Living together before being married makes married relationships

better.

Nowadays, living together before being married is becoming more and

more common. As a conservative country, most Chinese people may argue

that if couples live together before they get married, women will become

unsuitable to find another partner after they break up and move out. In

America or some part of China, like in Hong Kong, it is pretty common for

couples living together after they have kept a relationship. From my

perspective, the main reason for such differences is the diverse attitude

towards premarital sex. Even today, many traditional Chinese people believe

that couples should have sex after they get married. We called it ‘’wedding

night”, which means husband and wife can have sex on that night. On the

contrary, Americans always consider having a relationship with someone after

their “date”. Although I am from China, I don’t believe couples who live

together before being married is impropriate.

According to a recent US Census Bureau report, the number of unmarried

cohabiting couples in the US increased more than 17 fold between 1960 to

2010. What we can know from the data is people are more open with their

close relationship. We were born and bringing up in our own family, we live

with our parents before getting married. But, even for such a closed

relationship, parents and child, we always fight with them in daily life. That

made me know when people living together, it must have problems one or
two. A recent study conducted by the online rental site Rent.com of 1,000

cohabiting individuals in the U.S, found that 32 percent said living together

helped them determine if their partner was “the one”. The husband or the

wife is the one who will keep company with you, almost living together in the

rest of your life. If you do not live with him or her, how do you know you can

keep a good married relationship?

Secondly, it provides economies of scale as two can live more cheaply than

one. There are more and more young people choose to work at prosperous

metropolis nowadays, cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong, which means

they can get more valuable experiences but need to pay more for their daily

cost at the same time, especially for those who need to rent a room to live.

Actually, if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, you can share a room with him

or her. You can not only save a bunch of money but also have a chance to

figure out whether he or she is suitable for you to commit a long-term

relationship. What's more, many young people feel lonely in the metropolis

now. They just go to work in the morning and go back home after work, which

is their daily routine. If someday they are sick, they have no one to talk care of

them. Therefore, cohabitation can solve this problem and let them feel that

they are not alone.

Cohabitation also encourages economic specialization by allowing

individuals to focus on their unique skills while leaving other duties to their

spouse. For example, if one is good at making money, the other may pay more
attention to some specific housework like purchasing daily supplies, paying for

the utilities, cooking, etc. Housework is no longer women’s work, but it still

significant to decide which one in your relationship should handle all the stuff.

It is important to know if you can work as a domestic unit as it is not always a

reflection of how much you love each other. It is a function of how well you

work together under all sort of different stresses.

On the whole, cohabitation is a lot like turning the TV to your favorite

channel—and then leaving it on 24/7, you are bound to see some stuff you

don’t like, the same as marriage. Therefore, living together before being

married is something that you must do, you need and you should find out

whether you can accept the “dislike of your favorite channel” before you can

only choose to divorce.