Who is taking advantage of whom in premarital sex?

Cohabitation before marriage doubles the divorce rate

According to statistics, there were 500,000 cohabiting couples in the United States in 1970. Today, this number is close to 5 million. In addition, there are millions of people who have lived together before. Some men and women choose to live together in this way and never get married, but they are only a very small minority. Currently, 90% of young people in the United States are still willing to get married, and more than half of them have lived together before marriage. However, in Sweden, France and Quebec, Canada, cohabitation has begun to replace marriage.

Hazard: The trouble with instability

Studies in recent years have shown that cohabitation has a negative impact on intimate relationships. The divorce rate for people who live together before marriage is twice that of those who live together after marriage. Men and women who choose to live together have fewer traditional ideas about marriage and divorce, and do not think that marriage is sacred. This means that after a cohabiting couple gets married, if the marriage becomes pathological, they will be more likely to decide to divorce.

Some sociologists believe that there are other reasons why unmarried cohabitation is more likely to lead to divorce, such as the increased likelihood of divorce in the first 15 years of marriage when the family's annual income is less than $25,000. Schmuck said that having money means future financial stability and living in a safe environment, which are more important than cohabitation. The survey found that many cohabitors tend to have low incomes and education levels, both of which can damage relationships.

People who live together before exchanging wedding vows have poorer marital quality

Lower marital satisfaction, more arguments, poorer communication, and less fidelity. Scholars believe that the preference for cohabitation weakens commitment in intimate relationships. This means that people living together in the hope of ensuring the quality of their marriage may actually have the opposite effect. Susan Brown found that cohabiting men and women were more likely to feel depressed, which was related to their unstable financial situation. Therefore, long-term cohabitation is rare, and most people break up or get married within 5 years. She said uncertainty about the future of the relationship was an issue plaguing cohabiters.

Cohabitation also creates a serious problem: children. 40% of cohabiting couples have children, and there are approximately 3.5 million children in the United States living with two unmarried adults. These children perform worse than children of married parents in terms of mental health and academic performance, which is related to the instability of cohabiting relationships.

Cost: Women suffer more than men

Once they start living together, their relatives will encourage them to get married: "When are you going to get married?" At a friend's wedding, people like to ask cohabitors: "When is it your turn?" These social pressures can make the lives of some cohabiting men and women more complicated, so they decide to get married reluctantly, mostly out of guilt or fear rather than true love. New York psychiatrist John Jacobs said that many men, after living with a woman for several years, are undecided about whether to marry her and feel guilty towards their cohabiting girlfriend because he takes up too much of her time - if he does not marry her, she will have to return to the single "market" at an old age, and it will be more difficult to find a partner again. Women are even more afraid of this. Research evidence shows that women lack control over the course of cohabitation. She might take it for granted that they are heading for marriage, but he might just be thinking about saving on rent and enjoying the company of someone. Susan Brown, a sociologist at Bowling Green State University in the United States, found that among cohabiting men and women, if the man wants to get married, then the chances of getting married will be greater, but this is not the case if the woman wants to get married.

Some men bring the uncertainty of cohabitation into marriage, with devastating consequences

In 2004, psychologist Scott Stani conducted a telephone survey of nearly 1,000 people across the United States and found that men who lived together before marriage were on average less loyal than men who did not live together before marriage, but this was not the case for women. Therefore, he reminds women to pay attention: "Many young men say, I live with a woman, but I am still looking for my soul mate. How many women know that their cohabiting boyfriends actually have such thoughts?"

Finally, although men can also be burdened by cohabiting relationships, it is always women who bear the brunt of it, for a simple reason: they are more prone to unwanted pregnancies.

Chinese cohabitation: starting with men and women sharing a house

Experts say that many of the cohabiting groups in China are recent college graduates who have left their families at a young age to live a life of "drifting north" or "drifting south". They need to face the work pressure and uncertain environment of big cities alone. They hope to have someone to rely on emotionally to eliminate their insecurity and anxiety, as well as to satisfy their sexual needs, so they tend to find a companion. Many people start out as a man and a woman sharing a house, and over time they fall in love and end up living together.

In contrast, marriage requires many conditions, including the consent of both parents and a large amount of money, while a cohabitation relationship is much simpler. Moreover, once disharmony in life occurs, divorce involves division of property, which costs the man a lot, while cohabitation only requires one party to move out. However, when two people live together, it is inevitable that there will be clashes of values, sexual disharmony, and different living habits, which require tolerance from both sides. The tolerance level of marriage is much greater than that of cohabitation, and therefore it is more stable.

Cohabitation is more harmful to girls because many of them are unaware of the role they play in cohabitation. If they also lack knowledge of contraception, an unwanted pregnancy will increase the harm of cohabitation.