someonestolemyname wrote:
i could be wrong, but i thought couples that waited until marriage a)had happier marriages and b) stayed married longer/less divorce likelyhood?
or maybe i was thinking of the cohabitation statistics...
I don't know anything about waiting as a predictor for longer happier marriages, but cohabitation is DEFINITELY not correlated with either of those characteristics. Cohabitation before marriage is, statistically, a nail in the coffin for a long term relationship. Researchers have suggested that people who live together expect marriage to change what is, essentially, already a married living situation, and when each side is let down, communication breaks down into emotional arguments and the whole thing goes to hell. Couples who cohabit but had minimal expectation of change after the marriage experienced more normal rates of divorce. I read a few papers on this for a family/marital psychology course back in one of my senior seminars in undergrad.