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Marriage lasts longer than a live-in relationship.
This is one of the conclusions of the General Household Survey published recently. A quarter of people in their early thirties have been through a live-in relationship break-up. In contrast, only one in 12 thirty-somethings who have been married have since divorced.
The Office for National Statistics produced these results by surveying more than 19 000 men and women.
Claims that living together shows a commitment to one another were contradicted by the survey. One in three live-in relationships lasts less than a year and only one in ten lasts longer than five years. The average life of a cohabiting relationship is just over 2 years compared with more than nine years for marriage.
Children appear to encourage living together. Nearly a third of unmarried women with children are in a live-in relationship, compared with less than a quarter of those without children.
Patricia Morgan, author of the Marriage Life study of cohabitation, said "Cohabitation is a transitory and fragile state and produces single parent families. People don't enter it because they want commitment but because they want the opposite. They want to be able to get out easily and early"
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