Living together before marriage a bad idea?

I just read a piece by psychologist and syndicated columnist James Dobson who said one of the worst mistakes a couple can make is living together prior to marriage. He said research on five decades of statistics have revealed that those who lived together prior to marriage have a 50% higher incident rate of divorce than couples who only lived together post marriage.

I quote:

Why? The researchers found those who had lived together later regretted having “violated their moral standards,” and “felt a loss of personal freedom to exit out the back door.”
Furthermore, they have “stolen” a level of intimacy that is not warranted at that point, not has it been validated by the degree of commitment to each other.


Kind of flies in the face of what you might expect.

Thoughts?

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