Divorce rate
Does anyone know for a fact what the actual divorce rate is if two people are living together before they get married?
Please give sources, if possible.
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MovieChat Forums > License to Wed (2007) Discussion > Divorce rate
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if you are a reasonably well-educated person with a decent income, come from an intact family and are religious, and marry after age twentyfive without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are very low indeed. (Matthew D. Bramlett and William D. Mosher, Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the United States, National Center for Health Statistics, Vital and Health Statistics, 23 (22), 2002.)
Bramlett and Mosher list improvement percentages of 30, 24, 24, 14, 14 and 13 for those factors. I am not a statistician, but if these are valid, then the actual divorce rate among methodical, deliberate, self-disciplined Americans is VERY small, on the order of single digits. I had heard 11% previously, but these numbers indicate even lower.
Similarly, if you are 16, driving with a crowd of classmates, impaired, distracted, at night, on a weekend, under stress, your chances of injury or death behind the wheel approach certainty. The rest of us can expect basically no trouble in our lifetimes.
Being religious has no bearing on whether or not you'll divorce. Atheists have a lower divorce rate.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
For couples already living together, where is the excitement of getting married anyway? Why live with someone if you don't know you want to stay with them? And if you have kids, why expose them to strangers? Since you had no real commitment before when you lived together, how do you know there is any after you are married?
shareI wrote a paper a couple of years ago that had to do with living together before marriage and from what I remember the divorce rate is higher among those that live together before marriage.
shareI cannot quote sources - much as I'd like to; but I CAN quote from the point of having conducted marriage ceremonies.
The divorce rate in the Western world is between 35 - 40, Sth Africa% at the lowest end (Australia, Sth Africa, Canada - surprisingly) and about 48 - 60% at the highest end (the US) while the United Kingdom (Britain) is somewhere between - but closer to the upper end rather than the lower.
As for couples living together and the corresponding divorce rate - the fact that it's higher is absolutely correct. Every study in every Western nation corroborates it. In fact it's what drives the rate overall.
The actual divorce rates in Australia are between 20 & 30% among couples who lived apart until after the nuptuals while it is about 45%+ among those in the "try before you buy" group - other western nations reflect the same trends.
I'm sure a search of actual figures - Births Deaths Marriages registers will give you some idea - if you Google a search with the prompts: divorce rates +cohabitation before marriage (and then alter words until you hit something relevant) will help.
A further interesting fact: second marriages among widows/widowers are far more successful than those of divorcees going for their "second time around" (or third, or fourth or .......you get the picture
Muttley
Okay, this doesn't make sense to me at all. Before watching this movie and seeing the responses to this post, I would have bet everything that couples that live together beforehand would last longer than couples who hadn't. It really doesn't make any sense!
Seriously, when you live with someone you really get to know them--their habits and everything. I would think that if you didn't live together beforehand, you could find that your now-spouse is completely insufferable to live with and be around 24/7.
Can someone PLEASE explain this to me?
Maybe I'm just really f-ing scared now because my boyfriend and I have been living together for about two years...
In the clearing stands a boxer.
Okay, this doesn't make sense to me at all. Before watching this movie and seeing the responses to this post, I would have bet everything that couples that live together beforehand would last longer than couples who hadn't. It really doesn't make any sense!
I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly, but it has something to do with higher expectations about married life. They think that their lives are going to magically change when they get married, when in fact nothing really changes. You just go on living like you did before. That's when the disappointment kicks in and many get a divorce.
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"Time you enjoy waisting is not wasted time" share
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According to a sociology course I took, whether or not living with someone before marriage increases the chance of divorce depends on attitudes concerning living together. If couples live together knowing and certain that they are going to get married, their chance of divorce does not increase. However, if they are just using it as a test run/not sure about getting married but are just trying it out, then their chances of divorce are higher.
shareI totally agree with your comment the most. Simply put, living together before marriage provides all the problems of marriage (fighting over money, over upkeep of the living quarters, etc) without the guarantee of the commitment necessary to sustain such a relationship.
If people say marriage makes things no less different between two people because it can be undone via divorce, I say that divorce is more expensive (in both time, money and emotional recuperation) to go through than just a breakup per se.
People are not cars. People change over time.
share"Just because you found out your boyfriend prefers Colgate to Crest doesn't mean you have an advantage." LOL!!!
Never has there been a truer statement.
To be honest, I think people are constantly changing and it doesn't really matter if you live together or not before marriage, if you don't stay interested in each other, constantly learning about your spouse, your marriage will fail. Maybe people who get married first undersand that better.
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
The type of people who get married without living together, go into the marraige with the traditional attitude that they will stay married no matter how bad the marriage gets.
The type of people who live together first, don't have the attitude that it is their duty to put up with a lousy marriage.
Living or not living together before the marriage doesn't determine how long the marraige will last. It just reveals a difference in attitude towards marriage.
I think that it's women's attitude that has changed the most. Sixty years ago women were taught that staying marraid was a duty. Today they are barraged with the idea that they should be happy. Men know that nobody is happy so they don't expect it.
About 15 years ago I remember reading a report on a study made about marriage. It was found that just before they got married women thought that marraige would make them happy, while men secretly dreaded getting married.
The same couples were interview again years after the wedding.
The conclusion was that women's high expectation of married life caused dissappointment amoung women, and men's low expectation of married life resulted in the fact that men were pleasantly surprised and comfortable and actually liked being married.
Too much, too soon, too long, too strong, too many,
to fix.
Huh. I would have thought that living together first would decresase your chance of getting divoriced too.
Moving in together is stressful, the start of marriage is stressful, so why combine those two stressful events together at the same time.
But the whole, "now we're married, everything is going to change" attitude is true too. I know some people who thought that when they got married, everything would have changed.
RIP Heath Ledger
"Break me off a piece of that Fancy Feast! Nailed it!"
quote:
"The type of people who get married without living together, go into the marraige with the traditional attitude that they will stay married no matter how bad the marriage gets.
The type of people who live together first, don't have the attitude that it is their duty to put up with a lousy marriage.
Living or not living together before the marriage doesn't determine how long the marraige will last. It just reveals a difference in attitude towards marriage."
couldn't have said it better myself. people are treating it as if divorce is failure. really though, it's often times just honesty. if two people grow apart after years of having been married (which would be only natural), then there's really no shame in getting divorced. some people might see shame in it anyway though (likely the same sorts of people who object to living together before marriage), and will stay married regardless. a sham marriage really shouldn't be considered a success though.
the relevant question isn't "which type of couple is more likely to get divorced, those who live together first or those who don't?", but rather "which type of couple is more likely to grow apart?". and i can only imagine that the odds are the same.
i really wouldn't take seriously any of the stats given in this movie. it was pure fluff with bad writing and lots of terribly immoral messages.
I don't know why you want this?
I mean it'it's always diffrent with other people..
Personally I think that if you already live together, and then get married, your changes on a happely ever after-ending is more likely, then when you fall in love and then get married..
Let's have an intelligent conversation here: I'll talk, and you listen
well, I'm one of those "moved in first and then get married" couples.
To me though, we didn't expect married life to somehow to be drastically different to what we do now. Sure, we feel a little different. But fact of the matter is, living together first has allowed me to take the time for us to adjust our lifestyles to each other. (Which, if we got married we would have had to do anyway)
And people need to start learning how to read statistics properly. What you guys are talking about is correlations, not cause and effect. That means stat A might cause stat B just as much as stat B might cause stat A. (Or that another stat C might be causing Stat A and B)
Just because you moved in with your boyfriend first doesn't mean you're automatically endangering your marriage life. However, you're own attitude towards relationships and how you conduct them can effect how your marriage works out.
I took a Sociology course called "Marriage & Family". The divorce rate is very high for people who cohabitate before marriage. It's actually 80%, according to my textbook. Probly higher now. Breakup rate in general is high, and they barely ever make it to marriage. It's truly not a good idea. It's been scientifically proven. Plus, I've seen very little couples who live together that actually stay together. Especially ones that are engaged.
This one website (below) states these facts about cohabitation:
~ People who lived together before marriage have a higher rate of divorce than those who did not live together.
~ People who lived together before marriage report that it is more likely they will divorce than people who did not live together.
~ People who lived together before marriage have more negative communication in their marriages than those who did not live together.
~ People who lived together before marriage have lower levels of marital satisfaction than those who did not live together.
~ Infidelity during marriage is more common among people who lived together prior to marriage than those who did not.
~ Physical aggression is more common among married individuals who lived together before marriage than those who did not.
http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001126.cfm
~^*Angel Of Rock*^~