A new study from the National Center for Health Statistics, publicized by the Institute for Family Studies, suggests that young American adults may be turning to cohabitation largely because so many of them have painful memories of their parents’ divorce.
Who could feel anything but compassion for these young people? Yet to treat the pain of broken commitment by avoiding commitment is like treating a wound by pouring acid into it.
Besides, breaking up is painful for cohabiters too. The motives that lead some young people into the hookup culture are not so very different from the motives that lead others to cohabit. They think that by removing sex even further from relationship, they will be spared the sorrow of any sort of breakup whatsoever.
Since that is not how we are made, the wheel of loneliness keeps turning.