Category: Weekend Treat

By Rois Ola

For some people they are of the opinion that couples who cohabit before marriage tend to have less-satisfying marriages and are more likely to divorce than couples who live apart before marriage. This I believe is a matter of opinion or religious belief.

I am not here to tell you what is right or wrong, but share my view and experience on what I believe the effects of cohabitation can be for relationships.

While I was in university, there was a couple who lived together for a few years. Unfortunately, the boyfriend was not even a student of the school. They professed to love each other. Meanwhile, the girl got constant beating from her boyfriend.

At a point when she could not bear it, her brothers stepped in and tore the relationship apart. Will we say cohabitation in this case caused the break-up, or encouraged the beating and maltreatment she was receiving?

Cohabitation has been a hot topic of conversation for many years and may remain so till man exists no more. In the 60s and 70s, a  few couples lived together before marriage. Today, research shows that  more than 60 per cent of couples cohabit before marrying.

Numerous reputable studies, however, find that couples who cohabit prior to marriage significantly increase their risk for divorce. In case you have no idea, cohabitation is the state of living together and having a sexual relationship without being married.

On the other hand, it is also suggested that times have changed from when cohabitation before marriage signalled higher chances for divorce later. More and more, it appears that cohabitation plays a smaller role in predicting divorce than it used to.

Some people believe that cohabitation helps to stop more people from getting married blindly, testing the car engine before you zoom off. Some would argue against this point of view, especially when religion is involved.

So does cohabitation harm your chances of marriage? Does it increase the risk of divorce?

It is advisable for people to be cautious before they run out and encourage friends to cohabiting, because the truth is that even if you feel cohabitation is ok, it does not mean the negative effective will disappear. It will still exist and can affect people in a relationship.

For example, smoking cigarettes was not only socially acceptable in the past. In fact, it was the cool thing to do for years. Then research revealed that smoking, and even second-hand smoke, causes lung cancer. While not everybody who smokes gets lung cancer, the risk was great enough to make people think twice.

If a lifelong, healthy marriage is your goal, consider the evidence. There is more than enough of it to support that living together before marriage may put your relationship at risk.

WHEN researchers ask cohabiters these questions, partners often have different, unspoken — even unconscious — agendas.

Read Also: How to cope with being lonely in your relationship

Women are more likely to view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, while men are more likely to see it as a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment, and this gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage.

One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse.

Sliding into cohabitation wouldn’t be a problem if sliding out were as easy. But it isn’t. Too often, adults enter into what they imagine will be low-cost, low-risk living situations only to find themselves unable to get out months, even years, later.

It’s like signing up for a credit card with 0 per cent interest. At the end of 12 months when the interest goes up to 23 per cent you feel stuck because your balance is too high to pay off. In fact, cohabitation can be exactly like that. In behavioural economics, it’s called consumer lock-in.

Lock-in is the decreased likelihood to search for, or change to, another option once an investment in something has been made.

The greater the set-up costs, the less likely we are to move to another, even better, situation, especially when faced with switching costs, or the time, money and effort it requires to make a change.

Cohabitation is loaded with set-up and switching costs. Living together can be fun and economical, and the set-up costs are subtly woven in. After years of living among roommates’ junky old stuff, couples happily split the rent on a nice one-bedroom apartment.

They share so many costs and enjoy shopping for new furniture together. Later, these set-ups and switching costs have an impact on how likely they are to leave.

Cohabitation is here to stay, and there are things young adults can do to protect their relationships from the cohabitation effect. It’s important to discuss each person’s motivation and commitment level beforehand and, even better, to view cohabitation as an intentional step toward, rather than a convenient test for, marriage or partnership.

It also makes sense to anticipate and regularly evaluate constraints that may keep you from leaving.

I am not for or against living together, but I am for adults knowing that, far from safeguarding against divorce and unhappiness, moving in with someone can increase your chances of making a mistake — or of spending too much time on a mistake.

I am strongly of the opinion that The best time to work on someone’s marriage is long before he or she has one or is actually married and this means before cohabitation. I wish you all the best.

 Rois Ola

AT some point in time, everyone would have experienced what it feels like to be lonely. No matter how strong you are, loneliness can come any time. Being lonely is not just an emotion reserved for those who are single or alone, it is experienced by single, married, divorced, man, woman, child, young, old in fact everyone.  But there are ways to work through it and not just to work through it but survive it.

Do you know that even people on long term relationships experience loneliness? Oh yes, I have been with my husband for over two decades and YES, I get lonely sometimes. It’s very common that people find themselves in long-term relationships feeling lonely.

There are many reasons why people in a relationship can be lonely because something isn’t working in the relationship itself or because they look to their partner to fill a void that they’ve been carrying within themselves even before they met the person or started the relationship. The fact is no one can completely make you happy but you yourself.

Whatever the reason is , here are a few pointers as to why you may feel this way, explain why you might be feeling this way and provide ways to address the root of the loneliness you may be experiencing.

What makes people feel lonely in their relationship?

This is a phase I have been through and from experience one reason for feeling lonely could be that your relationship is not working as well as it once did. When people   are dissatisfied with their family lives, private lives with partners they feel lonely all or most of the time. It also appears as if more and more people are unable to close the void with material things anymore.

This sense of loneliness can often take place when a couple has lost their emotional connection, to each other, not very healthy, but it happens and you can overcome it, it’s a matter of tracing why you are lonely and getting to know the cause on time.

Let me add here that even in the very best of relationships, there are going to be those times when one or both partners may have drifted apart and feel somewhat distant and estranged from one another, you know why? Because people change and when they don’t grow together unrest sets in.

When a partner is also to be vulnerable or does not have the capacity to be, this can also contribute to feelings of loneliness within romantic relationships, when you want to be macho or show strength and you use that as a reason not to communicate or express your feeling, share things hurting, this can be very risky. Do you know it’s possible to claim to be close to someone yet they know nothing about you? Think about it.

There is also the problem of the way social media has been allowed to put so much hype and pressure on relationships.

Comparing your relationship to ones you see on social media is pure suicide! And this alone is a major factor these days.

When you see couples celebrate each other’s birthday, valentine, or something, you see the way they spend, flash wealth and use loving poses. You on the other hand may feel it’s all real, meanwhile its FAKE. So why allow yourself feel this way?  And then to add insult to injury, you or partner spend the whole day on social media, how will it work? WHO will do the work? Why won’t you feel lonely?

Of course I have also discovered that there are some people who have what is called a “heritable trait” and these sets of people may be genetically predisposed to feel loneliness throughout their lives. No can take away your loneliness only you can. If you keep relying on some feeling or someone to come and wipe away the loneliness, that will be hard. You need to find the way to acquire inner peace.

How do you know if the loneliness stems from you or your relationship?

It may be difficult to determine the root of your lonesomeness especially if your emotional state of mind is clouded with so much.

Read Also: Key truths to help any relationship survive

But the first step should be to talk to your partner about how you feel, while making this conversation, your partner is able to point to concrete and clear examples of ways they regularly or have been trying to make you feel emotionally fulfilled and yet you still can’t shake feeling lonely, probably due to insecurity or self-confidence issues then it may be safe to say it’s probably more something within, rather than coming from the other person. The problem may just be YOU.

If that is the case, take a closer look at your past relationships to determine if the feelings you are experiencing are a pattern rather than isolated to this particular relationship, if you talk to your partner and they’re also experiencing feelings of loneliness, it’s likely that the relationship is the culprit and the issue needs to be fixed or else the lonely feeling will never fade. strange to say that loneliness is contagious.

Take a look at the feelings within your relationship, is it more  when you are together? Do you feel this when in a new relationship or after a long while? Check the connection between the both of you and be sure you are not drifting apart

How do you overcome feeling lonely in a relationship?

If after the talk or discussion and you discover the loneliness stems from your relationship and you’re hoping to get back on track, it’s time to have another talk with your partner immediately. I would advise that the very first thing to do is to become self-aware of what you are feeling and then to approach your partner and begin what will probably be a series of conversations, it may be an emotionally stressful one, but you need to say what needs to be said.

You may wonder how you can have this discussion yet again without making your partner feel judged or defensive? It’s important to come from a place of vulnerability when you’re explaining how you feel and to use a non-accusatory tone and language, let’s say for instance you have to really start this conversation, you can start with, Femi I want to trust you with what’s happening with me right now — I’ve been feeling somewhat neglected recently, and I don’t want you to hear it so much as blame, as just more my experience.  And take the conversation from there.

Then, listen to your partner’s point of view. If they are on the same page about wanting to mend the relationship, you can have a series of conversations geared towards figuring out what may be damaged in your relationship and how to fix it.

And if you need a little extra help with communication or coming up with solutions, maybe some counselling from trusted friend or experienced counsellor will help. You greatly need wisdom and skills that can diffuse the situation rather than worsen it. Be WISE.

If, however, your partner really is doing everything to make you feel fulfilled and the loneliness is something that exists within yourself, you might be someone who tends to look for external ways to quell your loneliness, THEN it means you have to be disciplined enough to first of all admit, accept and get help for it.

While it may seem counterintuitive, the solution for loneliness is not necessarily to surround yourself with people. The key to handling it is to confront it, as said earlier admit, accept and handle. When you confront it then that is the first step to getting the root cause and addressing it, for a better, happier and more fulfilled life. I Wish you all the best.