Marketing junior Jamie Harris has found the perfect roommate.
Harris lives with her boyfriend, film and media studies junior Ryan O’Connell. A cohabitation arrangement like theirs is becoming increasingly common for young people, according to a study released earlier this month by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Harris and O’Connell have dated since their freshman year at ASU, when they met through mutual friends. They transferred to different universities for their sophomore years, but decided to move in together for financial reasons after returning to ASU this year.
They share a house with an additional roommate. Next year, the couple will rent an apartment by themselves.
“We’re kind of the best roommates for each other,” Harris said.
She said making the decision to live on their own next year required more consideration than living with a roommate this year because there will be no third person to buffer any relationship problems.
O’Connell said the dynamics of their current living situation played a role in the couple’s decision to live by themselves. While the situation worked out well overall this year, he said he and Harris know each other’s living habits well enough now to get their own place.
Both agreed that living together has helped their communication skills.
Sharing a living space means the couple has to resolve any issues they may be having by the end of the day, Harris said, adding that it is also important to agree on boundaries.
“Make sure you know what you’re getting into,” she said. “If you can’t have that conversation, then don’t do it.”
The living arrangement is a casual one for now because the couple is more concerned with figuring out their professional futures, O’Connell said.
Harris said they are willing to make some sacrifices for each other, but not at the expense of their personal fulfillment.
“You have to make sure you’re individually happy,” she said. “If one of you isn’t happy, it makes the whole thing go bad.”
Cohabitation gets easier after figuring out personal needs within the relationship, O’Connell said.
“If you are fighting, you have to make sure you’re not fighting for stupid things,” he said. “You get over those big things. And then you start to laugh.”
Communication is one of the most important things for cohabitating couples, said Sarah Hayford, a professor in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics who studies family demographics and child bearing.
“A lot of the time with cohabitation, people don’t really make decisions,” she said. “Because people don’t sit down and have a big talk about it, it sometimes moves faster than marriage or other relationships.”
Hayford said the increase in cohabitation recorded by the NCHS is significant because it reflects a change in family structures and resources.
Cohabitation can be a bad thing when children are involved, because it tends to be less stable than marriage, she said, adding that there has traditionally been less legal support for children when a cohabitating couple breaks up than when a married couple divorces.
However, it is important to consider whether this instability is an inherent part of cohabitation or just because of the personalities involved, Hayford said.
The NCHS report indicated that women with bachelor’s degrees are more likely to marry their partner and have shorter cohabitations than women without bachelor’s degrees.
Hayford said people have clear ideas of how financially established they want to be before marriage, and women with bachelor’s degrees are more likely to be in that position when it comes time to make that decision.
Cohabitation is diverse, and its increasing prevalence is changing the way it’s perceived, she said.
“(Cohabitation) means different things for different people,” Hayford said. “There’s going to be more spread and different ways of thinking about cohabitation. (It is) less structured and less formalized, so it can sort of play those different roles for different people.”
Father Rob Clements, who directs the All Saints Catholic Newman Center in Tempe, said he is concerned from a moral standpoint about cohabitation, but he understands that most students he talks with live together for financial reasons.
“I’m concerned about people’s freedom being diminished very subtly,” he said, because he worries a financial compulsion makes couples feel they have no choice but to move in together. “If I don’t have a solution, we’ll work with what we’ve got.”
Finances are always important when people become involved in dependent relationships, he said. Even with divorce, Clements said problems often come down to financial difficulties.
He said couples that go through marriage preparation at the Newman Center don’t always connect on these matters.
“Financial decision making is critical in preparing for marriage,” Clements said. “And that’s what convolutes cohabiting, too.”
He said money is the most changeable part of a relationship, and it can be easy to leave a less committed arrangement if a better financial prospect comes along.
Clements said he has discovered that young Catholic couples specifically tend to be unaware that the Church does not condone cohabitation.
He said it's important to talk about cohabitation because discussion has decreased as the practice has become more accepted, he said.
Sexuality is complicated, and there is a potential for people to get hurt in a cohabitation arrangement when there hasn’t been enough discussion of boundaries, Clements said.
“I think the moral thing is there, but we haven’t found the language to speak to that,” he said. “It’s the human side that really concerns me right now.”
Reach the reporter at ammedeir@asu.edu or follow her @amy_medeiros
