Living in unwedded bliss

In a major demographic shift of our lifetimes, "living together" has gone mainstream. And Seattle is at the forefront nationally, second only to Portland in rate of unmarried-couple households.

COMING UP

BOOK SIGNING

WHAT: Marshall Miller will talk about and sign copies of "Unmarried to Each Other," which he co-authored with Dorian Solot

WHEN: Today, 5 p.m.

WHERE: The Elliott Bay Book Co.,

101 S. Main St.

"Cohabitation has increased dramatically across every demographic segment," said Dorian Solot, 29, of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, a Boston-based support and advocacy group.Nationally, cohabitation has jumped 1,000 percent since 1960, according to U.S. census figures for "persons of opposite sex sharing living quarters."

Since 1990, when the census added a new, more specific category for unmarried partners, including same-sex couples, cohabiting has increased 72 percent.

Almost half of Americans under age 45 live with an unmarried partner at some point, according to the National Survey of Families and Households. But so do a lot of conservative grandmas and middle-age parents. Not to mention gay couples who can't marry.

Research shows that couples moving in together after the wedding are in the minority.

The Northwest's broad acceptance of cohabitation is explained by its generally liberal, relatively unchurched population, says University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz.


		Julie Simon / P-I

But rates are growing fastest in the Bible Belt, reflecting a broad shift in social norms.

"You cannot predict someone's politics by whether they're cohabiting," said Stephanie Coontz, national co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families and a professor at The Evergreen State College.

Solot and Marshall Miller, 28, her cohabiting partner of nine years, co-founded the Alternatives to Marriage Project, which has amassed a mailing list of 5,000 households in its four-year existence.

"Many of our members went looking for us," said Miller. "In us, they find an organization that says it's OK to be single" and live together.

Most cohabiting couples, however, do marry eventually. When partners are at odds on the issue, it's usually the woman who drags her feet, according to Solot and Miller.

The authors offer support and guidance for every demographic niche in their new book, "Unmarried to Each Other" (Marlowe & Company, 287 pages, $16.95). Besides practical and legal advice, it includes anecdotes gathered from more than 100 cohabiting couples. Other tips and resources are on their Web site, www.unmarried.org.Susan Ware of Seattle said she contacted the Alternatives to Marriage Project more than a year ago for advice on how to ensure she'd have emergency-room access if anything happened to her partner, Kai Strandskov, 28.

Ware, 25, said she entered a bad marriage when she was younger, largely because of parental pressure, but she divorced a year later. Although her live-in boyfriend's more-religious family wishes they would get married, her own parents are "happy with the choices I've made."

"I don't have any desire to do the marriage thing," said Ware, a college student who formerly worked at Microsoft. "Kai doesn't either. I don't think it has the same weight it did for my parents' generation."

Other couples say they feel they're as good as married, even without official sanction.

"Living together, we're not bound by anything. It's our choice," said Darcie Kline of Ballard, who shares a 10-year relationship and two children with her partner, Michael Christophesen. "It doesn't mean we're not committed."

Besides, she said, if she married, she would lose benefits under the state's Basic Health Plan.

Although the spike in cohabitation is a big change from the 1950s, Solot and Miller say current trends are in line with social norms throughout much of history, from ancient Egypt to medieval Europe.

Coontz, who consulted on the book's history chapter, agreed.

"For literally thousands of years," she said, "marriage was, in many societies, just a question of your intention. If you were intending to be married, you were treated as married. What I find interesting is that nowadays cohabitation is seen more as a stage in the progress toward marriage."

"Living together," Miller agreed, "is a chapter in many people's lives."

They offer these tips on how to make it work:

Should you live together?

Make the decision slowly, seriously and with great care because, while it's easy to move in together, it can be heartbreaking and difficult to move out. If children are involved, be doubly cautious. Ideally, you shouldn't live together to test a relationship but to deepen a relationship you already know is good.

Consider a "trial cohabitation." Try spending a week or two at each other's homes while maintaining your daily routine with all its hassles. This assumes no children are involved. Kids need stability, so don't uproot their lives until you're ready for a long-term commitment.

Have a heart-to-heart to see if you have compatible assumptions about marriage. Otherwise you might end up like "Mary," who told the authors, "Bobby and I were in the jewelry store together and he decided that I could pick out some rings. So I picked out some rings and I asked him, 'Does this mean we're engaged?' He said, 'Well, it just means you have rings.' "

Marriage carries an assumption of monogamy that isn't necessarily true of cohabiting. As Coontz noted, married people were the only forbidden fruit on television's "Temptation Island" -- cohabitors were considered fair game. Your own expectations may be quite different, so talk about this.

Most pregnancies among unmarried American women are unintentional, so be scrupulous about birth control, discuss how you'd handle it if a pregnancy occurred and air expectations about when or if you might want children.

Daily life: Making it work

Clarify expectations about issues big and small, from closet space to money and division of chores. One woman said she "learned the hard way" that her partner researches every detail and makes spread sheets before he buys anything, while she prefers to just buy whatever looks good. (She conceded that her partner's method does result in better purchases.)

Don't threaten to move out every time you have an argument. And don't mentally keep your options so open that you fail to put any effort into the relationship. One woman, "Rose," credited her successful cohabitation to the couple's three-year rule: If either of them felt unhappy for three years, they would rethink the relationship. They've been going strong for 35 years.

Dealing with social pressure

Religious: Solot and Marshall say the Bible doesn't specifically forbid cohabitation, and they quote religious authorities about various church-sanctioned alternatives to marriage that existed in the past. They advise searching for a congregation with inclusive values. A church's stance on gay and lesbian issues is a good litmus test.

The latest study: You may have heard that living together before marriage increases a couple's chance of divorce. But those studies overlook the fact that couples who don't cohabit tend, as a group, to be more religious and more opposed to divorce, said Solot and Miller. Coontz said the research is outdated because it emerged in an era when cohabitation was an alternative to marriage, not a precursor to it. "This work is really yet to be done," Coontz said.

Social expectations: "Marriage was never something that was important to me," Solot said. "Suddenly, in my 20s, it became important to everybody else."

Your own response will depend partly on the openness of the people involved. With parents, it often helps to explain the significance of the relationship -- since, without the marker of marriage, they may not know how important the person is in your life. Discussion also can prevent hurt feelings over issues such as, "Should I send Susie a birthday present?"

It also helps to surround yourself with supportive, like-minded people. The Ballard couple, Kline and Christophesen, get marriage comments from family but not their larger circle. "I never heard it from friends or co-workers," Kline said, "because they were all doing it, too."

Discrimination and legalities

Almost half the cohabiting couples who were surveyed for the book said they've faced discrimination over marital status. Problem areas include joint banking and loans, adoption, car rental, housing, health insurance, immigration law, taxes, inheritance law and hospital visitation. However, the picture is changing -- faster in some areas than others.

"Domestic-partner benefits have just taken off," Solot said. (For a searchable database of employers offering domestic-partner benefits, see www.hrc.org/worknet.)

The city of Seattle, for instance, offers domestic-partner benefits, and most landlords don't ask or care about marital status. But don't expect the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service to treat cohabitors like married couples anytime soon. Couples who have sued or filed discrimination complaints have had mixed success, say Miller and Solot.

They recommend you protect yourself and your assets by obtaining a cohabitation contract, a will, forms that address medical visitation and proxy decision-making (available at hospitals or at www.partnershipforcaring.org.) and durable power of attorney for finances. (Sample forms are at www.hrc.org/familynet.)

Deepening your commitment

Consider a ceremony to celebrate your bond. Besides being joyous and affirming, the authors write, a ceremony signals the couple is serious, "softening the hearts of great-aunts who didn't approve of cohabitation, indicating to friends that you intend this partner to be The One, and giving her mother her day to be 'mother of the bride.' "

For resources and ideas, see www.unmarried.org and www.indiebride.com.

If you eventually decide to marry, change some aspect of your life together to mark this new stage. If nothing else, rearrange the furniture.

One in three babies in the United States is born to unmarried parents, many of whom are cohabiting. Although you don't have to be married to create a nurturing, stable family, Solot and Marshall say marriage can add an extra layer of glue.

"Certainly, creating a healthy family for children is incredibly important and most people do want to be married when they have children," Solot said.

According to the authors, about half of cohabitors marry before their baby is born and a majority marry within five years of the birth.

Since cohabitation is often a step toward marriage, the authors asked couples how tying the knot changed things.

Some said they fell into gender stereotypes, some saw no difference and "some people were surprised by how much better they felt, that there was a new level of security in the relationship," Solot said.

Even when nothing changed between a couple, they often felt others viewed them differently. As one woman put it: "When you get married you become an adult. You sort of enter a big club."

P-I reporter Cecelia Goodnow can be reached at 206-448-8353 or ceceliagoodnow@seattlepi.com.

Add P-I Lifestyle headlines to