Intent

[lightandwinged]

A post on a pastor friend of mine's Facebook page got me thinking. In the post, the pastor talked about how it's "not a good idea to cohabitate before marriage" and that "80% of marriages where the participants cohabitated before marrying end in divorce." It made me kind of scratch my head, because by those statistics, Kyle and I should be heading

Comments

[morrigirl]

Hmm, do you know where your paster friend came up with that percentage? I've never seen such a high statistic connected to cohabitation and divorce rates, and suspect it might be inflated.

The Alternatives to Marriage Project tackles this very questions in their FAQ.

These studies' conclusions are frequently misrepresented in the media. Basically, studies like these are comparing apples and oranges. Most couples today live together before they marry, and research shows that on average, the minority of couples who marry without living together tend to be more religious, more conservative, and more opposed to divorce, as one would expect. So these studies actually show that people who are more opposed to divorce are less likely to divorce -- which is not particularly surprising. Researchers have found that when you "control" for the differences between the two groups, the cohabitation-divorce link decreases considerably or vanishes entirely, depending on the study. The idea that living together ruins relationships is not supported

[lightandwinged]

Yeah, the percentage definitely made me scratch my head and say "wtf." It's actually one of my pet peeves about pastors--throwing numbers out there that just aren't well-researched or even correct. I mean, we all do it, but if you're going to be in a position where people set stock by what you say, you should be more responsible, imo.