Giving it a whirl.

It's logical to think, with so much divorce, that it might make sense to try before you buy., that living together before tying the knot will boost the chances of succeeding at marriage. But living with someone isn't quite the same as being married. People can live together for years and then they get married and everything changes. Suddenly, the rules alter and there are new expectations, added pressures.

Several studies in the 1980s showed that couples who live together first tend also to get divorced first. For example, a 1984 study for Statistics Canada showed that couples who lived together before marriage were more than twice as likely to be divorced than those who did not. Similar studies in Sweden, Britain, and the United States give similar results.

But there could be a lot of reasons for that, which have nothing to do with actually living together without a marriage certificate. Perhaps, people who live together before marriage have a different set of values in the first place. Perhaps, they are more reluctant to commit themselves to a permanent relationship, and more inclined to call it quits rather than stay in a less-than-satisfying marriage. Or, maybe it's a reflection of the relationship: people might consider shacking up with someone they're not too sure about marrying. Sometimes, people think marriage will bolster a rocky relationship by giving it what appears to be a firmer basis. Sometimes, they decide to marry not because they want to make a lifetime commitment but because of external factors such as the birth of a child or pressure from family or friends.