Happily Unmarried
There are many reasons why baby boomer couples who might have gotten married a decade or two ago only live together now. Some reasons have to do with morality, some with affordability, some with practicality. Dr. John Curtis, a Ph.D. in Human Resource Development who has just written a book called “Happily Un-Married: Living Together and Loving It!
Baby boomers are known as trend setters, and while cohabitating trend setters like Oprah, Brad, and Jolene are in the spotlight now, many boomers have been “living in zen” for decades. The ‘60s were a time when every institution in America was tested and for many, discarded. Marriage is one of those challenged institutions, and we have never been the same since. In place of marriage, many have opted for the new “institution” of cohabitation. The novelty of living together outside of marriage is no longer new, but the fact that it has become mainstream, up and down the line of generations, is.
The way couples define commitment is dynamic. In our parents’ time, pre-1960s, few couples lived together without virtue of marriage. If they did, no one ever talked about it. Now, due in part to all the boomers who shacked up in the ‘60s, got married in the ‘70s, divorced in the ‘80s, and raised the first generation of children to come largely from broken homes, cohabitation is back with a vengeance.
Since so many of the children of baby boomers fear a failed marriage after seeing it in their own lives, nearly ten million couples are cohabitating instead, living together in an attempt to learn from their parents’ mistakes. And the fact is, many of these parents who made those mistakes have gone back to cohabitation themselves. Living together is not just for the twenty-something crowd.
Try before you commit, is a logical yet frequently discredited approach to building a successful relationship in the shadow of decades of failed marriages. While the U.S. leads the world in divorce, when it comes to cohabitation, we are playing catch-up with our European cousins who have some of the highest cohabitation rates in the world. This time around, we have the opportunity to get it right, to make cohabitation a successful institution rather than a failed social experiment as it was in the ‘60s.
But our motives have changed. We no longer cohabitate to rebel, to indulge in free love, or to reject our parents’ values. Instead, our motive is fear-based: we don’t want to make the same mistakes our parents did, and have another failed marriage ourselves. This time around, we need to take a totally different approach to improving the fitness and sustainability of our live-in relationships. We need a clear, step-by-step method that is not touchy-feely, judgmental, or complicated, and is based on the reality of what it means to be in a committed relationship in the 21st century.
“Happily Unmarried: Living Together & Loving It,” shows how to use business strategies to support any live-in relationship, so couples can be successful, committed, and happily un-married. Just think of it as a join venture.
1. Develop a common vision for the relationship to define why the relationship exists— before the shock that can happen after moving in together;
2. Write measurable objectives— determine how you will know if the relationship is progressing “according to plan,” and how to productively re-evaluate the relationship on a regular basis to either end it constructively, or to deepen it;
3. Develop and market a relationship “brand”— a “love logo” to head off the judgments and criticisms of friends and family before they start;
4. Merge “mindstyles”— to eliminate common battles like… how to spend the holidays, what to do with household possessions … how to cope with children from other relationships;
5. Create clear job descriptions— pinpoint each partner’s chores to prevent battles over simple things like who takes out the trash!
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Filed Under: Baby Boomers • Featured Story • John Curtis • Relationships
I was born in 1967, which makes me a boomer’s kid, the so-called “Generation X”. My parents did stay together, and it was not unusual for parents of friends to stay together as well. I married a woman two years younger than I am when we were both young. After two kids and seventeen years, the marriage was over (her idea, not mine). It was difficult for me to consider another serious relationship, and I swore to myself I wouldn’t ever marry again. Fortunately I found someone else who is my age as well, and also divorced with children, albeit younger by a few years than my own.
We decided to “shack up”, but both have promised ourselves that we will never marry again. We aren’t having children together, and we are both effectively “empty nesters” due to contentious divorce and visitation issues with her ex and mine while my children were still minors.
We never did any of the formal planning you suggest, and we’re getting on to two years now on the premise of mutual love and respect quite well. We have a mutual objective of enjoying what time we have left together, be it five years or fifty. Perhaps we’re jaded, but promises just don’t seem to carry the same weight as they did before “till death do us part” was breached. Now it’s a promise we are keeping to ourselves that we’re going to be happy together or we’re going to be finding someone else to do that with. This gives both of us the assurance that we’re together because we want to be, not because of a promise to stay together.
To Art:
As we Baby Boomers used to say, back in the days when many of us were doing the shacking up the article refers to: “We don’t need a piece of paper (i.e. marriage license) to legitimize our feelings for each other.” Sounds like you and your “significant other” are coexisting just fine using that same philosophy. Kudos. I suspect, however, that it is your greater maturity (as opposed to being married to your former spouses “when we were both young”) that is making your current relationship work, more than any promise or lack thereof.
The records of filings for divorce in the state of California reveal the following interesting statistics: If the male is under age 26 at the time of the marriage, he stands a 70% chance of the marriage failing. Same holds true for a female under the age of 24 at the time of the marriage. The odds of a marriage surviving goes up the older the couple are when they take their vows. Also, if the couple has a child within the first year of marriage, they have a 40% greater chance that the marriage will fail. Sounds like you hit ALL the wrong buttons with your first marriage.
So, now that you are both over age 40, are “empty nesters” with no children living with you, and do not plan to have any future children, perhaps you need not be concerned about whether to make vows to each other. The odds of your relationship enduring has gone waaay up.
By the way … I’m loathe to mention this, but …You are only 2 years younger than the youngest Baby Boomers. If you were born in 1967, odds are you are not “a boomer’s kid” as you suggest. (Unless your parents are among the very oldest Boomers and had you at age 21 or younger, you are more likely to be offspring of what is often called the Silent Generation, those born 1925 to 1945).
Best wishes for a long, happy, loving relationship … with or without promises. As the Beatles sang, “All you need is love!”