A Penn State study that involved video taping 92 recently married couples talking in their living rooms, showed that those that had lived together before tying the knot had poorer communication skills when trying to solve a marital or personal problem than couples who didn't previously cohabit.
The study director, Dr. Catherine Cohan, assistant professor of human development and family studies, says, "These data suggest that couples who choose to live together before marrying might need to work on these skills to counteract the risk of divorce that poorer communication competence could pose. However, we believe it is premature to draw firm conclusions about intervention or policy since this is the first study of its type."
Cohan presented details of the study June 29 at the International Conference on Personal Relationships in Brisbane, Australia. Her paper, "Toward a Greater Understanding of the Cohabitation Effect: Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Communication," was co-authored by Stacey Kleinbaum, a master's degree candidate in human development and family studies.
Cohan notes that, contrary to the popular belief that living together will improve a person's ability to choose a marriage partner and stay married, the opposite is actually the case.
"It has been consistently shown that, compared to spouses who did not cohabit, spouses who cohabited before marriage have a higher perceived likelihood of divorce and higher rates of marital separation and divorce, " she says. However, why cohabitation and divorce are related remains unknown.
Cohan's study is the first to compare the problem solving and support behavior skills of married couples who did not previously cohabit with those that did. In the study, the researchers visited the couples at home and talked with both the husband and wife separately. During these separate interviews, both the husband and wife had an opportunity to review a list of common marital problems and then select one that was important in their own marriage. The list included problems with sex, money, in-laws, career decisions, religion, the timing of children, who should do what chores around the house, and other typical sources of marital strife.
Later, the husband and wife sat together on the sofa in their living room in front of a video camera and were instructed by the researcher to spend 15 minutes trying to solve the problem that one of them had selected as important in their marriage. The researcher then left the room and the video camera recorded the interaction between husband and wife. Two conversations were videotaped. One in which the couple discussed the problem selected by the husband and one in which they discussed the problem selected by the wife.
On viewing the video tapes and analyzing them using standard psychological techniques, the researchers found that the couples who had lived together before marriage, even for as little as a month, displayed more negative and less positive problem solving behaviors compared with the spouses who had not cohabited. In particular, when the husband had picked the problem the couple was trying to solve, the spouses who had cohabited expressed more negative behaviors such as coerciveness and attempts to control. In general, wives who had lived with their husbands before marriage expressed more verbal aggression than wives in couples with no prior cohabitation.
In a similar fashion the couples were asked to select and discuss a personal problem from a list, such as trying to quit smoking or to loose weight, to develop a hobby, to improve a relationship with a family member or other common personal improvement goals. Then, in front of the video camera in their living room, they were instructed to talk about the personal problem with their spouse. Again, the videotaped conversations showed that couples who had lived together before wedding demonstrated more negative and less positive support behavior.
Currently, about half of U.S. couples live together before marrying. Cohan says this fact makes the need for further research evident. The results of this study combined with results from past cohabitation research and marital communication research suggest that problems with communication may be the link between cohabitation and the high rates of divorce.
"An important next step is to follow newlywed couples with and without cohabitation experience over four to five years to test whether communication skills link living together before marriage with a higher likelihood of divorce after marriage, " she adds.