Skewed Numbers

It wasn't until I moved in with my boyfriend that I discovered the surprising rates of divorce for couples who live together before marriage. There seems to be no end to the warnings and statistics, which are taunting me with the thought my boyfriend and I are doomed before we even begin.

Four months after my high school sweetheart broke my heart, I asked my current boyfriend to go out. We were both in the same place in life. We grew up in similar households, attended the same college, and even worked together. A month later we moved 2000 miles from our comfy nests and moved in together.

It was difficult because I struggled to trust myself to love after my first heartbreak. Eventually I enjoyed being with someone who shared the same values. We've both enjoyed the challenges of saving, earning, and spending for two, and I've learned to work together we have to adopt one another's goals as our own.

I admit our relationship may have started a little fast and maybe on the wrong foot, but it has grown into a real partnership. I'm a tender but mature 19, and my boyfriend is 21. Marriage is quite a bit down the road for me, but I would love someday for our relationship to blossom into a long-lasting marriage. How can cohabitating couples beat the odds?

Alicia

Alicia, many years ago there was a man who owned a chain of hotels. Each day he wanted to know how his hotels were doing, but gathering information from each hotel was burdensome in those pre-computer days. One day, while looking at financial data, he realized the amount of potatoes served in the restaurant of one particular hotel was an almost unfailing guide to the gross revenue of the entire chain.

So each morning he had the manager of that hotel phone him with the amount of potatoes served from their kitchen the previous day. That is one example of the use of statistics. Here's another. Imagine a person who compares the increase in ministers' salaries with the increase in liquor consumption, then argues there is no point paying pastors more because they will only spend it on drink.

The statistics on cohabitation include couples who have little in common. Some couples live together as an alternative to loneliness, others as a way to share expenses. Some have set a date and live together only after formal engagement, while others come from dysfunctional families and will have a difficult time forming a stable relationship with anyone.

There are three things to remember about statistics. First, just because two things are associated with each other, it does not mean there is a causal connection. Second, general trends do not predict the results of any individual case. Third, statistical categories include subgroups which have little in common with each other.

There is a huge difference between the couple deeply in love, and a couple where the woman uses cohabitation as a way to ease a man into marriage, while the man sees it as no more than an avenue for sex, housekeeping, and laundry.

When Wayne was young there was a teenage ballad called "Tell Laura I Love Her." It told the story of a young man who enters a stock car race to win enough money so he and his girlfriend can marry. He is killed in a wreck, and his dying words are, of course, tell Laura I love her.

The lyrics are so mawkish and sentimental they make your skin crawl. But there is one line in the song which is memorable. "He wanted to give her everything." That is how people deeply in love feel about each other, and two people deeply in love will always beat the odds. The depth of their connection is the key.

Before you marry, make sure it's right. It has to be perfect love.

Tamara

Wayne & Tamara are the authors of Cheating in a Nutshell and The Young Woman’s Guide to Older Men—available from Amazon, iTunes, and booksellers everywhere.