"We love each other, we stay together?"
“Yes, I do” is probably one of the crucial sentences that
either leads women to the road of happiness or sinks them into the quagmire of
despair for the rest of their lives. In
other words, there could be hardly a turning point in marriage. Hence, before
owning a marriage certificate officially, more and more couples nowadays decide
to test their marital capabilities through premarital cohabitation. The fact is
that living together before marriage is not a bed of roses. Both genders sacrifice
lots of things in order to certainly gain benefits from it. Specifically, there are advantages and
disadvantages of cohabitation that women should attempt to foresee before they agree
to it.
Research
shows that majority of men do not care about the details of everything (Gray,
2008). On the flip side, most of the women are punctilious and willing to pay
attention to trifle matters that concern them (Gray, 2008). Undoubtedly, the
instinctive slovenliness of men brings up the displeasuring habits in them and
the habits mentioned are often unpalatable in the eyes of women. For instance, most of the men have the tendency to accidentally fill the lavatory with the smell of ammonia, especially when they just wake up (Tolley, 2009). In the bedroom, there will be socks under the bed, and
underpants in every corner (Blake, n. d.). Furthermore, when men are in the house, toothpaste caps occasionally will go missing or
are left open at any time. The habits seem nothing for unceremonious men, but
not for attentive women. The thought of repenting to have got married with such
a man will surely flash through a woman’s mind if she comprehends him only
after they are married. Strictly speaking, premarital cohabitation prevents
marriage shock. Apart from getting to know the foibles of men, living together
before signing the marriage consent aids women to grasp and understand their
future life partners entirely. Then, cautious and rational women are able to
make decision on whether will it be worthy to spend their remaining lives with
the men.
. Ironically,
studies show that when cohabitating couples eventually separate, women tend to
get more hurt than men (Gray, 2008). In addition, studies have consistently
shown that cohabitation is accountable for poorer marriages and higher rates of
divorce. It is said that 70 percent of women who live with a partner and then
marry that partner, will later divorce that partner (World Watch Today, 2011). One of the plausible reasons for such
phenomenon is that 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 the commitment (Jay, 2012). The expectation of marriage as a step
after cohabitation held by women is higher than men. When it goes wrong, most
of the time, women are the ones who feel the pain. As the Chinese proverb runs,
“the more you expect, the more disappointed you will feel”. On the other hand, research
finds out that a woman who lives with a man outside of marriage is 3 times more
likely to suffer violence at the hands of her partner than a woman who is
married (World Watch Today, 2011). In short, other than enduring the emotional
distress when cohabitation fails at last, unmarried women bear the higher risk
of getting violent actions from their cohabitating partners than married women.
As a
conclusion, whether or not cohabitation benefits or harms women is an on-going
debate. Surely, women gain certain advantages from cohabitating. At the same
time, women loss something when they engage in premarital cohabitation as
well. Furthermore, the impacts of cohabitation are dissimilar for all women.
The focal point is that, women must weight both gains and losses of cohabitation
in their respective situations before making the verdict of involving in
cohabitation.
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