Tag Archives: cohabitation

Let’s look at this cohabitation thing again — You’re married, right?

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I heard a common story from a new friend last night. As far as she knew about church people, “living together” was so frowned upon that she and her boyfriend suspected they would be ostracized if they got involved in Circle of Hope.

I said to her, “You guys are married, though, right?” She said, “Yes.” (This is not a transcript of our conversation, but that was the gist).  What stood in the way of the official ceremony was money. They did not have wealthy or supportive parents; they did not have the money for a big party, money for the ring, the dress, etc.; plus, she wanted to feel more established financially before they made a commitment. This story is so common it seems to represent a new rite of passage into adulthood.

Care about people where they are

The “principle Christians” sometimes criticize Circle of Hope, as a whole, for our acceptance of people who are “cohabiting,” like my friend is. The implication is that we should consider these people taboo until they get themselves corrected. Instead, we apparently just let people have sex, willy nilly, and encourage people to sin. (Really, that’s gotten back through the gossip chain).

But, in truth, we’ve come up with an alternative. We care about people the way we meet them. So we usually get to know people who are cohabiting and ask them if they are married. Most of the time, if they aren’t just sharing an address, they say “Yes.”

I think people need to make a public covenant and have the benefit of a church-sanctioned marriage for any number of reasons. I’m not sure they need the government involved in their marriage at all – if they see that as an advantage, fine. But if they have taken one another home, and we all know they are a “they,” I don’t feel out of line by acknowledging their marriage.

Cohabitation facts

Like I noted in a former post, cohabitation has increased dramatically in recent decades in the United States. It climbed from 500,000 couples in 1970 to nearly 6.8 million couples in 2009. It looks like most young adults today will, at some point, live with a sexual partner outside of marriage. The stats say that a majority of couples now cohabit before they marry. Often their parents encourage these “trial runs.” It looks like a generation with so many divorced parents is deciding not to get divorced by never getting married.  It is a new era with a host of new issues to sort out.

Many Christians think the 21st century increase in cohabitation without legal, covenantal or public recognition devalues marriage and undermines its goals. If recent research is a true indicator, Americans, as a whole, have not fully decided whether they agree or not.  Sex is easier now. The capacity to marry for love (as well as be unfaithful) provided by birth control shook old foundations and new foundations are being built in response. Divorce is easier. In 1900, two-thirds of marriages ended with the death of a partner, particularly when women died during childbirth. By 1974, divorce surpassed death as the most common way to terminate a marriage. By the end of the 20th century, divorce was considered both a common and culturally acceptable way to terminate marriage. It is easier to be “abnormal” now. Since the 1960’s, cohabitation, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock childbearing have become increasingly common and culturally acceptable.

Although the contours of marriage have changed over time, the definition has not.  Americans still overwhelmingly define marriage as being sexually exclusive and lifelong, even though many break their vows. They are pulled between opposites and are still sorting things out. They want the connection of marriage, but they have slowly become accustomed to being individualistic and consumeristic. They want the security and safety of marriage, but they still want all their choices unencumbered. They want to marry or exclusively cohabit, but then have extramarital sex or divorce, even though they no longer have to get married. “Freedom” is the slogan, but they seem to still be pondering with the Apostle Paul: “Yes, everything is permissible. But not everything builds up!” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

What is the best way to marry?

Even though there are very few negative social consequences for breaking former sexual codes by not being married, Americans overwhelmingly choose to marry, eventually. Even same-sex couples want to marry and thirteen states will allow them to do it legally. I don’t think I can answer all the reasons why people mate the way they do, but I do want to respond to what is happening with grace and discernment.

It is an interesting era. I am watching it as something of an outsider, since I and my Anabaptist tradition do not tune our faith to the varying pitches of government music or the society’s dance. As far as I am concerned, state and federal government definitions of marriage do not necessarily serve to increase the integrity of marriage as an expression of faith. I don’t think legislation on sex, finances, or even procreation will protect marriage enough to make it work. It takes commitment. I don’t think couples need an excessive wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment. But I do think they need the sanction and participation of a living community in Christ to make a long-lasting covenant that is centered in the covenant we keep with the Lord.

As a church, we have not fully answered all the questions (including the ones that come through the gossip chain): Do believers need a wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment? Does the covenant need to be made in traditional ways — especially now that many of those mostly-extra-biblical ways are becoming discredited?

A new look at the spectrum of how people, in general, are changing marriage from contract to cohabitation might come up with some advantageous ways to adapt:

  • Maybe we could free some people from the ceremony trap — some people don’t marry because they are saving for the bling and the spectacle! Just stand up during the Love Feast; we’ll marry you and you can have a big party on your fifth anniversary.
  • Maybe we could honor people by acknowledging their cohabitation before they enter their covenant publically. That would be something like the way we embrace people as members of the church community before they make a covenant with the body.
  • Maybe we should more clearly express our understanding that people who have sex are, essentially, married, albeit poorly and dangerously. But then, some of them are better married than some people who live together with a publically affirmed covenant.
  • Maybe we should stop keeping secrets. Why should someone feel like they are secretly married just because they have not jumped through all the sometimes-arbitrary hoops? Why shouldn’t we help people have healthy, godly relationships with the people they are living with?
  • Maybe we can help people who are getting married to relax about it and not try to meet the demands of the wedding industry. That might encourage others to celebrate the relationship they have made with more freedom and less stress.

Here are some more blog posts and pages about marriage:

The Marriage Story (August 2012) http://rodwhitesblog.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/the-marriage-story/

Keep Talking about How Your Lover Is Doing with Jesus (April 2012)

Monica and the new marriage (June 2011)

Go Ahead and Marry (2000)

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Sorting Out Cohabitation and Marriage

Building community,

Cohabitation has increased dramatically in recent decades in the United States (and in Circle of Hope, too!). In the U.S. it climbed from 500,000 couples in 1970 to nearly 6.8 million couples in 2009. Most young adults today will, at some point, live with a romantic partner outside of marriage, and the majority of couples now cohabit before they marry. It looks like a generation with so many divorced parents is deciding not to get divorced by never getting married. We should consider this a new stage of development in marriage. It is a new era with a host of new issues to sort out.

Many Christians think the 21st century increase in cohabitation without legal, covenantal or public recognition devalues marriage and undermines its goals. If recent research is a true indicator, Americans, as a whole, have not fully decided whether they agree or not.  Since 1960, cohabitation, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock childbearing have become increasingly common and culturally acceptable. But even though there are very few negative social consequences for practicing these things without being married, Americans overwhelmingly choose to marry, eventually. I don’t think I can answer all the reasons why they do this. But I do want to respond to the reality of it.

In the past most people married for economic, political and social reasons. Today they marry for love. Postmodern people seem to think relationships save them. The love songs say it. The script of New Girl taught it in a recent sitcom episode. Marriage was once a sacrament, then it became a contract, and now it is an arrangement based on mutual attraction. Once religion provided the sacrament, then the law enforced the contract, and now personal preferences define the arrangement. The cultural change that made this happen was the same one that gave us science, technology, freedom, and capitalism: the Enlightenment. It made human reason the measure of all things, throwing off ancient rules if they fell short of new scientific reasoning. The greatest accomplishment of the Enlightenment was the creation of the United States of America.

Among the many things the scientific advances of the creative era called the Enlightenment spawned were the increase of divorce and cohabitation. The capacity to marry for love and participate in infidelity provided by birth control shook old foundations and new foundations are being built in response. In 1900, two-thirds of marriages ended with the death of a partner, particularly when women died during childbirth. By 1974, divorce surpassed death as the most common way to terminate a marriage. By the end of the 20th century, divorce was considered both a common and culturally acceptable way to terminate marriage.

Although the purpose of marriage has changed over time, the definition has not.  Americans still define marriage as being sexually exclusive and lifelong, but many engage in infidelity and divorce. They want the connection, but they have slowly become accustomed to being totally individualistic.  They choose to marry or exclusively cohabit and then have extramarital sex or divorce, even though they no longer have to get married. “Freedom” is the slogan but they seem to still be pondering with the Apostle Paul: “Yes, everything is permissible. But not everything builds up!” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

As a result of all this confusion, family law has lost any moral basis. It is easier to get out of a marriage than a mortgage. This change in culture is made clear when one looks at court decisions. At the end of the 1800s, the Supreme Court referred to marriage as a “holy estate” and a “sacred obligation.” (Reynolds v. U.S. 1878). By 1972 the same court described marriage as “an association of two individuals” (Eisenstadt v. Baird. 1972).  The Defense of Marriage Act (1996) attempted to remedy the Supreme Court’s philosophical direction that accelerated the change in society. But the adaptation of marriage has continued anyway and that law is being whittled away. The Obama administration selectively enforces it. As a society, people are still sorting this out.

For Christians who have not tuned their faith to the varying pitch of government, such as I am, the lack of federal protection for marriage merely serves to increase the integrity of marriage as an expression of faith: not of sex, finances or even procreation, but of commitment. Couples do not need an excessive wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment. But they do need the sanction and participation of a living community in Christ to make a long-lasting covenant that is centered in the covenant we keep with the Lord.

The question is: Do believers need a wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment? The essence of marriage is not sex, or money, or even children: it is covenant. Does the covenant need to be made in traditional ways — especially now that those mostly-extra-biblical ways are becoming discredited? A new look at the spectrum of how people are changing marriage from covenant to cohabitation might come up with some advantageous ways to adapt.

  • Maybe we could free some people from the ceremony trap — some people don’t marry because they are saving for the bling and the spectacle!
  • Maybe we could honor people by acknowledging their cohabitation before the covenant is publicly committed – that would be something like embracing people as members of the church community before they make a covenant with the body.
  • Maybe we should more clearly express our understanding that people who have sex are, essentially, married, albeit poorly and dangerously. But then, some of them are better married than some people who live together with a publically affirmed covenant, just secretly. Why would someone get married secretly?

When someone told me recently that they were about ready to have sex with their girlfriend, I said if he was going to get married, I’d marry them immediately, if he liked. We’re still sorting that out, too.

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Monica and the New Marriage

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The statistics are in a duel when it comes to whether living together before marriage results in a higher rate of divorce. Around here we tend to call cohabitation “faux marriage” and one does not have to be “living together” to be in one. But that is beside the point (already!). Some statistics keepers say 45% of cohabiters breakup before they get married.  “67 percent of cohabitating couples who marry eventually divorce, compared to 45 percent of all first marriages,” claims Michael Foust.  Others are very skeptical about how the numbers are crunched, like Catherine Harris, who says that her sense of the stats is that cohabitation isn’t that big of an indicator of marital success. So many PhDs! Such a big internet to argue on!

Moral choices about marriage

Marital “success” is nice. But people are not consulting the stats before they decide whether to cohabit or marry, are they? “Success” is not a very convincing moral argument for a moral decision. Success is not even moral – or is that all we’ve got, now? Moral is still a discussion of right conduct, right and wrong according to one’s principles, or, in my case, how I should live in response to the way of life revealed by God, primarily in Jesus, and persistently informed by the Holy Spirit. Getting married is a significant place where we get to decide, “What is best for me to do? What is best for the person I love?” and also, “What does my community think is the right way to go about this?”

An awful lot of us seem to be floating around in the rudderless ship of our personal decision on the ocean of our undefined thinking when it comes to moral choices about marriage. Many of us are not in a family system with any strength to guide us and most of
us are not part of a community we respect to inform us. The new marriage is a personal expression of “whatever.”

The new “marriage”

Monica Mandell appears to be an evangelist for the new marriage. I ran into her in the latest edition of Philadelphia Magazine. In the online version she gushes “Living together is a phenomenon previous generations did not experience. Although the divorce statistics show that it does not matter if you rush into marriage, marry your high school sweetheart or live with your future spouse, it must make things a lot easier to actually know the person you are marrying. Not only are women in the workplace today, but  they are also having premarital sex! Can you imagine being with your partner for the first time on your wedding night? It is a miracle that so many unions lasted from that generation!”

I took just a cursory look at the stats and there is no way one can say that it does not matter how you marry or whether you don’t marry. Of course it matters, unless nothing matters. One stat that I found most stat keepers agreeing on is that people who value marriage are more likely to stay married.

What’s more, let me be amazed at how Dr. Mandell breezily dismisses virginity with a “Can you imagine?!” I am surprised she did not include the implied “OMG!” Yes, Monica, I can imagine being with my partner for the first time on my wedding night. I don’t think marriages automatically die from lack of virginity. But I don’t think they are worse off with it, not by a long shot. The couples I counsel put a lot of stress on their love and they undermine the development of their commitment by never having any thresholds to cross — like a wedding and wedding night. Forming a healthy relationship that contributes to one’s spiritual health is not a light matter.

Monica’s shallow pool

She goes on, “Modern women should be seeking to balance good marriages with good jobs. Happy, productive parents breed happy, productive children. Having weekly mahjong sessions, lunches and shopping might have been considered fun as a standing operating procedure in the past, but the 1950s are over. Marriage is a partnership. Women who are not using their brains to full potential are selling themselves short.”

First of all, the 50’s were 60 years ago and the stereotype of the TV fifties never existed. That being said, I think Monica means that “postmodern” women “should” be doing the
balancing act she describes. They are more likely than modern women to see themselves as the defining factor in what should happen.

Secondly, families are built in a context and they are not just about happy productive parents (who apparently get their happiness from their marriages and jobs). Marriages happen in the world and “successful marriages” happen in community – hopefully in an extended family, ideally, in the church.

Thirdly, mahjong is not that easy. Using one’s brains as an economic tool is not always that satisfying, either.

I’ve got a feeling that Monica Mandell’s sense of what is good is mainly derived from economics. Looking for love aside, the lookers for love, these days, cohabit because they are shopping. “Getting what one wants” is the principle, shopping is the moral act. Monica’s byline names her: “Director of the Philadelphia office of Selective Search, the premiere (off-line) upscale matchmaking firm for the most eligible singles.”

From what I can tell from the website, Monica is a personal mate shopper. This is what her
website promises the men: “Selective Search Clients are single because they’re selective and don’t want to settle. We honor our Client’s preferences and don’t judge them, regardless of their criteria. In fact, we don’t consider having preferences like age, religion, and physical or personality type as being ‘picky’. We think it’s about knowing who and what you want and being selective….It’s our goal to introduce to you to that ‘needle in the haystack’ – a high caliber woman who will make you happy and fulfilled.” For a “premium fee” the website says, she will find you a premium selection.

Perhaps she “should” have added: Can you imagine the best possible, potential mate to try out in your very own bedroom? We deliver! Marriage as a commodity sounds like a perfect adaptation to a society that is all about economics, now that we have hollowed out its soul and forbidden God to influence it. I am not saying that everyone cohabiting is that shallow. But I am saying that they are wading in a shallow pool.