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Study

Unmarried Cohabitating Couples are Less Committed Than Married Couples

C. Price

Written by: C. Price

C. Price

C. Price is part of DatingAdvice.com's content team. She writes advice articles, how-to guides, and studies — all relating to dating, relationships, love, sex, and more.

Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to ensure DatingAdvice articles have been edited for overall clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Gwinnett Daily News, and The Gainesville Sun covering lifestyle topics.

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Do you live with your partner, or are you planning on moving in together soon? You may want to take a new study into account first.

Research conducted by the Rand Corporation suggests couples who move in together may have less long-term confidence in their relationship and their overall commitment to it.

Typically, cohabitating has been seen as that next step, the natural progression of a healthy bond between two partners.

However, the study finds living together is not the marital predictor it once was.

The study relied on survey data gathered from 15,197 men and women between the ages of 18 and 26.

Participants were asked to gauge the permanency of their own relationship and their own commitment to it.

Fifty-two percent of men cohabitating with their partner said they weren’t certain their relationship was permanent. For women cohabitating with a partner, it was 39%.

“Fifty-two percent of cohabitating men said they

weren’t certain their relationship was permanent.”

That represents a significant drop compared with married couples, one that surprised the study’s authors, sociologists Michael Pollard and Kathleen M. Harris.

Among their findings were men are more likely to cohabitat in relationships without necessarily having long-term commitment.

They also found 41% of men and 26% of women said they were not “completely committed.”

The results challenge the long-held perception that moving in together is a typical process of a permanently-committed couple, at least from the couple’s perspective.

However, the number of couples choosing to move in together does not appear to be declining and a significant number of those continue to result in marriage.

Data released from the Centers for Disease Control found about 40% of first premarital cohabitations result in marriage within three years.

From: The Rand Corporation

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