Trial Marriages

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After doing my blog on divorces within marriage, I begin to think about “trial marriages,” that is couples that live together before marriage. A study done by the Rocky Mountain Family Council found that couples that live together out of wedlock have a higher chance of divorcing after marriage or cheating on each other. “In a recent study published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family researchers analyzed reported sexual relationships of 1,235 women, ages 20 to 37, and found that it was 3.3 times more likely that a woman who had cohabited before marriage would have a secondary sex partner after marriage. The study also found that married women were five times less likely to have a secondary sex partner than cohabiting women and that cohabiting relationships appear to be more similar to dating relationships than to marriage." A recent study by John Hopkins University found that couples that choose to live together before marriage actually weakened their marriage. They found that most marriages end within two years. “In a recent study published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family researchers analyzed reported sexual relationships of 1,235 women, ages 20 to 37, and found that it was 3.3 times more likely that a woman who had cohabited before marriage would have a secondary sex partner after marriage. The study also found that married women were five times less likely to have a secondary sex partner than cohabiting women and that cohabiting relationships appear to be more similar to dating relationships than to marriage." They found that couples took marriage less seriously. A recent study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships showed that couples living together before marriage were more likely to have promiscuity than couples that begin living together after marriage. This study also showed that most of the men were not employed or were employed in low paying jobs, and that the women were employed full time. The wives that cohabited before marriage took on more “masculine” roles than wives that had not cohabited before marriage. I think that this study may have been biased. I believe that there are other factors that would be the cause of the rise in divorce rates among marriages rather than living together. For example, in the study done by the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships it showed that couples that lived together before marriage showed reversed roles. The increase in women working full-time could also be due to other factors such as women beginning to return to the work force that was not considered. Also, the increase in divorce rates could be due to the ease of getting divorces now, as opposed to years ago. Also, people are waiting longer to get married and are moving further away from traditional marriages.