FamilyLife (a conservative “family values” organization with headquarters in Little Rock) posted an article today on the pitfalls of co-habitation. While they brought up some excellent points in the flaws of  living together before marriage, they fell into some traps of their own.

First, the article states:

[A] problem with living together is what researchers call “relationship inertia.” Couples grow accustomed to living together, and they decide to get married because that seems like what they should do next. They may give in to pressure from parents, or they may feel they “owe each other” after investing so much of their lives in the relationship.

The problem with this statement is that doing things the “Christian” way doesn’t yield better results. Co-habitation is not a way to guarantee a couple’s success. But neither is getting married before you’re ready just because you want to give in to your biological urges. It is also definitely true that statistics show a slightly greater increase in divorces for cohabiting couples who later marry, but this is only true for first time marriages. Second marriages arising from cohabitation are actually less likely to end in divorce. Furthermore, this statistic is only true for the US and the UK. In Germany and France, couples who cohabit before marriage are less likely to get divorced, but you won’t hear pro-family sites quoting this! More cherry picking for sure, as this shows that perhaps it is not the system of cohabiting, but the culture we live in.

While the above made me smile, I actually laughed when reading their final paragraph:

God’s Word (Genesis 2: 18-25) not only establishes blueprints for marriage, but it also reveals a progression for building a relationship:

• Man is alone.
• He recognizes his need for a helpmate.
• God provides for this need.
• Man receives that provision.
• Both man and woman leave father and mother.
• They cleave to one another.
• They become one flesh.
• They experience intimacy and oneness

So, what’s the difference between that and cohabitation? Using Adam and Eve as the example is really quite laughable as Eve most certainly didn’t walk down the aisle in a long, white dress to be married by a minister. People argue that God married them, but that isn’t in the Bible anywhere. If God placed such a high value on ceremony, wouldn’t it be mentioned? Nowhere does it state in Genesis or in the article’s bullet point list anything about making a formal commitment. (Plus, do we really want to model our lives on Adam and Eve? They were naked after all!) The article goes on to say that the commitment came before the sexual relationship. Assuming, for a moment, that they are right and Adam and Eve did make a formal commitment (a pretty big assumption to create an entire model out of!), the only difference between this and cohabitation is that cohabiting couples often have sex before they live together. By this logic, it should be perfectly fine for engaged couples to live together–they’ve made the commitment and all they are waiting for is the piece of paper signed by a government official. Also by this logic, co-habitation is fine as long as you promise before God that you’ll always be together. Again, no real difference in the Genesis account and co-habitation. But of course, that’s not okay with these people. It’s really quite ridiculous. Keeping your virginity in no way guarantees a good marriage any more than cohabiting does. While some people regret going to far, too fast, with the wrong person before they were married, the heartbreak involved there is much less than the heartbreak later down the road when you go just far enough just fast enough with the wrong person. There are other factors to consider as well, such as attitude toward marriage in cohabiting vs. non-cohabiting couples. As in, a non-cohabiting couple may be more likely to view divorce as wrong or sinful, thus keeping them together despite unhappiness. Staying together doesn’t mean the couple works well together or experiences satisfaction in the relationship. Unstable married couples pass poor marital values onto their children just like divorced parents.

There are definitely many problems of more than one kind in our culture of marriage. I do agree with some of what the article stated about our views on co-habitation. I think that they bring up some good points, but they are wrong on their conclusions and solutions. The road to fixing these problems doesn’t include the pseudo-solution of pretending that physical intimacy doesn’t mean so much to marriage that you don’t need to know if you are sexual compatible before you jump into a lifelong commitment to a person; of pretending that ignoring that aspect before marriage will fix the problems. This is called the simple solution fallacy: believing that something simple will fix a big problem. Here, the fallacy is believing that refraining from sex will create stability in relationships. It’s just not true because there is so much more to it.

There are many reasons to wait until you are old enough and mature enough, but that doesn’t necessarily mean waiting forever. Over-valuing virginity to the point where it is essential for a good relationship is just as damaging as making sex a meaningless biological urge. Both extremes are harmful, and oscillating from one extreme to another won’t make families more stable.

Tags: abstinence, Christianity, co-habitation, Family Life, marriage, relationships, True Love Waits

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Life Today. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.