Informative Website
I was going through a book of questions today, and one of the questions reminded me of this very informative website:
Cohabiting, All About Living Together Before MarriageSome facts:
The risk of divorce after living together is 40 to 85% higher than the risk of divorce after not living together. In other words, those who live together before marriage are almost twice as likely to divorce than those who did not live together
(Bumpass & Sweet 1995; Hall & Zhao 1995; Bracher, Santow, Morgan & Russell 1993; DeMaris & Rao 1992 and Glen 1990). Those who cohabit more than once prior to marriage have much higher rates of later divorce - 26% for women and 19% for men
(Brown & Booth 1996; McManus 1993; Stets 1993; Thompson & Colella 1992).Women who cohabited are 3.3 times more likely to have a secondary sex partner after marriage than non-cohabitors
(Forste & Tanfer 1996). Cohabiting couples have an 80%+ chance that their relationship will end. (40% breakup before they marry; the other 40% divorce within 10 years of marrying.)
The U.S. Justice Department found that women are 62 times more likely to be assaulted by a live-in boyfriend than by a husband
(Colson 1995). Cohabiting women have rates of depression 3 times higher than married women
(National Institute for Mental Health). The median duration of cohabitation is 1.3 years
(Bumpass & Lu 1998; Wu 1995).The facts speak for themselves...
