Cohabitation can ruin relationships
Last week’s advice column recommended that a community female and her boyfriend cohabitate.
This is not good advice for anyone who would like to be in a fruitful and lasting relationship. We can define cohabitation as a male and female living together outside of marriage.
This begs the question: why not be married?
The answer, as suggested by the columnist, is that it would be a trial period for marriage.
What is to be tested?
What conditions would restrict you from loving that person?
If you cannot commit, it is obvious that you have reservations about being married with that person.
That’s okay.
Focus on that and resolve it with your partner.
Odds are, cohabitation will not resolve the division between you two and it will only widen and deepen that division.
True love is unconditional.
Cohabitation teaches how to live, not love, with conditions.
Roommates and pets are kicked out because of not meeting exceptions or conditions.
That is cohabitation.
When you are unhappy in a cohabitation relationship, you will be more likely to blame your partner for your unhappiness.
The feeling compels cohabitation.
True love is patient.
Visit docshare.com for a fine summary of cohabitation statistics with appropriate citations that will lead you to the research behind the conclusions.
This is a discussion worth having. It is worth having for the sake of your relationship.
Cohabitation exposes the divide between partners in painful ways. It is not the way to love.
There will be unreconciled feelings of hurt, loss and spite.
Surely, it would be better if we did not kid ourselves into thinking that we can test our relationships like a 90-day “risk-free” product trial.
Because the risk is the loss of love.
Patrick Haggerty Mount Pleasant resident
