“The young people in our study may be selecting better partners for themselves the second time around, which is why they are seeing a drop in emotional distress”, study co-author Claire Kamp Dush, professor at Ohio State University said.
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Now, it seems that living with one’s significant other has become just as fulfilling as actually getting married, and being someone’s spouse as opposed to their live-in partner doesn’t necessarily result in extra satisfaction and comfort.
The co-habiting of the couples actually helps in bringing down the overall stress levels considerably.
The study has also found that the emotional advantages of cohabitation or marriage aren’t restricted to first relationships.
During the study, researchers examined data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which included 8,700 people who were born between 1980 and 1984. The researchers took their interview every other year from 2000 to 2010.
Authors of the study believe these new findings are surely going to change the way, modern relationships are perceived.
Approximately two-thirds of all couples decide to live together, either in order to assess if they would be suited as spouses, or simply for the sake of convenience and togetherness, without even considering the possibility of walking down the aisle later on.
The research clearly highlights the changing landscape of the American population in terms of relationships. “We’re finding that marriage isn’t necessary to reap the benefits of living together, at least when it comes to emotional health”, she added. For instance, in their first serious relationships, women reported lower levels of emotional distress – regardless of whether they got married to their partners or were cohabiting.
When it came to finding love the second time around, both men and women had similar improvements in emotional health when they moved in with someone or got married, the findings showed.
Couples who engage in cohabitation do not have the same formal constraints or responsibilities as those who are married.
That may be because men are more likely than women to report cohabiting as a way to test a relationship, which has been linked in other research to subsequent relationship problems.
The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about emotional health.
In any case, the gender differences were visible for only first unions.
Males, on the other hand, only felt the boost in happiness when heading straight into marriage.
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In this recent study, the emphasis was placed on marital status, and its potential impact on emotional state. Cohabitation didn’t provide the same benefits for men. “That’s something we should be talking about”.
