Dr. Molly Barrow

The Official Dr. Molly Barrow Blog offers educational self help advice about relationships, business, dating, marriage, parenting, teenagers and children, self-esteem, love and romance. Dr. Molly Barrow holds a Ph.D in psychology and is the author of Matchlines for Singles and the self-esteem adventure series, Malia and Teacup Awesome African Adventure and Malia and Teacup Out on a Limb. Dr. Molly is a relationship and psychology expert host on progressiveradionnetwork.com and television guest.

Monday, November 13, 2006

COHABITATING COUPLES DR MOLLY BARROW MATCHLINES RELATIONSHIP SELF HELP

Marriage is a legally binding contract that overnight can make you wealthy or fifty percent less financially secure. Two signatures commit the parties for life and eliminate all other partners. Regardless of changes in circumstances like illness, disability, incompatibility or simply growing apart in every way imaginable you stay until you die. The hot choice made at age 20 or 24 must also work for you when you are forty or seventy years old. Once a girlfriend becomes a wife, her list of duties make Cinderella's pale in comparison. Is it any wonder that people are choosing to live together rather than marry?
People live together as lovers, friends and roommates who share expenses and sexual privileges. Young people may live together for security and the elderly live together to protect their social security. Often living together is more attractive than gambling with a nearly fifty per cent failure rate of marriage and vicious divorce laws.
The most important decision that you will ever make is the selection of a life partner and the parent of your children. Shopping carefully is not only brilliant it is mandatory. Remnents of traditional roles still linger and expand job duties of working women to Cinderella-like levels that she simply cannot fulfill. Does your husband expects a home cooked dinner, the children bathed and happily trotting off to bed with their homework finished while he in his Archie Bunker chair catches the news? Who can resist this lifelong contract? After working an eight-hour day for a paycheck, the wife will become frigid with resentment that may destroy the marriage. Unfortunately, this leaves the woman to do all the work alone anyway.
The older you are the more quickly you can identify crippling incompatibility. The younger person may require several years to peal back layers of compensation to reveal true character and potential for marriage. At first passion may dictate spending every waking and sleeping moment together. But passion fades after a few months and then someone has to move. During the shopping period must be a primary focus to eliminate an artificial push into unsustainable marriage and lifetime bond and. The forty percent of women with children living with a partner other than the father put their children at great risk for violence. Our society could help these parents and children in many ways such as health insurance, daycare, education and housing. Often, a person stays in a verbally or physically abusive relationship out of financial need or feels powerless to leave without intervention.

2 Comments:

  • At 10:33 AM, Blogger S.A.M. said…

    So what about those of us in our forties - divorced from our original "soul mate" with teenage children or children in college, etc.? Are you an advocate of living together? What are the chances of marrying the person you chose to live with for a year or so to see how things go first? I know I want to be in a long-term relationship with my current boyfriend, but marriage - I don't know if after divorces that included cheating spouses - are we both emotionally ready to fully trust someone new? Are we too set in our ways so we should make a "trial run" before making a marriage commitment?

     
  • At 10:39 PM, Blogger Dr. Molly said…

    Teenage children may not be receptive to a new parent. I do believe in long courtships because many people are so good at hiding their flaws. Take it slowly and seek some premarital counseling. The Relationship Quiz on my website drmollybarrow.com can be truly helpful.

     

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