Past studies have shown that marriage greatly increases the couple's lifetime happiness, but new research reveals that lovers who cohabit instead of tying the knot can also experience such mental health benefits. It revealed that when women move in with a live-in partner for the first time, it provides the same emotional benefits as the first time getting married, while men only became much happier when they wed for the first time. However, both genders became happier when they live together before getting hitched.
The study was conducted by researchers at Ohio State University (OSU). It was published in the Journal of Family Psychology.
OSU's research was based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997) of 8,700 people in the United States who were born between the years 1980 and 1984. The survey's volunteers were interviewed every-other year between the years 2000 and 2010.
Participants were asked questions about their relationship status. Meanwhile, queries about their emotional health included ones about whether they felt calm, sad, or very depressed.
The situation was different during second big relationships. Both sexes had the same increase in emotional health whether they cohabited or got married, according to Quartz.
The study's co-author Claire Kamp Dush is an OSU associate professor of human sciences. Her theory is that the study's results could reveal that living together before getting married is less of a stigma today.
Kamp Dush explained that in the past, society saw marriage as the only way for young couples to get the social support needed for emotional help. That situation has changed. About two-thirds of today's couples live together before they get married, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that couples are also now living together for longer periods of time. according to Yahoo.
In addition, men and women see living together differently. Women view it as a step towards marriage, while men perceive it as a trial run.
The study had some limits. In particular, the survey did not ask questions about the quality of couples' romantic relationship, and it was just taken biannually over one decade.