THINGS THAT MAKE YOU
By Omar & Christie
Should All Dating Journeys Lead to Marriage?
W
ay back when, most relationships led to the hope and expectation that marriage was the ultimate goal. Farmers needed children to pick the cotton, shuck the corn, prime the tobacco and cut the hay. They needed a wife to help make those farmhands. Other couples historically may have tied the knot and started families right away because in their culture, that was the traditional approach to happiness. All roads led to a legal partnership in which the man and woman pledged love and obedience “until death do us part.” Today, millions of people take a turn or two down the marriage road, not usually with farmhands in mind, but with the 50-50 chance that they might find life-long contentment. The half that gets divorced may think twice about another journey down the aisle, realizing that a marriage contract is not an airtight promise for happiness. As a result of the increasing divorce rate and changing attitudes toward cohabitation, many couples may decide to live together before marriage (about 60-70% of adult couples today) and take their relationship on a live-together test-run. They view their relationship in a rent-to-own mode versus a cash purchase (with no receipt). Moving out and starting over is always an option for some of these couples, especially if the toilet seat is always up or if the wet towels always land on the floor, among other annoyances. And while cohabitation used to result in higher divorce rates, studies now show living together before marriage results in the same divorce rate as those couples who do not move in together before the ink is dry on the marriage contract. For many of the couples who decide to live together, the discovery of little day-to-day annoyances are only that – habits that can either be overlooked, ignored, or tolerated because love conquers all. In other relationships, these small habits become deal breakers. Couples discover that they really
didn’t know their partner as well as they thought. Addictions are harder to hide when you live together. For example, you might find out that your partner needs a drink to get through the day more often than you had observed when you were merely dating. Sometimes moving in together is a promise that marriage will follow in a few months or maybe even within the next year, with the majority of cohabitating couples committed to a future together. Then again, 6 months pass and the marriage promise meets a roadblock, with the marriage contract on the other side of the road and someone moving on because of broken promises. So are couples who commit to each other without a marriage contract just as happy as or even happier than couples who enter into marriage? Most readers probably know couples who live together minus the contract, and who appear to be very happy. Why is that? One explanation centers around the fact that many of these happy couples have survived one, two,
three or even more painful divorces or breakups, and are trying to avoid making the “same mistakes” over again. They recognize what habits they can live with and what behaviors they consider deal breakers. They know what works, or at least what they think works, and are likely to be older and more worldly-wise than younger couples living together for the first time. Then there are couples who enjoy long-term dating, but don’t live together, and also appear very happy. Some people just need their own space. Some need space to raise children still living at home. Others may be caring for older parents who require daily attention. Couples may have different lifestyles that present cohabitation issues, such as conflicting sleep schedules, different attitudes towards pets, or the need for room for large family visits during holidays. Some of you may be thinking that if these couples really loved each other, then they could work around these lifestyle issues, but changing someone’s behaviors or values is a road littered with potholes that frequently leads to a breakup. Each couple has to decide the best road to happiness for them. Many people are happily married, many couples who live together are happy, and many couples who remain together without a contract or shared address are also happy. The takehome message is to recognize that there are more roads to happiness than when your parents were dating. Which route you plug into your GPS is up to you. Bertrand Russell said in The Conquest of Happiness that, “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” Be brave. Take a chance. Bon voyage!