Is Cohabitation Replacing Marriage?

There is no formula for human relationships. One man’s poison is another man’s meat, one girl’s trash is another’s treasure and one man’s one night stand is another man’s lifelong love! Apart from celebrity wedding crashes, commodification of love and marriage and falling out of the traditional “till death do us apart” concept, another social phenomenon that contributes to number of marriages falling like a pack of cards today is cohabitation. The acceptance of couples living together out of wedlocks today has contributed to the decline in society’s general faith in the institution of matrimony. The longevity of marriage and statistical crescendos of divorce rates make us wonder whether man is moving back to being a polygamous animal or is it just the way human spirit is supposed to evolve?

Marriage is a socially constructed phenomenon and man is a socially abiding animal; exceptions only prove the rule! The falling out rates of marriages could probably be an indicator of the fact that as much as man needs love, commitment and stability in life, the need for freedom of thought, want and expression is ever-dominating. Cohabitation gives people the best of both the worlds as one experiences togetherness without the fear of permanence. With life expectancy at an all-time high and change so usual that it’s almost mundane, people need to feel that they are not in a rut, they always have an option to freedom, they can unburden the responsibility and radically change their lives without upsetting norms of the society. Living in gives people a percieved control of a situation that often lacks in a marriage. A person taking a divorce becomes a stereotype, a kind of breed of people whom you should avoid falling in love with and who can be labeled troubled. The character of Ross in a popular television series, Friends, would be an apt example to show that a man avoids at every cost to divulge the fact that he has been divorced thrice by the time he is 30. It would have been just another good old, regular break up had he not married.

The lack of predictability in life has never been so prominent as it is in the case of marriage. Prenuptial agreements defeat the purpose of marriage where conditions of separation are decided even before people get together. Marriages have become like business transactions where if one party fails to deliver what was promised the deal is nullified. The flavors of unconditional acceptance and selfless love have been replaced with convenience as easily as aspartame replaced sugar in the sweet industry. As much as you’d like to watch for the calories, you can’t help but crave for the real thing. Marriage, in this case, is still the real thing and cohabitation is a convenient substitute. So out of the two sweet things, which one will you bite into?