By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A new study has found that couples are not only shunning marriage these days, but even cohabitation is requiring too much commitment with many of them now opting for more casual “stayover relationships” instead.
According to The International Business Times, research from the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that instead of cohabitating, young people in relationships are spending three or more nights together per week, which enables them to maintain their own homes and get out of the relationship with little or no fuss.
“This seems to be a pretty stable and convenient middle ground between casual dating and more formal commitments like living together and getting married,” says Tyler Jamison, a University of Missouri doctoral candidate who conducted the study.
This much more “convenient” relationship is believed to be a general trend in which young people can delay making permanent commitments while finishing their education or pursuing other goals in life.
“Instead of following a clear path from courtship to marriage, individuals are choosing to engage in romantic ties on their own terms — without the guidance of social norms,” Jamison told Reuters.
“There is a gap between the teen years and adulthood during which we don’t know much about the dating behaviors of young adults,” she said. “Stayovers are the unique answer to what emerging adults are doing in their relationships.”
According to the abstract, Jamison used grounded theory methods to investigate the pattern of stayovers in the development of romantic relationships among 22 college students and college graduates. The results indicated that some young couples stay overnight between three and seven nights per week while living in separate homes. This arrangement functioned as a comfortable and convenient alternative to forming more lasting, and therefore riskier, commitments such as full-time cohabitation and marriage. Stayovers served as a stopgap measure between casual dating and making more formal commitments.
One example of how these relationships play out was told by Michael Bless Jr., of Auburn Hills, Mich., to MSNBC. Bless said he was involved in a four-year stayover relationship and liked the option of staying over or staying at home.
“Sometimes, you want your own space, and the next room may not be far enough,” said the 30-year-old engineering student at Oakland Community College. “I can love you and be with you almost every night, but there are times when I want to be alone.”
The couple parted ways when his girlfriend graduated and took a job in Miami. Wanting to fulfill his own goals, Bless stayed behind.
“When she left, my commitment left,” he said.
Some experts see a lot of problems in this scenario and say it’s a reflection of the general degradation of U.S. society.
“We don’t want anyone hindering us from doing our thing,” said Aaron Turpeau, a licensed professional counselor and relationship expert in Atlanta. “You hear people say it all the time: ‘You do you, and I’ll do me.’ Unfortunately, this obsession with independence leads to unhealthy human relationships.”
As a result, a large segment of young people are living on the fence, he says, never committing one way or the other.
“We don’t value what we don’t need, and we don’t love what we don’t value,” he says. “I can say I want a relationship, but I don’t need a relationship. I want a man, but I don’t need a man. So we play house; we play marriage and as soon as we get tired, we go back to our own places.”
Jamison, whose current study has been published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, says she’s not convinced that there are any long-term consequences of stayover relationships.
“Without data, it’s hard to make a statement about it,” she says. “I doubt it has major implications for later commitments or marriages.”
She plans to expand her research to examine unmarried parents, and suspects that people of all ages enjoy stayover relationships.
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