Fact #1 - The Houston Chronicle reports that couples who live together have an 80 percent greater chance of divorce than those who don't.4 Playing house, which is all living together really is, is like playing Russians roulette with your relationship. Except, instead of putting one bullet in the six chambers of the revolver, you're putting four bullets in. Spin the revolver, take your chances ... and experience relational suicide.
Fact #2 - A Washington State researcher discovered that women who cohabitate are twice as likely to experience domestic violence than married women. The National Center for Mental Health revealed that cohabitating women have four times, four times, higher incidence of depression than married women, two times greater than unmarried women.5
Fact #3 - In one survey of over one hundred couples who lived together, 71 percent of the women said they would not live-in again.6
When are we going to wake up and realize "it isn't working"? Not only does living together not prepare you for marriage, it actually works against you, eroding the foundation of trust and respect.
If you are living together right now, let me give you a word of counsel: Stop having sex and move out. If you're serious about getting married, if you're serious about having a successful relationship, the best move you can make is to move out.
Living together and having sex without the lifelong commitment of marriage covers a multitude of flaws. It clouds the issue. How can you tell if the person has the essential character qualities needed to make a relationship work when you're having sex or auditioning for the part of the bride? Why subject yourself to usury, insecurity, depression, and possible domestic violence?
The solution is so simple: move out. Move into a different residence if you're serious about getting married to the person you are living with. Whenever I counsel a couple who is about to get married and they are living together, I always explain to them why they must move out before the wedding. Their usual response is, "There is no way we can do that. She has no place to live, we can't get a lease in this short of notice, yada, yada, yada...." It's at that time I suggest that they can move into my house until the wedding. That shuts them up quickly and allows us to get down to the real reason they are doing it.
If you are engaged and living in the same residence, then why in the world do you want to have a church wedding? Why do you want to wear a white wedding dress? Do you want the minister to ask God to bless a union and commitment that has already taken place?
Do yourself, and your partner, a favor and move out. If you really want to test your compatibility, then get some pre-engagement counseling. You don't have to become another statistic. You don't have to become another crash dummy on an ill-fated Test Drive.
An NBC News poll discovered that 66 percent of young people ages 18 to 32 believe that you should first live together before you get married.1 The number of couples living together has increased from 523,000 in 1970 to where today there are some 3.7 million couples who are playing house, shacking up out of wedlock. Forty-five percent of all women in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 34 have at one time lived with someone.2
Some would argue that it's strictly a matter of convenience (and certainly no matter of morals) if friends of the opposite sex who have no romantic love interest, no sexual involvement but simply choose to share the shack and the rent. This is becoming a more common scenario among singles but still remains a myth that living together in a platonic relationship is a perfectly acceptable arrangement. A seemingly harmless situation? No major commandments broken? This is a dangerous situation for many reasons.
The most obvious problem is that you can not control what people perceive and believe your situation to be. You may know that you and your platonic roomie are strictly friends but who else thinks otherwise. Neighbors and friends or mere acquaintances who see you come and go may have their own ideas about what goes on behind closed doors. As Christians we are called to live above reproach to avoid the appearance of evil and to not cause our brothers and sisters to stumble. Are you willing to risk your ability to effectively witness to someone just because you chose a roomate of the opposite sex.
A very real concern that you may believe to be impossible is a dangerous position that you put yourself in living together with someone of the opposite sex. Living under the same roof you are certain to share many of life's trials that are inevitable. Some day may come when one of you feels very rejected and alone and sharing turns to comfort and comfort turns to love and late one night your platonic relationship may graduate although you never planned it that way. Not that it may progress any further, maybe it is just a late night kiss, maybe just the comfort of having someone to hold you. But your platonic relationship is no longer platonic.
A very practical issue is that your expectations of one another may be a real road hazard. Men and women differ in their living styles and while you think you know a person very well, to know someone is very different than to live with someone. Maybe you both go into the deal with platonic expectations. But if you are good friends your concern for the other's well being in their dating life may appear, or actually grow to be bitter or unapproving. Maybe you care for them and think they are dating below their worth. Perhaps you are bitter that they have a date three nights a week and you sit home with the cat watching Barbara Streisand in The Way We Were, three nights a week.
If you remember the old television show Three's Company, the so-called platonic living arrangement between Jack, Chrissy and Janet was no secret to us. Every show was another episode of the myths they were trying to deny. Yes, Jack was really very attracted to both Janet and Chrissy. Yes, Janet was always lonely and lovesick to see all the other women Jack went out with. And certainly the landlord-neighbors the Ropers always suspected Jack had something going on behind closed doors.
As a Christian, your ability to witness to non-Christians is greatly damaged. As much as we dislike this fact, people will judge our lifestyles more closely when we call ourselves Christians. Friends, neighbors, coworkers and family members often jump to conclusions when a man and woman lives together. They often assume more than just a convenient friendship is happening behind closed doors.
Secondly, this type of cohabitation can put a strain on each persons dating relationships. Not only does the roommate often become jealous of time spent with others, but the person you are dating has to learn to understand the dynamics of the relationship of the person you are just living with.
Often times, a man and woman will move in together as roommates who have been great friends in the past. Two things often develop from this mistake. One, they either can not stand the living style of the other and the friendship is doomed, or they wind up with romantic feelings for each other. In the first situation, it becomes evident that the only way a man and a woman can stand to live under the same roof is through love and confines of the marriage covenant. In the second situation, you are trapped. What began as an "innocent" venture, now has you living with someone whom you have romantic feelings for. Which leads us back to the problem in the main article.
My advice, leave the male/female roommate situation until marriage. There is no need in learning to live with the opposite sex's bad habits until it is the person you love and are committed to for life.
NOTES
1. Spin Magazie/NBC News Pole, 1996
2. Roseane Rosen, The Living Together Trap (Far Hills, N.J.:New Horizon Press, 1993),2.
3. Harold Ivan Smith, Singles Ask (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1998), 145
4. BarbaraVobeja, "Number of Couples 'Cohabitating" Soaring as Mores Relax," Houston Chronicle (5 December 1996), 13 A
5. William R. Mattox Jr., "Nag, Nag, Nag,"Focus on the Family Magazine, 1996
6. Rosen, The Living Together Trap,82