“Why Buy the Cow, When You Can Get the Milk for Free?”
In today’s society cohabitation is as common as dating. In spite of what is considered ‘normal’ today, living together before marriage is not beneficial emotionally or spiritually. In this modern age, living together feels like a vital step in a relationship than a destructive and potential harmful experience which can leave both you and your relationship dissatisfied. What makes cohabitating morally wrong? What even defines cohabitation? Before deciding whether or not to move in with your partner, you should take the time to reflect on the consequences of living together.
According to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) Marriage and Family Committee cohabitation is defined as “living together in a sexual relationship without marriage” . Although couples who are living together and do not participate in acts of premarital sex are considered in good standing with the Christian faith, the emotional benefits of waiting to live together until marriage are significant and should be taken into consideration.
So, why does the Christian community encourage living together only after marriage? The greatest difficulty with cohabitation is that it undermines the grace and beauty of marriage. Living together lacks the true commitment which marriage gives to couples thus providing a false foundation for their relationship. In addition, cohabitation gives rise to sexual relations outside of the union of marriage. When people are cohabitating together, they have greater opportunity and less desire to restrain from intercourse. Sex outside of the institution of marriage is damaging personally and to relationships because of its lack of the respect for procreation and the sanctity of marriage (See post on pre-marital sex for more information). Many individuals may assume that if they are already having premarital sex, it does not matter if they decide to live together because they are already are violating Christian values by having premarital sex. However, this is untrue. Living together only further violates the institution of marriage. Living together produces all the obstacles of marriage without receiving the support that the institution of marriage provides.
Couples have numerous reasons for why they personally choose to live together before marriage. These reasons include strengthening relationships, financial implications, and marriage preparation. Some couples cohabit in an effort to test their relationship and see if they are compatible. Despite the fact that cohabitation appears to give them a chance to grow closer together and learn more about themselves, it has been shown that living together before marriage does not increase martial happiness but actually decreases it . Other couples find cohabitation necessary for financial reason and to insure economic security. While cohabitation may seem like an easy answer to financial problems, couples face many new problems and challenges they must resolve together. These additional problems add stress to a time when couples should be strengthening and developing their relationship. Another reason why couples cohabit is that they view cohabitation as an essential step in a relationship leading to marriage. Despite the intentions of those entering into cohabitation, it has been documented cohabitation does not increase the likelihood of marriage; rather those individuals who live together before marriage are found “as likely to return to singleness as enter into marriage” .
Since cohabitation is defined as living together in a sexual union, what are the consequences of having sex outside of marriage? Sex is a sign of total and mutual commitment between two partners. It requires a deep level of trust and respect. Cohabitation is a temporary arrangement where the partners can choose to leave at will; therefore, cohabitation lacks the trust necessary to support the emotional implications of sex. Sex without marriage is opposite of a sign of commitment. Without the security of a partner’s commitment, both cohabitation and sex can lead to emotional damage.
Although, I have not personally cohabited, I have closely observed one of my friends who chosen to live with her boyfriend, now ex-boyfriend. Though her experience was not a completely positive one, as indicated by their decision to separate, she has discovered important emotional consequences and aspects about cohabitation. By sharing her story, I hope to reveal some of the issues with cohabitation that she faced.
Foremost, it is important to realize my friend chose to live with her boyfriend not because she was trying to take the relationship to the next level, but she felt that cohabiting would create a safer environment for her to live. She was moving to a foreign city where rent was expensive and the only way to live in a safe area was to live with other people she knew and trusted.
At that time in her life, cohabitating was the most reasonable solution for her. Why should she spend the more money to pay for another room when she was probably going to spend all of her time in the same place anyway? Also, if she did live with other roommates, she reasoned that the roommate could have problems with having a constant visitor. Though the relationship was serious and marriage was a possibility, in retrospect she realized the cohabitation, though originally convenient, is very inconvenient in the long term because of its emotional implications.
When discussing cohabitation with her, some of issues of cohabitation she mentioned were difficulty leaving the relationship and new conflicts that arise out solely out of cohabiting. Rent and bills determined their level of commitment and made it harder to leave the relationship. New decisions and plans had to be made as how they would maintain the apartment and live together. Also cohabitation forces couples to see how they worked together as a team. If an argument arose, there was nowhere for either of them to disappear and calm down. The relationship took on a different dynamic. The emotional implications of cohabitation caused more stress and difficulties in their relationship rather than creating a fostering environment in which their relationship could grow.
Living together is not a necessary step of development in relationships before marriage. I choose to reveal my friends’ personal reasons for cohabiting because I believe that many young adults share similar reasoning for deciding to live together. While they may not be looking for marriage as an outcome of cohabitation, they are allowing cohabitation to function as a form of dating or means of getting to know each other better. Cohabitation should not be used as a form of dating because it creates more problems without the help and commitment of marriage. According to the statistics of the NCCB, seventy-six percent of couples who plan to marry and are cohabiting, only around fifty percent of these couples end up marrying .Cohabitation is not a necessary step in the journey towards marriage. Before you decide to live with someone remember, “Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?”
Heather P
Works Cited:
Scott, Karen. “Marriage Preparation and Cohabiting Report”. Perspectives on
Marriage. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
(http://foryourmarriage.org/dating-engaged/must-have-conversations/intimacy-cohabitation/)
Showing posts with label premarital sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label premarital sex. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Waiting Before "I Do"-ing It
You shouldn’t have sex until after you’re married.
Chances are that if you’re reading this blog, you’ve been told some variation of that advice at least once in your life. And statistically speaking, chances are you’ve also had premarital sex. A 2006 study by the Guttmacher Institute in New York has found that by age 20, 77% of respondents had had sex and 75% had had premarital sex. And according to a 2008 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study, “Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do.” Then there are all the statistics about physical health and sex, such as “Nineteen million new STD infections occur each year, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24.” The numbers are there and they can be frightening, but at the same time they are just numbers. Throwing a bunch of statistics at the youth of America is not the way to promote abstinence.
Catholic Church teaching clearly explains that abstinence should be practiced by unmarried individuals, but it can be intimidating and may read more like a list of “don’ts”. In my experience, this is really off-putting for young adults. I’m not here to try to convince everyone to remain abstinent, but I do think that if we all tried to better understand why the Church believes in waiting, in the end we will see that it actually makes sense.
The teachings of the Church are certainly all consistent and logical, but for some reason people still disregard them. There seems to be a gap between understanding them and explaining how they should be implemented into everyday life. First, rather than seeing sexual morality as what one can or cannot do, author Christopher West suggests seeing what it means to follow Christ’s example of selfless love and applying that to relationships. This love is grounded in totality, faith, freedom, and is meant to be forever. While there are people who probably possess the faith and freedom to love, how many couples can confidently and truthfully say they love their partner with the totality and intention of permanence that West is talking about? Boyfriends and girlfriends can split up, fiancés can break their engagement, but the vow that is taken in marriage is really the only way to accomplish all of these factors that make up real love.
Those who participate in the sacrament of marriage share in a special union that cannot be achieved by two individuals who have not shared marriage vows. West specifically points out that the sexual aspect of marriage is no different. It is apparent that a couple must put in a lot of work to get to the level of a true bond worthy of marriage, and “the fact that a couple is now married does not automatically make their sexual union what it is supposed to be.” Having premarital sex, no matter what their level of commitment, only shows that a couple does not understand the importance of the act or the true meaning of love as God intended it. Once a man and a woman can truly love each other and therefore get married, sex can act as a renewal of their wedding vows as it is supposed to be. It is also important to see that a marriage bond is sealed by the Holy Spirit and can only be broken through death. Those who are casually having sex, dating, or even engaged have not yet established this connection and therefore have not recognized the sanctity and the permanence that marriage conveys on all aspects of the lives of the two individuals, including their sexual relationship.
It is no secret that in our society sex before marriage is an accepted, if not normal, part of life. I think the challenge now is to reshape the way we think about this topic and the way the Church presents it. On the health side of the argument, delaying sex until marriage or abstinence is the only method supported by medical research that offers 100 percent protection from sexually transmitted diseases and early pregnancy. But people also need to start thinking about sex in relation to true love and commitment. Can a couple who have not committed to spend the rest of their together through marriage truly be in love and have a healthy sexual relationship? Rather than stressing what people shouldn’t do or what is wrong, the Church and society need to start educating young people about love and marriage and then allow people to make their own decisions with that information. If that is enough to change the mind of one or two individuals, I think eventually the trend will start to spread and once and for all we will see a significant decrease in premarital sex.
Written by: Kat D.
Sources used:
Finer, Lawrence B. Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954–2003. Public Health Reports.
Stein, Rob. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds." The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122801588.html
West, Christopher. "Good News about Sex and Marriage: Answers to Your Honest Questions about Catholic Teaching". Cincinnati, Ohio: Charis Servant, 2004,(65-73).
http://www.rmfc.org/RMFC-Abstinence.pdf
http://www.sadd.org/stats.htm#stds
Chances are that if you’re reading this blog, you’ve been told some variation of that advice at least once in your life. And statistically speaking, chances are you’ve also had premarital sex. A 2006 study by the Guttmacher Institute in New York has found that by age 20, 77% of respondents had had sex and 75% had had premarital sex. And according to a 2008 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study, “Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do.” Then there are all the statistics about physical health and sex, such as “Nineteen million new STD infections occur each year, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24.” The numbers are there and they can be frightening, but at the same time they are just numbers. Throwing a bunch of statistics at the youth of America is not the way to promote abstinence.
Catholic Church teaching clearly explains that abstinence should be practiced by unmarried individuals, but it can be intimidating and may read more like a list of “don’ts”. In my experience, this is really off-putting for young adults. I’m not here to try to convince everyone to remain abstinent, but I do think that if we all tried to better understand why the Church believes in waiting, in the end we will see that it actually makes sense.
The teachings of the Church are certainly all consistent and logical, but for some reason people still disregard them. There seems to be a gap between understanding them and explaining how they should be implemented into everyday life. First, rather than seeing sexual morality as what one can or cannot do, author Christopher West suggests seeing what it means to follow Christ’s example of selfless love and applying that to relationships. This love is grounded in totality, faith, freedom, and is meant to be forever. While there are people who probably possess the faith and freedom to love, how many couples can confidently and truthfully say they love their partner with the totality and intention of permanence that West is talking about? Boyfriends and girlfriends can split up, fiancés can break their engagement, but the vow that is taken in marriage is really the only way to accomplish all of these factors that make up real love.
Those who participate in the sacrament of marriage share in a special union that cannot be achieved by two individuals who have not shared marriage vows. West specifically points out that the sexual aspect of marriage is no different. It is apparent that a couple must put in a lot of work to get to the level of a true bond worthy of marriage, and “the fact that a couple is now married does not automatically make their sexual union what it is supposed to be.” Having premarital sex, no matter what their level of commitment, only shows that a couple does not understand the importance of the act or the true meaning of love as God intended it. Once a man and a woman can truly love each other and therefore get married, sex can act as a renewal of their wedding vows as it is supposed to be. It is also important to see that a marriage bond is sealed by the Holy Spirit and can only be broken through death. Those who are casually having sex, dating, or even engaged have not yet established this connection and therefore have not recognized the sanctity and the permanence that marriage conveys on all aspects of the lives of the two individuals, including their sexual relationship.
It is no secret that in our society sex before marriage is an accepted, if not normal, part of life. I think the challenge now is to reshape the way we think about this topic and the way the Church presents it. On the health side of the argument, delaying sex until marriage or abstinence is the only method supported by medical research that offers 100 percent protection from sexually transmitted diseases and early pregnancy. But people also need to start thinking about sex in relation to true love and commitment. Can a couple who have not committed to spend the rest of their together through marriage truly be in love and have a healthy sexual relationship? Rather than stressing what people shouldn’t do or what is wrong, the Church and society need to start educating young people about love and marriage and then allow people to make their own decisions with that information. If that is enough to change the mind of one or two individuals, I think eventually the trend will start to spread and once and for all we will see a significant decrease in premarital sex.
Written by: Kat D.
Sources used:
Finer, Lawrence B. Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954–2003. Public Health Reports.
Stein, Rob. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds." The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122801588.html
West, Christopher. "Good News about Sex and Marriage: Answers to Your Honest Questions about Catholic Teaching". Cincinnati, Ohio: Charis Servant, 2004,(65-73).
http://www.rmfc.org/RMFC-Abstinence.pdf
http://www.sadd.org/stats.htm#stds
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