Cohabitation Before Marriage

Topic 1: The practice of cohabitating before marriage is becoming increasingly common in our society, especially among the youth. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages for young people who decide to do this. Many people wonder whether or not they should live together before getting married. There are many different views when it comes to this question and some of them lie in religion, ethics or realism. Nonetheless, like everything in this life, there are two sides of a problem. Hence, the advantages and disadvantages of cohabitation will be discussed in depth as follows: The first and foremost reason is that living together before marriage is a good way for people to find out whether they would be compatible marriage partners. Knowing the partner is not the same as living with him or her. Dating just from time to time, partners are on their best behaviour, they avoid confrontation because they are eager to have someone love them and insecure in the temporary relationship. Moreover, this super nice behaviour may partly account for the radical changes in behaviour, personality and attitudes (almost always for worse) that sometimes occurs shortly after marriage. In addition, shacking up with somebody is a total different experience. People can get the full picture about who they are. If both partners are not ready yet for marriage but want a steady partner, living together offers obvious advantages. It can be real life learning experience of loving and adjusting on equal terms with another person. It is just one of many possible “tests” for a potential partner. The best predictor of good marriage is a long, relatively smooth relationship, in which wide variety of problems and successes are experienced. Living together measures the couple’s strengths and weaknesses in such areas as; communication, personality, expectations, leisure activities, conflict resolutions, financial management,