave the relationship right so what would you recommend to I'm going to ask you several of these questions okay let's start with what would you recommend to a couple who is considering moving in together my suggestion would be this there are ways to decide whether or not you want to be with this person for the rest of your life without first trying it out through a trial living together thing because if you have this trial living together thing we've talked about all that it starts changing your mindset I was once on a radio program with Dave Ramsey the finance guy who's a good guy by the way and and he was asking me why do some people want to go have a date and others marry and I explained it to him in financial terms because he's a financial guy there's a different mindset in renters and buyers and if you just want to rent you're going to be looking at it differently and that's what we're calling cohabitation and so you say well we just want to try it out to see if it's going to work you haven't really committed to it therefore you can never walk away from it saying I gave it my absolute best shot because if you say that I'll say really if you think you were going to give it your best shot why didn't you fully commit to the thing why don't you give yourself to it all together so my recommendation would be for your own benefit on the future don't do that there's another thing about that Kimberly about half of the population adult population I should say about half of the adult population of America is single okay and you look at that and go oh what's your point most of those people not all but most of those people want to be married well why aren't they now this is not putting anybody down if you want to be single great if you are single I'm not trying to say anything negative about you at all but if you are single you probably have already experienced this there are all kinds of people who are willing to use you but there's only a handful of people from which you have to choose to find somebody who will love you now if I love you one of the characteristics of Love is commitment and therefore don't be used what would you say to a couple who is engaged and so they're saying well we do want to be committed but why not just go ahead because we're gonna get married why don't we just start living together now because if you jump the gun you still have a period of time where that at least somewhere in your mind you think I can walk away from this I can leave this there it's the difference between waiting around and the shallow end of the pool and diving into the deep end well I'm in the pool we're together yeah but you can step right out whereas are you going to totally commit yourself to it or not what about a couple who's listening and they are currently living together so they've already been cohabitating and there may be some thought in it which is well we've already done it Why Stop Now we can't undo the damage should we just keep living together obviously if that's your situation it's your choice as to what you do we cannot tell you what to do but I think if I were in that situation I'd have to be thinking why what commitment does this other person have to me what commitment do I really have to them and do I want to live in the situation where I hope he'll be here tomorrow where I hope she'll be here next month or do I really need to find a situation where I can count on them being here tomorrow and next month so my recommendation would be this I could do some analysis is this the person you want to spend the rest of your life with then figure out how to commit to that and get married if this is not the person you want to spend the rest of your life with why are you wasting away your time with that person now and then for people who are saying I want to do it right maybe I haven't in the past but now I st I want to be able to have a great marriage what are the things you would recommend they do to not have to bring the baggage of having lived together in the past into possibly higher divorce rate in their marriage well basically I think it's when you have to change your mindset like I'm I'm not going to think in any more in terms of renting I'm only going to think in terms of buying don't beat yourself up for the past learn from the past but don't beat yourself up for it and so if you've been through that experience and you're saying okay is that going to affect me the rest of my life it won't if you change the way you think which then should change the way you act which is like that's what I was but it's not who I am anymore in that sense it's kind of like a religious conversion I'm not going to be the person I was before this is the person I'm going to be now and in my estimation which you may reject living with somebody is not honoring yourself because you deserve to have a person who will be with you to commit to be there and if you have children will commit to be there for them you deserve that but it's your decision so is there hope for a great marriage even after someone has lived together we know it's not the best way to start it but can there still be a great marriage in our experience and we have worked with thousands and thousands of people over the years at decades actually we've been doing this no matter what the situation when you get your mind right when you start doing the things you need to do you can make a great marriage no matter what has happened before and we've seen that with everything you can possibly imagine absolutely so the key takeaways are at marriage helper we are pro-marriage we love marriage we believe that it is the most important Earthly relationship that we can have and because of that and because of the research because we base what we do on social sciences we see that cohabitation before marriage is not what is best for your marriage it's not there's no way around it that doesn't mean there's not hope if that's been where you are but just like Dr Joe said it takes a a change of mindset which has to lead to a change in actions that you go with forward and that as well so we believe there is always hope but we also believe you need to do the right thing and doing the right thing in this situation is being married that's my opinion mine too all right well thank you so much for this great conversation Dr Joe and we will have way more conversations like this coming up so be sure that you are following us on the podcast platform you listen to share this with a friend if you're watching the video on YouTube be sure you like And subscribe to our marriage helper channel so that you will be notified when all of the new content comes out we'll see you next week good [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Marriage Helper

Views: 61,708

Keywords: marriage helper

Id: 8Rz34x0nkaU

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022