When it comes to living together before marriage, opinions differ.
While a study from the National Center for Health Statistics has cited an increase in marriage survivability for men when cohabitation occurs during the engagement period, the same study indicated a slight decrease for women under the same circumstances.
On the other hand, a significantly more drastic finding backed by Yale University faculty has indicated that women increase their chances of a marriage falling apart by 80 percent if there was cohabitation before marriage.
With all of the statistics on the matter either spinning cohabitation in a harmless or harmful light, it can be difficult to understand whether or not it is beneficial to a relationship to live together.
While many Americans live together either under financial constraints or to practice their future commitments without the pressure of marriage, this does not change the sobering nature of many cohabitation statistics.
Many agree, if not as radically as others, that cohabitation puts most couples under peculiar stresses that can reappear in marriage.
This may seem unbelievable, considering that cohabitation is just the simple act of living with another person.
In couples who decide to move in before marriage, this kind of thinking can lead to making these people effectively married without any of the official or legal responsibilities.
While this seems pragmatic, especially for young couples who are trying to build their finances, it can also threaten the relationship.
Without the responsibilities of marriage, sociologists have noted that it is more difficult to deal with the increased pressures found in marriage once an engagement is fulfilled.
As a result, divorce can be a painful conclusion for some couples who thought cohabitation could work out for them.
As with almost everything, it is not an absolute.
Cohabitation does not necessarily lead to divorce.
However, speaking from probabilities, cohabiting couples do not necessarily translate the skill of rooming together into the skill of living together.