mating rituals

Does Moving In Together Make You Break Up?

Photo: Corbis

By age 25, more one-half of American women have shacked up with a significant other, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report on the status of cohabitation published today. More women are moving in with their partners at younger ages and living in sin longer — 22 months on average, compared to 13 months in 1995. The survey is somewhat limited. It only looks at the premarital living arrangements of women (12,000 of them, interviewed between 2006 and 2010), who move in with, in the AP’s words, “guys.” (“Nearly half of young women say the first time they lived with a guy, they weren’t married.”) Still, how did it work out for these women and their guys? “About 40 percent of the women who lived with a guy went on to marry him within 3 years,” the AP writes. Thirty-two percent were still together, 27 percent broke up. Not terrible odds! See the data broken down by race and education level here, and a warning: One in five women got pregnant during their first year of their first premarital cohabitation.

Does Moving In Together Make You Break Up?