I've just had a look at the 'living together before marriage' article on the site here and it doesnt seem to be making any distinction between engaged and defacto couples. Is there another article I have'nt found?

Lil, I don't remember ever reading mention of that in Dr Harley's articles. I found the engaged/married stat in one or two places in his references.

Lil, here is another article about the same study in the New York Times but they present the data very differently. And this is not a new study. This is the same one I read previously that found that the divorce rates of engaged couples compared to married couples was very close:

The study of men and women ages 15 to 44 was done by the National Center for Health Statistics using data from the National Survey of Family Growth conducted in 2002.

I suspect that is the study I read. But look at how this is presented in the NY TIMES:


here

Oh, I see. Sorry, must have misread your original comment. I thought you said Dr Harley has written something where he specifically said about engaged is like being married as far as co-habitating. I did read the Dr H article, but didnt get into the citation work references as..*sigh* time and Beetles Also it's not Dr Harley's own writings. I'd rather read what he has to say if I am going to read much now a days.

I did look at those links you gave and excluding the one above which says pretty much what mine did, I couldnt actually find anything about engagement. Oh, and one of your links isnt working, the one that ends in .gif. If you could fix that for me, that would be awesome. I tell ya, I think I get dumber everyday. Or maybe just tired.

Did any of that make sense??? Pardon the ramble, I need SLEEP! LOL!

O/T...what does it mean when furin people say Beetles?

Lord only knows!!

ok, I tried to send the email last night to Dr Harley and it was bounced back so I sent it to Justuss. She got them to read it online. Thanks Justuss!!

Lil, when you get a chance, you can listen to their discussion which is at the very top of the hour. He talks alot about the research about living together but is NOT CONVINCED about the engaged/married thing but says he can sort of see it. I think he thinks I am trying to justify it, which I am not.

Just to clarify, because it seems I gave the wrong impression, I read all the studies Dr Harley referenced in his conclusions in Buyers, Renters Freeloaders and that is where I ran across the engaged dynamic. When I looked at the study referenced in your article, Lil, I recognized that as one I looked at.

"Beetle" is lil's 9 month-old, very cute but very strong-minded grandson. He is in her care at the moment, and she is trying to get him into a routine that suits her. He has other ideas.

Oh! Does he play guitar or sing about yellow submarines?

I think he does - from midnight until 6am every day.

Sadly I cannot not listen to MB radio. Never have ben able to

Gotcha. So Dr Harley does NOT liken engagement to marriage. However material he has referenced may or may not have alluded to it being a dynamic.

Thats the Beatles - silly yank

Thank you Mel for emailing me the MP3 of the MB radio show broadcasted on 06/23/10

It didn't really explain Dr Harley's thoughts on engagement at all so I emailed him directly, here is his response:

If you can get a hold of today's show it was discussed again. He basically said the same thing he wrote to you but more wordy

Lil, you must have missed it because he did finish up by saying a possible explanation would be that engaged people have a buyers mentality, rather than a renters mentality. [he even says this in his email you post] It is that renters mentality [we are going to test this out] that is the kiss of deathg. He did add that he would have to see that premise replicated in another study to really buy it. He did touch on it though.

Mike moved in with me about 2 months after we got engaged. He always said that it was like we were already married. He was right. Mike and I were more married while we were co-habitating than B and I ever were. And there were some bumps and some adjustments during that year.

But, Mike's attitude was always one of a buyer. He checked out the merchandise very carefully before making a decision, but once the decision was made, it was made. I'm not sure he even really questioned himself.

My approach was different up until the time we were engaged. I was renting. I was semi-committed, but I also knew what I was getting myself into, and I had watched Mike very carefully whenever we had any conflict or weren't exactly in sync. By the time we got engaged, I knew we could and would make it work.

Except now. Now, I'm fighting with him tooth and nail and have coem up with another way to irritate him.

No, I did hear that, I just felt it was a very general chit chat on the study and not at all relating to ME.

Yes, it's all about me

So FYI here is my email I sent Dr and Joyce Harley. It had comments addtional to the topic. I have edited these for TMI reasons

Dear Dr Harley,


My name is xxxxxxxxxxxx, I post on the Marriage builders forum under the name 'Lildoggie'

I am the person who started the 'living together before marriage' thread on MB. Although unable to listen to the radio programme direct, Melodylane emailed me the MP3 recording a few days ago.

Below is a transcript of the pertainant part of the recording and some comments I have following it.



Transcript of MB_062310.mp3

�...
JH �well now we ahh received this email from umm what are the ahh the forum one of the foremen forum leaders is that correct?

DrH One of our ahh moderators

Jh moderators, there you go I didn't get the term right and she said that someone posted this article about how living together before marriage doesn't raise the likelihood of divorce. I think it is flawed a flawed conclusion. And then she gives us portions of the study for you to look at and then she concludes her email. She said I did a lot of research on this last year, that is living together before marriage

DrH right, mm-hmm

JH and was amazed at the problems that stem form these tenuous relationships. domestic violence happens almost exclusively in living together situations ahh or in marriages that started that way which I find interesting, this too

DrH thats right

JH ahh that living together then you decide to get married ahh and then the violence can continue on or pick up

DrH right. That's what the justice department studies found

JH and thats just what you were saying. all right well now why would this be posted on the website?

DrH well, the person posting it was trying to argue that there's nothing wrong with living together before marriage (laughs)and and again the the volume of research that shows that that on average these people dont do ery well ahh is is just staggering. Ahh I was on a public radio show ahh about of Boston ahh a couple of years ago where I was on with the umm publisher of bride magazine and a professor from Columbia university and umm the question came up is there a value in living together before marriage?and the publisher of bride magazine and the professor both said that it was a great idea for people to try out the relationship and see how they're doing

JH oh yes very popular

DrH and I came back and I said havent you read all of the research that has come out on how successful these people really are?..

It carried on for a while about other stuff. And never got back to my original point of posting the question in the first place.

These are my comments on the radio show and the thread itself.

1. I was hoping to open up a dialogue on the topic as initially the quote �It�s couples who give into the urge to merge households without a defining vision of their future who are more likely to divorce, the results suggest.� was what interested me. I also believed that it would be a topic of interest to others as it relates to Marriage - something everyone on MB in interested in.

2. I wasn't asking about justice dept survey about violence and sexual violence against women and children. I am well aware of said surveys and studies and have in fact used them on MB to get a point across myself. Many times.

3. I was primarily interested in the topic because as I said on the thread, Flick and I lived together before marriage for 9 months. Almost the entire period of our engagement.


When Mel then made the comment �This study is confusing because they are comparing ENGAGED couples to married couples and then extrapolating that there is very little difference in their divorce rates.

Well, we already KNEW THAT. Most previous studies have shown that the difference between engaged and married is about 2%, in reverse order here. An engaged couple is usually just waiting for the actual wedding and tends to have the attitude of a married couple.

That is because when an engaged couple lives together, they are not "testing things", they have already made a decision to marry and tend to be buyers. Not so with un-engaged, unmarried shackers.�

It was food for thought and lead me to believe that Mel was saying that Dr Harley himself had these thoughts. However upon reviewing the additional information Mel provided , I saw that actually Dr Harley does NOT believe that engagement brings couples into a buyers mindset. That is fine,I now understand. {edit for TMI}

[EDIT TMI]I argued nothing, just posted a survey with a view for discourse., because as I have said, Flick and I lived together for 9 months before marriage; I have read all the articles on MB about how very bad that is outside of the abuse and violence issue which is not an issue for me, and I wanted to know what Dr Harley thoughts were about it, and others possible experiences.

Regards
Lil

I believe that the day Flick proposed to me and I said yes, I moved into the buyers group. One of my many reasons for leaving X-Lil was his frequent comments of "Marriage is just a piece of paper making it harder to separate"
I used to think if your so sure we will separate, why are you even IN this relationship?

ETA Do NOT get me started on the day X-lil went to town to buy me an engagement ring

Hopefully, you are clear now that I DID NOT say that Dr Harley said that or believed that. In fact, in that post I even said: "I am going to send this to Dr Harley and see if he will give his opinion on the radio. Thanks for posting this, lil! "

Hope that clears things up!

Lil, Dr Harley is discussing your letter on the show today. Want me to send you the show?

Not that it's important now I have it 'straight from the horses mouth so to speak,

ok, he is refuting the argument in your email. You might want to post that transcript too.