Late last month, the Journal of ily published a the newest study with a somewhat foreboding finding: Couples who lived together before marriage had a lower divorce rate in their first year of marriage, but had a higher divorce rate after five years. It supported earlier research linking premarital cohabitation to increased risk of divorce.

In other words, by the point boffins have sufficient longitudinal studies to know if one is meaningfully connected to the other, new personal norms you to definitely designed the newest results have a tendency to scarcely become of use to partners now racking your brains on exactly how cohabitation you can expect to connect with its relationship

But just two weeks later, the Council on Contemporary Families-a nonprofit group at the University of Texas at Austin-published a statement that came to the exact opposite conclusion: Premarital cohabitation seemed to make couples less likely to divorce.