I wrote this blog a few weeks ago but just right now I realized that I had not published it. I had just saved it. So here is my blog from I think one week ago Enjoy!. I am a bit behind on my blogs so I am going to write one about what I learned not this past week but the week before (the week of October 15-October 19). One of the things that I found really interesting that we talked about was cohabiting. Many people in today's society cohabit. I learned in my class (I think that this is the right statistic) that 80% of people cohabit. That is an incredibly high number and I was very surprised by that. I learned that some people cohabit to "test out" a relationship. But we learned in class that this is actually very wrong. and, research has proven that living with a person, or cohabiting, before marriage is actually detrimental to a couple's relationship. It is much better to get married to the person instead. And there is a lot of research to back that up. According to our text book, "Marriage and Family: The Quest for Intimacy" by Robert H. Lauer and Jeanette C. Lauer, research has found that (1) married couples have sex more frequently and married couples have better sex; (2) married couples have better-quality relationships than those couples who cohabit (and it is noted in the text book that quality of relationship between a married couples is especially more high-quality than couples cohabiting that have no intention of getting married); (3) violence is especially higher among those who cohabit. It is reported, (and according to the text book), that a woman is nine times more likely to be killed by a partner that she is cohabiting with, as opposed to a woman being killed by her husband; (4) people who cohabit have worse health behavior and more health problems than people who are married; (5) married couples report that they are happier, have less depression, are more committed to the relationship, and they also have a better relationship with their parents; (6) married couples have more "more stable and durable" relationships than cohabiting couples do; (7) children of cohabiting parents are five times more likely to have parents separate than parents who are married; (8) cohabiting parent families spend more money on alcohol and tobacco and less on education than do married parent families. Furthermore, there was more research that proved that couples that cohabit as a way to prepare for marriage have found that it does not lead to a more satisfying marriage. The way to go is just to marry the person you love instead of living with them first. Research in the text book has stated that those who cohabit before marriage are more likely to be unfaithful to their partner than those who do not cohabit before marriage. In addition, women who have cohabited with several partners before these women marry are twice as likely to have a divorce as opposed to women who only cohabit with their eventual husbands. These statistics are shocking. More people need to look into why marriage is a much better alternative than cohabiting. I have always had a personal and religious belief that cohabiting was wrong and that marriage is the right path to choose, but it was very interesting to find out statistical research that proved marriage is a much better alternative than cohabitation.