REASONS FOR COHABITATION & MARRIAGE

Right & Wrong Reasons: Cohabitation

There really are no good or right reasons for cohabitation. Clergy can pastorally understand, but we cannot condone a clear occasion of sin. Perhaps one of the reasons why these relationships often end badly is because their lack of formalization allows for an absence in responsibility and commitment. The emotional injury usually comes to the fore when the involvement of one partner is not reciprocated in the other, as in the incident just narrated (see the end of the previous post). Why these relationships often do not do well even if corrected by marriage is a legitimate puzzle. There may be no single reason.

Cohabitation cannot function as a trial marriage because it is only a false caricature of marriage. Financial benefits are often forfeited for at least one partner when the other has exceptional bills or when there is a pregnancy. Given work schedules, there may be a convenience to living together, but it leads to fornication and that in itself amplifies sexual need and dependence, another magnet toward cohabitation. Many young people want to get out from their parents and living with someone of the opposite sex gives the immediate impression of independence and maturity, even if false and temporarily disguising emotional hang-ups and relational shortfalls. Cohabitation also arises from various contradictory forces: insecurity in terms of possibly losing someone versus a fear of commitment that forestalls marriage. Using contraception, many couples play house (like little children) with insufficient fear of pregnancy and a romanticized or idealized fantasy about what adulthood and lasting relationships are about.

Right & Wrong Reasons: Marriage

While the Church opposes cohabitation and sexual activity outside of marriage, this does not mean that all couples living together should get married. People who are not ready for marriage should not be living together either. They should live with parents or with same-sex (platonic) friends or alone. Single people should live like singles, not like married people.

If the level of involvement in a marriage and in an active faith life is minimal from one or both and they simply get married for the wrong reasons, the chances for a successful marriage appear dismal. Wrong or weak reasons for marriage would include the following:

1. The woman becomes pregnant;
2. Parents insist that they get married;
3. They want a fancy ceremony;
4. It would avoid embarrassment (peers);
5. One partner coerces the other;
6. Business prospects would be helped;
7. It is the thing to do when getting older; and
8. Sex is more easily accessed.

The first one is wrong because a child cannot in himself be made the basis for a lifelong committed relationship of love. Rather, a child is ideally the fruit of such a love already in existence. Along with (2), (4), (5), and (6), couples should not feel compelled or forced into marriage. It must be their free and conscientious decision. Two and seven deal with externals which must be secondary to the principle resolution of a couple to share irrevocably their lives and to express rightfully their love as husband and wife.

Number eight is not all that bad as long as it is not the main reason. St. Paul said it was better to marry than to burn. Couples should not have sex until married. Instead of acknowledging this, some people get married because it makes sexual intercourse less problematical, especially in regard to tight schedules. But one should not marry another person “simply because” the prospect of sex is appealing. This is lust. If lust masquerades as love and goes no further than the flesh, what happens when it burns itself out? If sexuality is understood as an expression of a deep friendship and as a means to manifest a permanent union of love and sacrifice to a particular person, then what would otherwise be a wrong or weak reason becomes incredibly and resoundingly RIGHT. Men do not marry other men and neither do they marry trees nor automobiles. Men marry women. If there was no physical attraction and no potential for children, we would have friendships, but no marriage. Men and women would simply say, why bother?

I should add some of the good or strong reasons for marriage, although they were once reckoned as quite obvious:

1. The couple wants a permanent and formal commitment recognized both by civil society and by the Church.
2. Seeking mutual happiness, the couple reaches a maturity where they naturally desire to love each other in a responsible and life-giving way (settling down and having a family).
3. The couple dutifully desires to remain in God’s good graces and embrace the vocation which God has placed before them (it will come to their sanctification).

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