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Comment by forinti | Hacker News Reader

"Marriage counselors tell us that couples frequently tie the knot without discussing the core matters that can cement or sunder their marriage: finances, children, religion."

Which is why people should live together before getting married. If it doesn't work out, it's a whole lot easier to undo than a divorce.

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Living together is no guarantee that a couple will discuss those things. The solution to the problem of not discussing things isn't to live together, it's to discuss those things.

It's not a binary question.

Living together produces all kinds of 'mundane' contact that dating doesn't, which can facilitate those possibly uncomfortable discussions.

Those discussions are certainly possible without living together, but they are far more likely to happen if people do live together.

So the answer is still to discuss those things.

Instead of living together, travel together. Few things more than travel force you to make decisions together involving money, schedules, priorities and more. It's also easier to extricate yourself during or after a holiday than from a joint living arrangement.

Taking some trips together is good.

I'd also recommend doing some projects together. Are you there type that likes to wing it, and your partner is the type to careful read the all the directions? You want to find out these sort of temperament issues before getting married.

But living together will force you to be with the other in their state that you will share 90% of your life together.

For example if they're happy not to wash the dishes for a whole week, you'll find that out and can argue about it when living together, but when travelling you might stay in a hotel where others do the dishes, or might stay for short enough period of time that you'll never find this out.

Hah! You just typed my comment. OPs is only another facet of being in a relationship and definitely a good one. But for some, traveling often is not a real option, and the majority of the relationship is spent doing mundane things like washing the dishes, or working out, or finding time to create space and learning how to settle into roles together.

That's one of those ideas that sounds great in theory, but turns out to work out badly in practice.

In fact, people who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce, not less.

Look at it this way: you move in with someone you're in love with, but haven't made a substantial commitment to. However, now you're sharing rent, utilities, etc., and are monogamous in the sense that you're not dating anyone else.

Time passes, and you find you're not compatible... but all those side commitments you've made become really hard to undo... and it looks easier to just stay together.

On the other hand, if you're willing to take the time to ensure the relationship is sound before marriage, you're more likely to stay that way.

Do you have more information about that statistic (people who live together before marriage being more likely to divorce). It sounds so counterintuitive, and I'd be really interested to learn more about how they controlled for (eg) arranged marriages, or generally the covariance between stigma of divorce and stigma against living together before marriage.

I think it's probable that they did control for these things... but it seems interesting.

Here's an article with a couple of references to research:

http://psych-your-mind.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-cohabitation...

And a more recent one, with a lot more references:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/close-encounters/201504...

The difference disappears when adjusting for age: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/sex-and-love/should-couples-l....

Ah thanks, that is a very reasonable explanation which explains the (what I previously thought was weird) shift via age.

Always interesting to see how easy it is to make faulty statistical inferences.

> There was still a slightly increased risk of divorce among cohabitors, but Kuperberg says this is explained by other factors. For instance, research shows that people who cohabit are more likely to have less education, more likely to have previously lived with another partner, and less likely to have lived with both parents as a child—all characteristics that put them at a higher risk of divorce to begin with.

Fascinating. I find the middle one pretty interesting: that "more likely to have previously lived with another partner" is correlated with divorce.

Off the top of my head I can think of a number of possible explanations: some people may never consider divorce for moral/religious reasons, some people may be better or worse than others at entering into and maintaining long term relationships, some people have learned from one or more prior experiences and are less tolerant of bad relationships[0], etc.

[0] i'd like to believe it's largely this one, but maybe that's because i've spent too much time reading relationship advice threads

> For instance, research shows that people who cohabit are more likely to have less education, more likely to have previously lived with another partner

But that's not a separate factor. If the whole point of cohabiting is to try things out and provide an easier dissolution if they work, the higher risk of cohabitors having cohabited with someone else before isn't orthogonal to the decision to cohabitate, its central to it.

So, you disagree with the more likely to divorce statement, then? Because your 'Look at it this way' points seem to be in favour of living together before marriage, suggesting it doesn't make divorce more likely.

Or; have I misunderstood?

The kinds of people that don't co-habitate before marriage could easily have different qualities.

i.e. There's one or more confounding variables.

Unless it could somehow control for all these variables, I wouldn't be too convinced.

> In fact, people who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce, not less.

In addition to what others have said, using divorce rate as a metric of relationship success is itself a flawed method of looking at the problem.

As an example, many folks consider divorce to be an immoral act. They would rather sit in an unhappy marriage for decades than get divorced. Thus, it could easily be that those willing to cohabit prior to marriage also tend to be those who do not think divorce is an immoral act, so that the statistical observation you're making here (assuming it's even true) is really just a reflection of the underlying beliefs of two different groups of people regarding the act of divorce.

The whole marriage/divorce thing is a artifact of history.

It comes out of a time when keeping the paperwork to figure out inheritance was difficult to put it mildly. So instead one put on a formal event before witnesses.

And because back then the line between government and religion was downright non-existing, the formal event was given a religious meaning.

And so we have the mess we are still dealing with today...

Marriage and religion are both prehistoric. They are cultural universals, present wherever you look.

The ubiquity of marriage across vastly disparate cultures means either that there's a strong force compelling all societies to develop it, or it's so old that we took it out of Africa with us.

> If it doesn't work out, it's a whole lot easier to undo than a divorce.

Are you sure? It seems to me the paperwork involved is a whole lot easier than the emotions involved. You aren't really saving much head/heart ache by living together first as a trial.

It takes a lot less time, effort, and emotions to simply discuss the things first. Plus you can meet a lot more people in that time, vs living with each one as a trial.

Spousal support isn't so much paperwork as a long-term standard of living cut.

I'd suggest that discussions of finances, children, religion are not really "casual relationship" topics of conversations. If you're talking about having kids you're fairly involved at that point, and a subsequent breakup is going to have some level of pain.

You might say "so is living together" but I know people who started living together just because they are already having sex so might as well combine finances on the rent and groceries and they don't really view it as a huge step.

Are you sure? It seems to me the paperwork involved is a whole lot easier than the emotions involved. You aren't really saving much head/heart ache by living together first as a trial.

Not heart ache, but you'd be saving a lot of headaches by living together before marriage. Finances these days... retirement accounts, who paid what into the house... It can be a huge mess.

> Are you sure?

Yes, probably by at least one trip to a lawyer and at least one trip to court, regardless of relative difficulty of dealing with the paperwork and the emotions.

Kind of, until you consider common law marriage, which in this country at least(canada) can be just as messy. WHere I live, if you live with someone for 6 months, you're considered common law. I've had friends lose half their apartment over a break up.

Is it possible to sign a contract that you don't want to be common law married?

Or: work at having those discussions, even if it's difficult at first and less enjoyable than other activities together.

Pray together, go to church together (yes, I realize not everyone prays and/or goes to church). Discover points of contention and find the time and will to discuss them in a manner that's constructive, even (or especially) if it takes several attempts.

Make friends and spend time with married couples in various stages of their married lives: recently married, with infants and young children, mature couples with teenagers or whose kids have flown the nest.

Be open to life, and encourage one another in the lifelong struggle to be less self-centered and more self-giving.

why not both? I know a few couples where one person often has their own place, but is never there. They keep it so they can technically say that they aren't living together with their SO. They're usually from a religious family and afraid of being judged by their relatives for 'living in sin'.

Some persons may have a sense that the faith tradition in which they were raised discourages cohabitation (e.g. considering it to be morally problematic), but: they're not sure why that's the case, they want to be with their SO, they wonder what's the best way to prepare for life together as a married couple (per the comment to which I replied originally).

So, on the one hand, I encourage such persons to learn more about why their religion (and/or the religion of their parents) teaches what it teaches[+]. And on the other, to recognize that there are good ways to prepare for life together that don't involve cohabitation.

[+] Catholic POV: http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/m...

[&] https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?rec...

see also: Cohabitation and Marriage: How Are They Related?

https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?rec...

> Which is why people should live together before getting married. If it doesn't work out, it's a whole lot easier to undo than a divorce.

In some ways, its harder, since one of the things legal marriage and divorce provides is default and orderly ways of assigning property rights and disentangling those things that have become entangled. Informal cohabitation and shared use of property without clear identification of ownership, gift status, etc., can only seem "easier" to resolve because its so difficult that its often not worth the effort to challenge whoever first effects a division of possession as the relationship collapses.

I'll advocate for: see a marriage counselor regularly! Before getting married if possible, and at least every couple of years after. Many people take more seriously the maintenance of their car than the maintenance of their marriage.

There's nothing magic about what you'll learn, and a lot seems pretty elementary. But go before you have a problem! This is one of the best things my partner and I have done. We know that if we have an issue there's someone we can talk to for help, and because we go regularly there's no stigma with going.

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