Once again, I feel like I am living in a time warp.
The real challenge is being able to live together AFTER marriage.
Oh, well:
WHEN researchers ask cohabitors these questions, partners often have different, unspoken — even unconscious — agendas. Women are more likely to view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, while men are more likely to see it as a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment, and this gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage. One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse.
Sliding into cohabitation wouldn’t be a problem if sliding out were as easy. But it isn’t. Too often, young adults enter into what they imagine will be low-cost, low-risk living situations only to find themselves unable to get out months, even years, later. It’s like signing up for a credit card with 0 percent interest. At the end of 12 months when the interest goes up to 23 percent you feel stuck because your balance is too high to pay off. In fact, cohabitation can be exactly like that. In behavioral economics, it’s called consumer lock-in.
These "experts" and shrinks NEVER explain what "commitment" is. All they are doing is making it synonymous with marriage. If you are talking about marriage, say it. Don't use psychobabble like "commitment" to describe it in an attempt to make it a "higher" relationship than everything else simply because it is somewhat harder to get out of it than other relationships because of the legal entanglements of divorce and child support. Because you enter into a legally-sanctioned relationship, that doesn't mean you are more "committed" to making it "work" or "succeeded" than somebody who doesn't.
I always thought the term "commitment" meant putting somebody in a mental hospital.
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