Why Cohabitation is NOT Good for You

While the eight of us were seated round the table and kept on soaking ourselves in more and more beer and trying to drink ourselves to stupor and doing what most guys do over drinking some beer which is talking about women, a fierce argument broke out. The debate was: Is it better for a man and a woman to cohabit before getting married or not?

Most of the guys there were already into some form of cohabiting so it didn’t come as a surprise to me when they quickly started to defend the practice.

They gave their reasons for doing this as the couples involved helping each other out, having a human company; knowing, learning, trusting and understanding your partner everyday; leads to a better courtship and test running the would be marriage experience, getting free laundry as well as already prepared food plus of course, the “free” and assured sex at the end of every blessed day!

One other guy reminded me that cohabitation might also be a way for couples to reduce things like house rent and cost of living.

Wow! They really had some point there!

But being the type of person I am who likes to argue a lot and also hates popular opinion and so often likes to go the other way, if not for anything, just to play the devil’s advocate and stir up some trouble, I decided I’ll rather burst their bubble.

Besides, I must admit I was miffed when they started making it seem as if cohabitation was the way to go so I just had more motivation to go on the defensive, since I must admit again, I have never been in any cohabitation arrangement!

So, I decided that one way I will effectively give it back to them is by using their points against them.

Wanna see how I did it? You are welcome. We’ll just do that over the next few pages.

But first, some warnings.

If you just happen to be into any form of cohabitation relationship, you are also included in my ‘personal attack’ here because by the time you are through with this reading piece, you will see that your bubble, which I promise to bust, will be leaking uncontrollably, hopefully…

Mind you, I am strictly addressing guys so if you are a lady who likes cohabiting, please I’d rather you just pass.

Okay, enough said, let’s get started.

No privacy

Yeah. Guys, this is the first reason why I vote against cohabitation. There is no privacy. Even if there is a semblance of it, privacy and cohabitation, they don’t mix all that well.

People do get in the way and boundaries will not be set or enforced properly. People might end up hearing or seeing what they are not supposed to see.

Sometimes you might just feel like being alone but your partner might wrongly misread this as you being selfish or secretive or distant or not loving and caring. And that’s another big problem of it’s own.

You will be monitored

Of course, get ready to be monitored like mad. Guys, I bet you must have experienced this and you know I am telling the truth.

You might be thinking you and the girl are just testing how things work out but in the girl’s mind, she’s already seeing herself married to you and she’s not ready to take chances so as to make sure that you are not actually wasting her time, so to speak. That’s how a woman’s mind usually works, you know?

This monitoring also means that your freedom will very much be restricted. God save you if you just happen to have a very suspicious partner because your text messages, your Facebook activities and even your internet browsing history might come under constant assault in the manner of the snooping Secret Service.

Get ready to always answer questions like “Where have you been?”, ‘Who was that girl?’, “What’s the meaning of this text message and who sent it?”, ‘Where are you now and when are you coming back?’, “Have you always been this dirty?”, ‘Why didn’t you pick my call?’, “Do you still love me?”

Jeeze. Oh, spare me, please.

Continuous Devaluation

One funny thing about human beings is that we tend to value less the things we have or see or use the most. Of course, why do you think scarcity creates more value and pushes the prices up?

Yes, it’s true. Why do you think diamonds are valued more than water even though water is necessary for our every day survival on the planet? Scarcity, my friend, scarcity!

Yes, we know that attraction between people is often built on availability. But then, the more available you are to your partner(okay, let me add during courtship), the more you are being consciously or unconsciously devalued. You might want to deny it but it’s a fact of life!

This normally happens to us guys so you know what I am saying. There is an assured comfort that comes with knowing that you already have someone who will always be there for you to the extent that we start misbehaving by devaluing such person and taking them for granted.

You might even start becoming lazy and no longer interest in making her happy. Your interest in her will also start to wane. This will most likely lead to you neglecting your partner which is not a healthy practice in any relationship but then, that’s exactly what cohabitation might cause. Don’t shoot me, remember I said might.

Boring sex

Sex is usually the best when it is unexpected or spontaneous. But in the dynamics of a cohabiting relationship, this rule often changes.

Unless the participants have earlier agreed on keeping everything platonic, which I don’t think is that possible, the sex quickly becomes part of the arrangement too.

And you know what this will eventually lead to? Of course, it leads to boring sex. The sex can also start becoming not only boring but as time goes on, it might also start appearing as an incestuous-like affair most especially when the cohabitation process has started running into years.

Another reason why the sex might become boring, or should I say not fulfilling is because the girl in question might not feel so free to let herself go.

Out of insecurity, or morality or whatever reason she might have conjured up in her wary mind, she might still be harboring this feeling that you are just using her.

So, she sensibly defaults to saving up herself. Too bad.

But, I may be wrong.

Distraction

Of course, you will be distracted, like it or not. Things that you don’t necessarily need to concern yourself with assuming you are not cohabiting will start cropping up.

Things like feeding allowance, maintenance allowance etc. will start calling for your attention more than is required.

You will also learn how to provide for more than one mouth because sometimes she might also visit with some other friends and you won’t want to be seen as the miserly guy who cannot even keep up.

Your academics will also suffer assuming you are a student as you will also learn how to devote some of your time to unnecessary entertainments. Your finances will also take some hit because maintaining a family is not an easy walk through the park.

In fact, so many things will be calling for your attention, and they might for calling for it at the same time!

Mind you, it is a well known and undisputable fact that women love and demand attention, 100% of it actually…

As a man, do you think you can cope with that? All the time? Believe me, I have been there and I can tell you, it is not as easy as it might sound!

Nothing (new) to discover

Cohabiting also robs the partners the chance of making some new discoveries with each other because by the time the two partners have lived together for some time, they will find out that there is no longer anything to discover.

This is usually the first stage of declining of interest in one’s partner as boredom starts to set in thus driving both lovebirds further apart.

By the way, I am not trying to say that the lovebirds won’t discover anything in themselves during their cohabitation. Of course, they will discover their differences and similarities in the process of cohabiting but then, just like in the case of those Reality TV shows where the actors are aware they are being watched, they will always feel the pressure to always put up their best behaviors but most times, in a very pretentious manner. I will speak more on this later.

I don’t know if you will like to agree with me but all guys know how to behave and conduct themselves in a gentleman fashion during courtship. And so do women.

I don’t know for you guys, but as for me, I always like to keep it real.

Break up is very hard to deal with

Sometimes in certain relationships, break ups become inevitable but in a cohabiting relationship, such break ups are usually so hard to deal with and this is almost made worse in dire situations when the couples start conforming and living to the expectations of others.

People might want to not be so obvious with their dating status but cohabitation does not allow this. It makes a lot of people to start taking notice of that relationship.

A lot of people like friends and family will start paying notice to the relationship while counting on the relationship to progress and transmute into long-term serious things.

This will not obscure the fact that there are some other people who are also interested in seeing the relationship break up and shatter to pieces as a result of one thing or the other.

And so it becomes worse and a very big burden for those involved in the cohabitation relationship not to either disappoint or satisfy any of these groups of people in the process.

Thus when the break up issues crop up, the couple will not want to disappoint those who want them to succeed on one hand while at the same they would want to deny those who are wishing for their break up the pleasure of standing by and watching the whole thing so up in smoke.

And so they might just have to continue in a very toxic relationship to their own detriment.

Disloyalty

Yes, at some point in every human relationship, there is bound to be a case of disloyalty. In most romantic relationships, this disloyalty is often caused by one party taking the other for granted.

When two people in a romantic relationship cohabit, there is every possibility that, like I mentioned earlier, they would start taking each other for granted because they now know each other.

This might be a good or bad thing depending on the emotional intelligence and/or capacity as well as the level of maturity existing between the involved couples but one thing you can never take away from a relationship is the truth in that statement that “familiarity breeds contempt.”

And it can even get worse because we all know that friends can easily become spoiled and tyrannical.

On the other side of this disloyalty is the case of forced loyalty whereby the parties involved will strive so much to prove to each other how loyal they are.

This is just another case of trying too hard to please and this might cause certain types of strains in their relationship which if they are not matured enough to handle will certain end the relationship.

At some point, the break is bound to occur when one party, usually the man, decides that he cannot keep up with the acting game any longer.

The thing with this cohabiting of a thing is that it will make couples to never show their real selves and this will certainly dampen and possibly harm the relationship on the long run because true relationship can only be established by people being true or real to each other.

There is also another dangerous angle to the cohabitation experience where people try to hide their true selves until they get what they want. In such a situation, you might just wake up one day to discover that you have been living with a stranger or worse still, a monster, or even worse still, a very dangerous monster all along!

Don’t be mad. This stranger knows that if s/he showed you his or her real self in the beginning, you will still be running by now.

But one wonderful thing about humans is that we are always guided by our true nature and we will always get around revealing our true selves in one way or the other, one day.

The problem is your cohabiting partner may not be prepared to handle that person.

Sympathy marriage

Cohabitation might lead to sympathy marriage. There is a possibility that when two people have lived with each other for so long, done so many things together with each other, shared each other’s joys and pains, invested so much on each other, known each other’s secret/s, the only thing remaining for them is to get married.

But that marriage may be out of sympathy because nobody with a good conscience will like to be seen as a gold-digger or a user or even a player who was all along parasitizing on his or her partner just because the going is good.

But you can’t neglect the fact that the problem in there is that the sole reason why one of the partners might want out is simply because, like I said earlier, either there is nothing new to discover or maybe boredom or when the love has completely died but s/he will be forced to stay in the relationship just to appear as a gentleman in the eyes of the public.

Only to suffer inside, with a heart full of regrets, dissatisfaction and a feeling of lack of fulfillment behind closed doors.

You tell me, what a better way to open up a Pandora’s box filled with infidelity and a turbulent married life full of strife!

It doesn't automatically lead to marriage

Strangely though, cohabitation does not lead to marriage and if it does, it might just be that type of sympathy marriage I just touched on. This is usually because the guys are like why pay for the cow if you are already getting the milk for free. Simple, pure and straightforward logic as a man, if you ask me!

People are animals of fun and we naturally like to flow where the excitement is. When the excitement dies, we turn around and look for another place to reenact what he previously had or deemed to be fun.

This can also happen in marriages where the couples no longer find fun in themselves and completely bored with each other, naturally they want out and seek divorce.

But this can even get worse and cause a very big psychological problem if it just happens that either or both parties have made a lot of investment in terms of time and resources in the relationship and the thought of throwing it all away might just force some to settle for a sour and sad married life but there are some people who already know they cannot stand such a situation so they just decide to end their relationship – eventually.

In one way, I know you might be tempted to feel or say that it is better this happens in a cohabitation relationship rather than in a marriage situation in the real sense of the word marriage but I still maintain that most cohabitation relationships are just like marriages without the vows.

The inherent problem in the cohabitation relationship is that it leaves the woman’s hope hanging on the fifty-fifty balance, with her waiting and praying hard that she will not have to resort to handing you the man an ultimatum, with her seriously wishing something good will happen and you will decide to be the man and take up the mantle and do what you have to do and put a ring on it rather than hanging in there and watching her biological clock tick away as the cohabitation period starts running into years even as her sexual worth continues to depreciate!

Last Shot: Now, here is the big question: since all that I have mentioned so far will still happen in any marriage since cohabitation is actually a glorified marriage without the rings and the vows, does it mean that I am advocating you stay out of marriage?

No.

Now here’s the thing, guys. Here’s the big answer for you and I am so sure you are not going to like it. And that’s why I am going to say it.

Listen, if you (know you) can cohabit, why don’t you just go ahead and marry the girl first and stop cheating or confusing or even deceiving her?

Oh yes. That is exactly how I see it because in all cohabitation arrangement, most times if something goes bad, it is the women that lose out – the most!

Do you want me to count the possible physical and emotional abuse, the likely abortion/s, the abandonment and baby mama drama, the loss of sense of purpose and direction on the part of the woman, and her wasted time too, the constant though unspoken societal ridicule of being viewed as a wayward, laughable and foolish girl who cannot even read the handwriting on the wall or see what is really going on behind her, etc., before you agree with me?

Truth is cohabitation does not offer women security. Marriage does. Don’t tell me it will not work because I can bet you are already old enough to know what burning your all your bridges mean?

In my own honest opinion, if you just go ahead and marry her, instead of settling for cohabiting, you will then have every reason to fight and make it work rather than your usual practice of lackadaisically sitting on the fence like a greedy and immature imp, and looking out for the next one, while in the meantime enjoying the eating your cake and cookies and chocolates and still having it.

If you do that, believe me, you will just discover something very important and interesting and surprising and refreshing waiting for you at the other side.

You will start noticing how she will just magically change and how she’ll be giving you so much back in return with so much happiness. I mean, the helping each other out. The human company. The knowing, learning, trusting and understanding your partner every day. And the free laundry. Plus the already prepared tasty food always waiting for you. And of course, the “free” and assured invigorating sex at the end of every blessed day and anytime you want it until either you are completely satiated or you can’t get it up again!

Yeah!

All this for you for your enjoyment because your woman is very much highly motivated now to do all that for you because of the sense of security which you have given her – with just one ring!

I think it is better that way so you should try it. Or don’t you think so?

Wait a minute…why are you guys looking at me that way? Oho! Now, I get it! You don’t like that, do you?

Ha ha ha…

Anyway, that’s your business. Me, I am done here.

Ha ha ha…