Some couples want to “test drive” their relationship before committing to marriage. Does this help or hurt?
Scientists find that cohabitation cuts down on commitment. The message of living together is, “I’d really only like to take part of you. And maybe some time later I’d like to take all of you.” No wonder so many cohabitating couples break up or fall into unhealthy patterns. The relationship defines itself by a holding back of commitment.
People, especially men, who cohabit are less committed to that relationship but also less committed to future relationships. Again, that’s not a preacher’s line or a moralizer’s line. That’s a scientific line. Cohabitating men who go on to marry are significantly less committed to the marriage itself than men who don’t cohabit.
Having lived through the n1960s as a young adult, my observation is that “shacking up,’ sex without committment desensitizes young people to the point where it is is difficult to form a lasting “committment” or that “committment” as a mental concept and as a life strategy becomes meaningless.
One sad by-product of this self-focused inability to form a lasting committment are poorly/carelessly parented children and abortions (babies ‘get in the way’ you know).
Another sad by-product are the children of relationships without “committment” who grow up without parents who provide “committment” role models.
And there are more sad products than the above two.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if [i]this[/i] instead of “safe sex” was taught in schools?
Why pay for what you can get for free?
Any recovery of marriage requires a proper — as in honest and genuine — Christian male/female anthropology. In this culture, such would require something akin to deprogramming.