Living with a partner brings emotional benefits, especially for women, whether marriage is involved or not, a study finds.
Young couples—especially the women—benefit from improved emotional health whether they get married or just move in together, researchers at Ohio State University say.
In the study, female participants reported a decrease in emotional stress resulted from either getting married or moving in with a partner in a romantic relationship.
Males in the study, however, said they experienced a lessening of emotional distress when they moved straight into a marriage but not as much when they entered into a sexual relationship with a partner without marrying them.
Both genders experience even greater emotional happiness if they've been living together and then make the decision to get married, the researchers report in the Journal of Family Psychology.
"It's not commonly known that couples can get emotional benefits from moving in together without being married. That's something we should be talking about," says Claire Kamp Dush, study co-author and a professor of human sciences.
Previous studies have mostly focused on marriage, finding it can significantly increase lifetime happiness, but the new study looked beyond that limited viewpoint, researchers say.
What they found, they say, is evidence of a changing landscape in the United States and possibly a diminishing of the social stigma once attached to living together before a marriage.
"At one time marriage may have been seen as the only way for young couples to get the social support and companionship that is important for emotional health," says Kamp Dush.
"It's not that way anymore," she says. "We're finding that marriage isn't necessary to reap the benefits of living together, at least when it comes to emotional health."
The researchers looked at data gathered in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, in which more than 8,000 people born between 1980 and 1984 were interviewed semiannually between 2000 and 2010.
In the interviews the participants were asked about their current relationship status and were asked questions designed to assess emotional distress levels.
"We are able to look at people over a 10-year period and see what happens to them individually as they make these various transitions in their relationships," says doctoral student at Ohio State Univeristy and study co-author Sara Mernitz.
