'cohabiting couples are less likely to stay together'

That's the funniest part to me. I've heard this one many times.

It just so amazingly misses the point.

Anyone who sees it as at all relevant obviously is so closed minded as to believe every cohabiting couple would be striving towards a life long commitment.

For some reason I just find it particularly hilarious.

BTW:
' it should support, encourage and utilise family and community organisations, rather than supplant them'
ie. Give the Churches more money? Hey?... Hey? Wink.

Marriage, the single worst thing I've ever been part of.

I should have chosen more carefully but I was a timer and wish I'd done some co-habiting first to learn a little more.

R0bert

'cohabiting couples are less likely to stay together'

I see "cohabitating couples" as including two subsets:
1. those married
2. those not married

* How many in group 2 start cohabitating with a view to moving to group 1;
* What proportion do make it to group 1
* what proportion that make it to group 1 stay married "til death do them part"?

Hi RObert! I guess you'd be one who would agree with a mates description of marriage as the worst hire purchaser agreement in history.

Everything you have as deposit, everything you earn as monthly payments for the rest of your life, & you can't trade the old one in on a new model, when it starts to break down too often.

Hasbeen I don't tend to like the parallels that imply some kind of ownership. Too many ways they can be twisted by those with an agenda.

I'd envisaged a partnership with both of us working to the best of our abilities to benefit our family. Instead I found myself bound to someone who treated our marriage as a means to the end of her own wants with no regard for mine. Marriage became a constant demand for more by someone who would not give.

The marriage has been over for a long time now, the ex has married someone else and I now find the government taking far more than what it cost me to care for my son here to give to a couple who chose not to contribute anything to the normal costs of his care when he was here. I don't see anything to indicate that they are spending more than I did.

After my experience of marriage I'd suggest a few things
- Co-habit before investing in the emotional and financial baggage of marriage to get some idea of what the person is like to live with day to day.
- As soon as a male pill becomes available men who don't already know the real character of a partner should start using it until they are confident that they want to share parenting with that person.
- Lobby for changes to family law and child support that protect the responsible parents rather than the scoundrels. A history of not working should not absolve someone from responsibility for their kids and a history of working (especially when they have also done the care part) should not turn them into an unsupervised money source for the other parent. Both parents should have responsibility and be allowed to get on with their lives once a sane version of that responsibility is met.

R0bert