Living Together More About Sharing Bills Than Planning Wedding
Study: 'Testing' Marriage Not Major Reason For Cohabitation
POSTED: Thursday, July 29, 2004
Couples looking to live together are more interested in splitting bills than in "testing" marriage, a small study of New York City residents suggests.Nearly all of the people interviewed who lived with a boyfriend or girlfriend said the major impetus was finances, convenience or housing needs."The common wisdom seems to be that people live together because they're testing the water before marriage. But we didn't have a single person in this study who said that was the reason they moved in together," said Sharon Sassler, lead researcher of the study and assistant professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. "Couples may have discussed marriage, or thought about it, but that wasn't the major reason for living together," said Sassler, whose study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.For the study, Sassler conducted interviews with 25 New York City residents -- 19 women and six men -- between the ages of 20 and 33 who lived with a boyfriend or girlfriend for at least three months.While there have been many large-scale, quantitative studies of couples who lived together, none of them focused on the reasons that prompted the decision to cohabit, Sassler said."Some couples may eventually decide to marry, but that doesn't happen until they've been together awhile," she said. "What we're finding is that people don't move in together thinking that they're preparing for marriage."Sassler split the interviewees into three groups -- those who moved in with a significant other within six months of beginning a relationship; those who waited seven months to a year before cohabitating; and those who waited a year or more before moving in together. None of the interviewees mentioned marriage as the main reason of living together.In a previous study that Sassler and colleagues published last year, they found that only about 40 percent of cohabiting couples ended up marrying within four to seven years. But the data from that study, and others like it, don't answer the question of what couples are thinking when they decide to live together. This new study helps to begin answering that question.
Previous Stories:
- February 2, 2004: Cohabitation Often Alternative To Marriage, Not Precursor
- August 4, 2003: Cohabitation Often Leads To Trouble In Paradise
- September 20, 2002: Married Couples Live In Health, Shared Sickness
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