Marriage vs. Cohabitation: Does Living Together Beat the Wedding Ring?
RTTuesday, September 23, 2025.
For centuries, marriage has been cast as the cornerstone of happiness, the cultural apex of adulthood.
But new research tells us the real psychological boost comes much earlier—and with far less ceremony.
A longitudinal study across Germany and the U.K. shows that life satisfaction rises when people enter a relationship, peaks when they move in together, and stays elevated long after (El-Awad et al., 2025).
Marriage, by comparison, barely shifts the graph.
This isn’t to say marriage has lost its meaning.
Cohabitation may provide the measurable boost, but marriage is one of humanity’s oldest rituals. It is gravitas, continuity, and a public vow. If partnership is the daily bread of happiness, marriage is the ritual feast.
What the Research Really Shows
The Journal of Personality study followed over 1,000 adults who transitioned from singlehood to dating to cohabitation. The pattern was consistent:
Dating → already raised life satisfaction.
Cohabitation → peak perceived well-being.
Marriage → no consistent additional boost.
Here’s the bad news first. The so-called “marriage effect” first observed in 1990s Germany has since more or less vanished.
By the 2010s, marriage added nothing measurable beyond what partnership already delivered.
This aligns with broader evidence that life satisfaction stems from connection and support, not legal status (Umberson & Thomeer, 2020). In other words, happiness isn’t the certificate, it’s the toothbrush in the bathroom.
Marriage as a Cultural Perk of Affluence
Sad to say, marriage is no longer the universal threshold it once was. Sociologists describe it as a capstone event—a milestone reserved for those who have already achieved financial stability (Cherlin, 2004).
Working-class couples often cohabit without marrying. It’s not a lack of commitment; it’s the simple reality that weddings, averaging $35,000 in the U.S., are out of reach (The Knot, 2024).
Affluent couples marry later, after careers and mortgages are in place, treating the wedding as symbolic theater—lavish venues, signature cocktails, vows crafted for Instagram (Gibson-Davis et al., 2018).
Marriage has shifted from necessity to privilege. Once it secured survival; now it secures status.
Cultural Vignettes: Two Versions of Commitment
The Manchester Cohabiters: They move in after three months, buy a secondhand couch, and argue about who forgot to pay the gas bill. They aren’t married, not because they love less, but because every pound is spoken for. Their happiness is steady, measurable, and deeply real (El-Awad et al., 2025).
The Boston Vineyard Wedding: Two attorneys, already living together for six years, stage a vineyard wedding. Their marriage is not about beginning a life but about broadcasting one already built. It’s a capstone, a punctuation mark of privilege.
Both couples are committed. Both love. But one expresses it through necessity, the other through ritualized luxury.
Marriage Through History: From Survival to Symbol
Marriage has always been human—but not always romantic.
Survival: In agrarian societies, marriage secured labor, food, and continuity.
Property & Power: Among elites, it was transactional, consolidating wealth and alliances.
Religion & Community: For centuries, marriage was sanctified, binding couples to faith and kin.
Romantic Ideal: Only in the last 200 years has marriage been reframed as the pinnacle of love (Coontz, 2005).
The economic and religious imperatives may have loosened, but the ritual endures. Across cultures, marriage remains the way we transform private love into public vow.
Global Perspectives
Scandinavia: Marriage has been de-centered for decades. Cohabitation is the norm, backed by strong welfare states. Stigma is low; therapy often focuses less on legitimacy and more on intimacy (Johannesson, Ekholm, & Sundström, 2023).
East Asia: In countries like Taiwan, cohabitation is rising, but family stigma persists. Marriage is often still tied to filial duty and respectability (Yang, Purdie-Vaughns, & Wong, 2020).
United States: Marriage is bifurcated. For the middle and upper classes, it is a marker of “making it.” For the working class, it is less accessible, with cohabitation filling the space (Reeves, 2022).
Latin America: Cohabitation is longstanding and culturally normative, especially in regions where church weddings are expensive but partnership is expected (Perelli-Harris & Bernardi, 2015).
The Therapist’s Chair
In practice, this shows up everywhere. Working-class couples tell me, “We’d marry if we could afford it.”
Affluent couples say, “We’ll marry when the time feels right.” And across the spectrum, cohabitation is where happiness lives: the day-to-day rituals, the shared burdens, the intimacy of ordinary life.
But marriage still holds something sacred.
In session, I’ve watched couples tear up at the memory of their vows—not because the words raised their life satisfaction scores, but because they made love visible, binding, and witnessed. That ritual weight still carries through generations.
The Future of Marriage
Some argue marriage will fade as cohabitation becomes globally normalized (Perelli-Harris & Bernardi, 2015). Others believe its ritual gravity ensures survival, even if fewer people choose it (Reeves, 2022).
The likeliest path is both: marriage will lose universality but keep its symbolic heft. Cohabitation will remain the happiness engine; marriage will remain the gravitas-laden ritual.
Key Takeaways
Partnership drives happiness. Life satisfaction spikes when people enter a relationship and peaks when they move in together (El-Awad et al., 2025).
Marriage adds little to well-being. The small “marriage bump” seen in the 1990s has since vanished.
Marriage is now a cultural perk of affluence. Working-class couples cohabit; affluent couples increasingly treat marriage as a symbolic capstone event (Cherlin, 2004; Gibson-Davis, Edin, & McLanahan, 2018).
Cohabitation is nourishment, marriage is ritual. One sustains daily happiness, the other provides symbolic gravitas.
Bread and Ritual
Here’s the double truth:
Cohabitation is the bread of life. Nourishing, practical, sustaining. It provides the daily happiness of connection.
Marriages are the roses of ritual. Symbolic, solemn, deeply human. It gives shape and continuity to love.
One keeps us alive. The other makes us feel seen. Together, they remind us that while happiness comes from partnership, meaning often comes from vows.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Cherlin, A. J. (2004). The deinstitutionalization of American marriage. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66(4), 848–861.
Coontz, S. (2005). Marriage, a history: How love conquered marriage. Viking.
El-Awad, U., Eves, R., Hachenberger, J., Entringer, T. M., Goodwin, R., Realo, A., & Lemola, S. (2025). Mapping life satisfaction over the first years of cohabitation among former singles living alone in UK and Germany. Journal of Personality.
Fiese, B. H. (2006). Family routines and rituals. Yale University Press.
Gibson-Davis, C. M., Edin, K., & McLanahan, S. (2018). High hopes but even higher expectations: The retreat from marriage among low-income couples. Journal of Marriage and Family, 70(5), 1301–1312.
Johannesson, M., Ekholm, B., & Sundström, A. (2023). Couple-based treatment for depression in Scandinavian contexts. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 77(5), 345–356.
Perelli-Harris, B., & Bernardi, L. (2015). Exploring social norms around cohabitation. Demographic Research, 33, 701–732.
Reeves, R. V. (2022). Of boys and men. Brookings Institution Press.
The Knot. (2024). Real Weddings Study: 2023 wedding industry trends.
Umberson, D., & Thomeer, M. B. (2020). Family matters: Research on family ties and health. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(1), 404–429.
Yang, L. H., Purdie-Vaughns, V., & Wong, L. Y. (2020). Stigma and cultural scripts of mental illness in Taiwan. Social Science & Medicine, 247, 112810.