Denver Catholic

19 DENVER CATHOLIC | FEBRUARY 11-24, 2017 Thinking through the temptation of cohabitation M en and women clearly need each other and naturally gravitate towards arrange- ments of mutual support and lives of shared intimacy. Because women are frequently the immediate guardians of the next generation, they have a particular need to ascertain if there will be steady support from a man prior to giving themselves to him sex- ually. The bond of marriage is ordered toward securing this critical element of ongoing commitment and sup- port. Cohabitation, where a man and woman decide to live together and engage in sexual relations without marriage, raises a host of issues and concerns. Sex, of course, has a certain power all its own, and both sides may be tempted to play with it in ways that are potentially damaging, all the more so when they decide to cohabit. One concern is that cohabitation can often become a rehearsal for var- ious selfi sh patterns of behavior. It perpetuates an arrangement of con- venience, popularly phrased as, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" Even as many women try to tell themselves they are "pre- paring " for marriage by cohabiting with their partner, they may sense the trap of the "never ending audition" to be his wife and become intuitively aware of how they are being used. Cohabitation also invites the woman to focus on lesser concerns like saving on rent or garnering transient emo- tional attention from her partner by moving in with him and becoming sexually available. Even as a woman becomes attuned to the power of sex from an early age, she can eventually fall prey to an easy mistake. Aware that sexual intimacy is also about bonding, she may sup- pose that by surrendering this deeply personal part of herself through cohabitation, she now has a "hook" into a man and his heart. While such an arrangement can trigger various platitudes, (that he "cares for her," "loves her", etc.), experience shows it doesn't typically help him reach the commitment refl ected in those all-important words, "Will you marry me?" Cohabitation, in fact, is a relation- ship that is defi ned by a holding back of commitment. The notion that it somehow allows both parties to "try out" a marriage beforehand is conve- niently make-believe, a kind of "play- ing house," mostly because it's impos- sible to try out something permanent and irrevocable through something temporary and revocable. As Jenni- fer Roback Morse has described it, "Cohabiting couples are likely to have one foot out the door, throughout the relationship. The members of a cohabiting couple practice holding back on one another. They rehearse not trusting." They don't develop the elements crucial to a successful mar- riage, but instead keep their options open so they can always beat a hasty retreat to the exit. Or as Chuck Colson has put it: "Cohabitation — it's training for divorce." Many studies confi rm that the divorce rate among those who cohabit prior to marriage is nearly double the rate of those who marry without prior cohabitation. Some researchers believe that individuals who cohabit are more unconventional to begin with, being less committed to the institution of marriage overall and more open to the possibility of divorce. Others sus- pect something more insidious — that living together slowly erodes people's ability to make a commitment by set- ting them up into patterns of behav- ior that work against succeeding in a long-term relationship. Both may actually be true. Various risks correlate strongly with cohabitation. Compared with a married woman, a cohabiting woman is roughly three times as likely to experience physical abuse and about nine times more likely to be mur- dered. Children also tend to fare poorly when it comes to these live-in arrangements. Rates of serious child abuse have been found to be lowest in intact families; six times higher in step-families; 20 times higher in cohabiting biological-parent families; and 33 times higher when the mother is cohabiting with a boyfriend who is not the biological father. Cohabiting homes see signifi cantly more drug and alcohol abuse and bring in less income than their married peers. Cohabitation is clearly bad for men, worse for women and terrible for children. "Marriage," as Glenn Stanton notes, "is actually a very pro-woman institution. People don't fully realize what a raw deal for women cohabi- tation is. Women tend to bring more goods to the relationship — more work, more e• ort in tending to the relationship — but they get less satis- faction in terms of relational commit- ment and security." While marriage doesn't automatically solve every problem, it clearly o• ers a di• erent and vastly better set of dynamics than cohabitation for all the parties involved. Making Sense of Bioethics Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., serves as director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, www.ncbcenter.org. FATHER TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK, PH.D. PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK In the Jan. 28 edition, the Beacon of Hope Gala was mistakenly listed on the "Get Involved" page to be taking place Feb. 28. The event hap- pened Jan. 28. Additionally, Archbishop's Lec- ture Series was listed as taking place Feb. 27. The event happened Feb. 7. We apologize for the errors and any inconvenience this may have caused. CORRECTION LETTERS A big thank you for the article in Denver Catholic ["Denver faithful buy cows for African diocese," Nov. 26] about the Mission Cooperative Program and our support for Father Crispin and the Diocese of Kibambe in the Congo. To date we have raised $1,800 additional funds for this mis- sion e• ort because of the article in the newspaper – thank you!! AL HOOPER

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