Sliding vs Deciding
Research-Informed
Scott Stanley's framework from the premarital research. Couples either *decide* their way through relationship transitions (explicit conversations and…
Scott Stanley's framework from the premarital research. Couples either *decide* their way through relationship transitions (explicit conversations and mutual commitment before moving in, getting engaged, having kids) or *slide* through them (the transition just sort of happens through inertia and convenience). Sliding is associated with worse outcomes, largely because of constraint commitment: moving in together creates constraints (lease, shared stuff, social ties) that keep couples together who might otherwise have ended, and some of those couples then slide into marriage. This is the leading explanation for the "cohabitation effect," the finding that couples who live together before engagement have historically shown somewhat higher divorce rates. The risk isn't living together; it's sliding into major commitments without deciding.
Evidence
Research-Informed
Sliding versus deciding, the idea that couples often drift into major commitments like cohabitation by default rather than by an intentional choice, earns Research-Informed. It comes from Stanley, Rhoades and Markman's commitment research, which links sliding through transitions to worse later outcomes and is part of the broader work on the cohabitation effect. The evidence is solid and replicated in correlational and longitudinal samples; it stops short of peer-reviewed mainly because the causal claim, that sliding itself produces the worse outcomes rather than who tends to slide, is hard to fully isolate.
Origin
Scott Stanley
Sources
- Fighting for Your Marriage — Markman, Stanley & Blumberg