Married couples who move in together before they get married tend to be less satisfied and more likely to divorce than those who don’t. This association is known as the cohabitation effect. When researchers first investigated the cohabitation effect, they figured only a certain kind of couple moved in together before marriage. These couples, the researchers assumed, were laxer about marriage and thus more open to the idea of getting divorced. However, as more and more people choose to cohabitate before marriage, it’s much harder to say that only a particular type of couple is choosing this
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