Is Cohabitation a Good Way to Prepare for Marriage?-Part 1
An estimated 70% of couples today will cohabit before marrying. Is this a good idea? As pointed out in an article by Brad Wilcox and Alysse ElHage, Taylor Swift and her boyfriend Joe Alwyn broke up after six years of living together. Living together before marriage does not help you odds of having a successful marriage. In fact, it hurts your odds of having a successful marriage.
Fifty percent of white evangelicals believe that cohabitation is morally acceptable if a couple plans to marry, according to Pew research! A lot of people think that you should 'try before you buy'. People who would consider themselves 'well educated' still think that they should cohabet before marriage. In fact, jointly committed love is the foundation for a good marriage, and for many cohabiting couples, this is lacking. Cohabiting increases your chance of divorce from 20% to 25%. There is very little taboo now about living with someone before marriage and practicing sex outside of marriage. And that really is a shame.
Pastors, parents and schools should emphasize that cohabiting is a bad idea, and that it does not work toward buiding a stable marriage. Steve Harvey, the radio and television personality has had three marriages. But what is he telling his own daughters? He is telling them to get married first, based on his own experiences in cohabiting. Maybe Taylor Swift will give her own daughters and sons the same advice in the future; get married first before having sex, we hope.
Let's now look at a more internal perspective on why not to have sex before marriage. In this show (The Richard Urban Show) we emphasize the Unification Principle point of view. Paramount is that we follow God's plan for marriage. Anyone who created themselves, please raise your hand! You were 'created' by your parents, but really, you are created by God, working through the sexual union of your parents. In Genesis 1:28, we are told to 'be fruitful, multiply and have dominion over creation'. To be fruitful means to unite your mind and body, centered on God to become a perfected individual. In light of this direction from God, at the sister site to Urban Life Training, UnionStation.love the motto is "Be the one to find the one".
The current environment of dating sites has allowed psychopathic men to take advantage of women, who are the biggest losers in this culture of hook-up. God's first blessing is individual perfection, and sexual abstinence before marriage is a big part of that. The second blessing is family perfection; a God-centered family consisting of a God-centered husband, wife and children. In the Unification Principle this is called the four-position foundation. A family or society that has formed the four-position foundation in line with God's ideal is patterned after the image of a perfect individual. It this becomes the substantial object partner to the individual who lives in oneness with God, and consequently, it also becomes the substantial object partner to God.
The third blessing is the perfection of a human being's dominion over the natural world; to fulfill this blessing, human beings and the natural world should become completely one, thereby establishing a God-centered four-position foundation of dominion. By fulfilling the three great blessings, we return joy to God.
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We will continue part 2 of Is Cohabitation a Good Way to Prepare for Marriage? in next month's Urban Life Training newsletter.