“Men and woman cohabitate for different reasons,” Mike McManus said in a conference call discussing the book. “Women see it as a step toward marriage. They think they can audition for this job. Men do it because they like to have the ready availability of sex and having someone share their living expenses. Women should heed their mother’s advice -- if you give away the milk, he won’t buy the cow.”
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Couples who live together not only are significantly more likely to divorce after marriage, but about 45 percent of them will break up before marriage, studies show. Cohabitation, McManus said, has a high failure rate because it’s based on selfishness.
“’If you make me feel loved, then I might marry you. If you make me happy, then I might marry you,’” McManus said. “Love and marriage is an investment, and cohabitation is a gamble. Cohabitation is conditional; marriage is based on permanence. These are radically different psychological premises. True love is selfless -- seeking to serve the other person. Cohabitation is based on selfishness -- ‘How will this relationship satisfy me?’”
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Women who cohabitate are more likely to be abused and to be depressed than women in a marriage...
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“The major underlying reason for soaring cohabitation is that these are couples in which one or both partners grew up in a divorced home or in a home where there was not a marriage,” he said. “These young couples fear marriage because they fear divorce.”
Plus if you are going to drive each other crazy, better to do it when you don't need to think about a divorce.
