Rutgers report: Marriages are hurt by premarital cohabitation

(U-WIRE) NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- Rutgers University's National Marriage Project released a report this week that found people considering marriage should play hard to get to shelve divorce.

According to the reports, couples who live together before marriage have a significantly higher incidence of divorce after rings are exchanged, said David Popenoe, co-director of the project, a small, privately funded research group.

“Living together before marriage - far from actually creating happier marriages, which is sometimes the intention - actually leads to a higher divorce rate,” Popenoe, a professor of sociology, said. “Every study we examined found the same thing - living together before marriage led to a higher divorce rate after marriage.”

The most groundbreaking revelation of the report was a possible explanation as to why cohabitational relationships tend to crumble after marriage, Popenoe said.

“The key finding is that living together outside of marriage tends to generate attitudes about relationships that are not helpful when you marry,” Popenoe said.

“Marriage is based heavily on a strong, long-term commitment to another person,” he said. “Cohabitation is basically the opposite of that.

“You get into a pattern that works against having a long-term, committed relationship,” co-director of the National Marriage Project Barbara Whitehead, who is not affiliated with the University, said.

The National Marriage Project's report was a comprehensive examination of all the studies released by research institutions in the past decade, Popenoe said.

The project is nonpartisan but is funded by mainly conservative, traditional family foundations. The University also contributed to the funding of the project, he said.

“I should stress that this doesn't mean that no one should cohabit,” he said. “It just sends out a warning flag that this is a trend that we should think about.”

Popenoe said more than 60 percent of people who are married live together first, while nearly 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. The project made several recommendations to couples thinking about living together before marriage.

“Consider not cohabiting before marriage,” Popenoe said. “I think that is especially good advice for women. Men and women's mating styles are, well, a little different. If you want a man to marry you, it is important to play a little hard to get.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.