The downside of living together
Marriage and divorce rates in New Zealand (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Marriage and divorce rates expressed as percentages of the Australian population at the time. Based on statistics from the ABS 2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Divorce Rates in Sweden 2000- 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) AT 32, one of my clients (I’ll call her Jennifer) had a lavish wine-country wedding. By then, Jennifer and her boyfriend had lived together for more than four years. The event was attended by the couple’s friends, families and two dogs. When Jennifer started therapy with me less than a year later, she was looking for a divorce lawyer. “I spent more time planning my wedding than I spent happily married,” she sobbed. Most disheartening to Jennifer was that she’d tried to do everything right. “My parents got married young so, of course, they got divorced. We lived together! How did this happen? Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In 19...