What’s Wrong with Living Together?
More and more couples
live together either instead of marriage or as a preparation for it.
What should we make of this social phenomenon? Just what is the difference between marriage and cohabitation and in, any case, what’s wrong with living together? Holy Trinity vicar, Gary Jenkins, has written a Grove booklet which attempts to address some of these issues.
You can
read extracts below (or you can buy a copy of
‘Cohabitation: A Biblical Perspective) for £2.50 (post free) from the Grove
Books website.
INTRODUCTION TO ‘Cohabitation: A
Biblical Perspective’
'It's a bit like membership of a club
or gym. You try It out for a bit and, if it's a hit, you become a life member'
This is how a young woman summed up
her view of marriage in a recent article in the Daily Mirror about 'living
together'. Like many people today she wants to try marriage on for size before
she definitely commits herself to it-and cohabitation offers her the
opportunity to do just that.
A real revolution has occurred in
popular thinking about marriage. To use an analogy from the world of Christian
initiation, the average wedding is now more like a service of confirmation than
a christening. The traditional order of things has been the wedding, first,
followed by moving in together. Under the new arrangements moving in together
comes first and the wedding, like confirmation, comes much later and, like
confirmation, its function is not to start something but to ratify publicly and
celebrate an existing relationship of faith and commitment.
What should Christians make of
living together? Should we condemn it because sex outside marriage is wrong?
Should we condone it because it is essentially the same as marriage? Or should
we do our best to ignore it when erring cohabitants come to the church to book
a rather belated wedding? I am not in favour of any of these options, since
none of them in my view is based on a sufficiently broad perspective of the
relevant biblical material. Many aspects of biblical teaching are relevant to
the issue and the aim of this booklet is to point to some of these as the basis
for a distinctively Christian understanding of the widespread modern social
phenomenon of living together.
The rest of this chapter considers
some of the background facts about
cohabitation; the next two chapters look at the biblical evidence;
and chapter four offers some pastoral
applications.
How Common Is Cohabitation?
It is often said that marriage is
as popular as ever and, indeed, the total number of weddings each year remains remarkably
high. However, 'this figure is kept high by the growing number of second, and
even third, marriages. In fact the number of marriages per 1,000 eligible
bachelors and spinsters declined by about 40% in the eleven years from 1 973 to
1984. Reliable statistics are hard to
come by, but it appears that during the same period the incidence of couples
living together outside marriage has increased. In 1981 only 8% of single women
aged 1 849 were cohabiting; by 1988 this figure had increased to 20%.~ A survey
of clergy in London showed that in 1 988 40-80% of all couples in the parishes
who got married were already living together
By 1991 the Family Policy Studies
Centre were able to report 'nowadays it is virtually the majority practise to
cohabit before marrying.'
The incidence of cohabitation
varies greatly across Europe with 90% of Swedish couples cohabiting before
marriage compared with less than 2% of
Italian couples.2 Cohabitation is most common in the countries of northern and
western Europe and is least common in eastern Europe and the predominantly
Catholic countries of the Mediterranean.
What Is Cohabitation?
Cohabitation is a slippery term. It
can simply mean any two people 'living
together' under the same roof. However, we shall use it far more
restrictively as 'any unmarried, heterosexual couple who consistently share a
common residence and regularly engage in sexual intercourse. Under English law,
at least, there is no doubt about who is and who is not legally married and
therefore it is possible to define cohabitation in these rms. Unless otherwise
stated, references to marriage', 'married couples', and 'getting married' will
refer to legally recognized marriage.
Types of Cohabitation
Lewis has described three main
types of cohabitation:
A)TEMPORARY OR CASUAL.' Research6 has found that many cohabit-ing
relationships start in a casual way. A high proportion of couples have no
thought-out reason for beginning the relationship: it just
happens. In
other cases the relationship is purely a temporary one: for
example, research among cohabiting
students in American colleges
has suggested that their
relationships are more like 'steady dating'
than anything else.
B)PREPARATION OR TRIAL FOR MARRIAGE: Here there is already either
a definite commitment to marry or a some form of conditional commitment.
Examples of the former would be where an engaged couple live together before
the wedding for reasons of convenience; or where a couple are awaiting the
dissolution of their existing marriages to other people. In other cases living
together is seen as a trial for
marriage: the couple will marry if the trial works out.
C)ALTERNATIVE OR SUBSTITUTE FOR
MARRIAGE: this includes
couples who have rejected marriage and opted for cohabitation on
ideological grounds. In certain
cultures cohabitation has become so
well established that it is accepted
as a social institution in its own right. Where cohabitation is the 'done
thing' those who decide to live together have often not even considered
marriage and therefore can not really be said to have consciously rejected it.
Perhaps many young British couples, especially in inner urban areas, are in
this category.
Why Do People Cohabit?
A Letter to a Mother: 'I feel very sure now that John is the
best person for me to share my life with. In the process of developing our
relationship we have come to believe
that there are means more conducive to a growing and 'stable relationship than that of marriage. Certainly the
examples of failing marriages prevalent in our society today (e.g. John's
parents) have a negative impact on any goals of marriage for us ... So John and
I propose to live together for a year to give us time to workout our domestic
roles and get a better idea of each other's life goals to be further sure that
they can be shared and/or coexist. ..We each have had several close
relationships and do not feel now as much the need for the security of marriage to have one. The options are more
easily available by not being married and we believe we can contribute to
fuller communication ... For people to grow they must be part of an open system
and not one that becomes locked in, which is more likely to happen in marriage.
In time we hope our relationship will grow sufficiently strong to be able to
include the external bond of marriage in a
long-term commitment that would include having children.’
In this letter a young woman explains why she prefers
cohabitation to marriage. It is quite likely that others who have followed the
same route as her share some of her reasons. The reasons she gives include:
a) a belief that a deeper quality of relationship can
be enjoyed outside marriage;
b) a fear that a married relationship would end in
disaster as many marriages she knows of have done. Many clergy have encountered
couples who fear
their relationship will be 'jinxed' if they marry. These couples often have close personal experience
of unhappy marriages.
c) a belief that a period of cohabitation prior to
marriage can be a preparation for marriage by helping the couple to understand
each other better and adjust to one
another;
d) a belief that marriage involves a higher degree of
commitment than he is yet ready for;
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of why
people choose to cohabit. ther reasons include:
e) legal inability to marry due to existing marriages
to other people
f) ideological rejection of
marriage
g)it just seemed the thing to do because
everyone else was doing it.
h) financial reasons: for example,
in Britain until recently the tax
regulations
favoured unmarried couples. Another financial incentive
to live together
is the prohibitive cost of paying for two flats when one
would do. This pressure
particularly applies to engaged couples who
may decide that in the run-up to
the wedding it makes good financial
sense to share accomodation. For other couples the cost of the wedding
and, more especially, the reception, is prohibitive and can be responsible for
the delay of the marriage for many years.
i) with cohabitation there are
fewer restrictions on who one can have relationship with, and when and how the
relationship can start and
end.
j) cohabitation offers the sexual
and emotional closeness of marriage
with the independence and autonomy of singlehood.
But why has cohabitation increased
so dramatically at this particular point in history? Increased divorce rates,
the decline in religious belief, altered understandings of love and marriage
have no doubt all played their part. So has the post-war change in sexual
attitudes and behaviour in many Western countries. The recent dramatic rise in
cohabitation was preceded by the
increase in the availability of reliable contraception and the increased acceptability of pre-marital
sexual intercourse. In England and Wales in the late 1950s 65% of women
marrying for the first time claimed no previous sexual experience. This figure
had fallen to 26% by 1979~4 Dormer argues that the 'acceptance of
"sleeping together"' evolved into 'tolerance of "living
together" '
The next three chapters:
Chapter 2: Can the Bible Help
Chapter 3: Biblical Perspective
Chapter 4: Pastoral
Applications
are available in Jenkins, G, Cohabitation a Biblical Perspective, Grove
Books, Nottingham, 1993 (Second Edition), available post free from Grove Books
Ltd, Ridley Hall Rd, Cambridge, CB3 9HU. (Tel: 01223 464748) price £2.25. These
extracts are copyright Ó Gary Jenkins 1993.
The last
chapter is printed below
CONCLUSION TO ‘Cohabitation: A
Biblical Perspective’
All the signs are that the incidence
of cohabitation has increased in the last 1 5 years and that it is a social
phenomenon that is here to stay.
Cohabitation, of course, is a broad term covering a range of
relationships. People enter these
relationships for a range of different reasons and bring to them a range of
different expectations.
A biblical perspective on
cohabitation has been offered in this booklet. It has been argued that
cohabitation relationships are a subset of all sexual relationships and that
cohabitation relationships must be evaluated in the light of the biblical norms that govern all sexual relationships.
An evaluation has been offered of cohabitation in the light of biblical
teaching. All sexual relationships including married relationships and all cohabitation
relationships are obedient to these norms to varying extents. The extent to
which they obey these norms is the extent to which the relationship is
consonant both with the creator's intention and with the created reality of who
men and women are and what relationships are.
At one time, even for people who
had no explicit commitment to the Christian faith, getting married seemed the
natural thing to do. Marriage was the normal outcome of a successful courtship.
Today more and more couples decide to live together outside of marriage either
as an alternative to marriage or as preparation for it. Fewer people seem to
see the need to get married at least,
before they start living together, although most couples get married at some
point.
A sizeable proportion of
cohabitants who eventually opt for marriage opt for a wedding according to the
rites of the Church of England or other Christian churches, yet, a perusal of
Christian literature shows that remarkably little has been written by
Christians about cohabitation, and the subject is largely ignored in most
wedding preparation materials produced by Christians. It seems that in this
case, as in many others, the Church has been slow to respond to social change.
The Church needs to think seriously and biblically about cohabitation: to
understand what is
going on in these relationships; to
evaluate them in the light of the scriptures; and be ready and willing to
commend the rightness and wholesomeness of marriage lived as the creator intended
it. It is not enough just to state that sex outside marriage is wrong. Too
often an
undue emphasis is given to sex in
Christian teaching about relationships: biblical teaching about sex and sexual
immorality is important but it is only one aspect among many aspects of
relevant biblical teaching. A broader, multi-dimensional, biblical perspective
is needed.
In the future, the increasing social acceptability of cohabitation
may lead to changes in marriage laws. In England cohabitation relationships may
come to be recognized as legally equivalent to marriage as they are at present in certain circumstances in a number
of other countries (e.g.
Scotland). It may become more
common for cohabitation relationships to be regulated by contracts and these
may become legally binding. However,
even if these changes do occur it does not follow that actual cohabitation relationships will
automatically change and become much more like marriage as the Bible
understands it. In fact, with the increasing secularization of society there
may be a gradual shift away from biblical norms in all sexual relationships,
both married and unmarried. So perhaps at the very time that living together
becomes more like marriage (in legal terms) marriage may become more like living
together (in practical terms). There is likely to be an even greater need for a
biblical perspective on cohabitation in
the future than in the present.
In a world where so many
relationships are going wrong the church has some real Good News to proclaim.
God's word comes as Good News to all sick and sinful relationships. God's word
speaks to cohabitation as it speaks to all areas of life and the church has the
privilege of helping to pass that message on. It will need to done lovingly
sensitively, imaginatively and humbly. May it be, that many cohabiting couples
come, by God's grace, to walk in his good and perfect ways in their married
lives together and experience his blessing and his love.