Marriage After Living Together Will Probably Fail

The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University recently released a report that agrees with prior studies which say that divorce is more likely to occur between people who lived together before marriage than between people who did not.  It is believed that the reason is partly because the commitment is not there due to the unconventionality of cohabitation, and the couples are more open to divorce.  A 1997 study by the National Center for Health Statistics reported that “27 percent of women who lived with someone before getting married ended up divorced within five years.”

Family News From Dr. James Dobson, 9/99, p.5