Timing Is Everything: Pre-Engagement Cohabitation and Increased Risk for Poor Marital Outcomes.

Abstract

Data from a longitudinal study were used to examine differences among couples that cohabited before engagement, after engagement, or not until marriage. Survey data and objectively coded couple interaction data were collected for 136 couples (272 individuals) after engagement (but before marriage) and 10 months into marriage. At both time points, the before-engagement cohabiters (59 couples) had more negative interactions, lower interpersonal commitment, lower relationship quality, and lower relationship confidence than those who did not cohabit until after engagement (28 couples) or marriage (49 couples), even after controlling for selection factors and duration of cohabitation. Our findings suggest that those who cohabit before engagement are at greater risk for poor marital outcomes than those who cohabit only after engagement or at marriage, which may have important implications for future research on cohabitation, clinical work, and social policy decisions.

Premarital cohabitation and divorce: Support for the "Trial Marriage" Theory?

“…Such "trial marriages" (Bennett, Blanc, and Bloom 1988) involve relatively low investment and are therefore easier to terminate; unsuccessful partnerships are effectively "weeded out" (Cherlin 1981;Klijzing 1992). Indeed, most young adults appear to believe that cohabitation improves the chances of a subsequent marriage (Kline et al 2004), suggesting that lay people's views about premarital cohabitation concur with this theoretical perspective.…”

“…However, duration of prior cohabitation was not found to influence subsequent marital instability by Lillard, Brien, and Waite (1995) -short cohabitations appeared to offer no advantage compared to longer cohabitations. More recently, Kline et al (2004) showed that those who are engaged at the point when the couple starts cohabiting are at much less risk of subsequent marital break-up. Hence, commitment to the relationship appears to be an important aspect influencing later partnership success (Stanley and Markman 1992).…”

American Muslim Marital Quality: A Preliminary Investigation

“…Scores ranged from 4 to 28, with higher scores representing greater confidence. Cronbach's alpha for the short form in this study was α=0.96, a higher internal reliability than studies that used the 10-item scale (Kline et al, 2004;Whitton et al, 2007).…”

Free to stay, free to leave: Insights from Poland into the meaning of cohabitation

“…This process can lessen the danger of having an unhappy marriage that eventually ends in divorce. Thus, young people view pre-marital cohabitation as a means of improving their chances in future marriage, and of "divorceproofing" their relationship (Manning and Cohen 2012;Kline et al 2004;Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001). Cohabitation is therefore frequently conceptualized as a "trial marriage" or a "testing period" before marriage (Heuveline and Timberlake 2004;Seltzer 2000;Kiernan 2004).…”