Are You Married Or Just Living Together? There Are The Same Emotional Benefits For Women

Women seem to fare just as well living together as being married when it comes to emotional health in relationships, according to a recent study.

Researchers found that women experienced a decline in emotional stress when they moved in with a romantic partner or when they went straight to marriage. Men, on the other hand, experienced a drop in emotional distress when they went directly to marriage--not when cohabitating with a partner for the first time.

"Now it appears that young people, especially women, get the same emotional boost from moving in together as they do from going directly to marriage," Sara Mernitz, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in human sciences at The Ohio State University, said in a news release. "There's no additional boost from getting married."

During the study, researchers examined data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which included 8,700 people who were born between 1980 and 1984. All participants were interviewed every other year from 2000 to 2010. The NLSY97 is conducted by Ohio State's Center for Human Resource Research for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While participants were also required to report on their relationship status, they also asked them five questions each time that assessed their levels of emotional distress based on a scale of 1 (all the time) to 4 (none of the time) on how often they felt unhappy.

The findings showed that while women felt a significant decrease in emotional stress if they moved in with their partner or married, men showed different signs regarding emotional health depending on the relationship. For instance, in men entering their second union--whether via marriage or cohabitation--they showed no difference in signs regarding emotional health when compared to female counterparts. However, when it came to first unions, researchers found that men only experienced a decrease in emotional stress if it went directly to marriage and not cohabitation. 

Though researchers aren't certain what explains the gender differences, they believe that living together may be a "relationship test" for some men, researchers say. 

They also note how the study results push on a changing landscape in the United States and potentially show some emotional benefits to cohabitation.

"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," she said.

The study is published in the Journal of Family Psychology.

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