Cohabitation’s Dirty Little Secret

I meant to blog on this article when I first saw it. It reminds me of friends I knew who had lived together for some years prior to marrying. Empty-headed I said something conventional after their marriage like " at least now you two know each other better because of living together for a few years". She responded, not without bitterness: "No, I never knew him. After we got married he became a different person". They were divorced some years later.

Cohabitation’s Dirty Little Secret:

Back the 1970s there was a lot of talk that living together before marriage was a “wise” thing to do. After all, said its proponents, “You need to try a shoe on before buying it” and “You take a car for a test ride before negotiating the deal.” Never mind that human beings are a little more dignified and complicated than shoes or cars, and that we don’t “buy” one another. Never mind all that, according to the proponent of this theory, we were supposed to bow our heads to the obvious wisdom of “shacking up.”

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)