Chapter 4 Dating and Cohabitation

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Chapter 4Dating and Cohabitation

• Cultural and Historical Background of Dating
• Functions of Dating in the U.S.
• Meeting a Partner
• Dating after Divorce
• Cohabitation
• Consequences of Cohabitation
• Ending an Unsatisfactory Relationship

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Functions of Dating in the U.S.

• Confirmation of social self.
• Recreation
• Companionship/intimacy/sex
• Anticipatory socialization
• Status achievement
• Mate selection

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Relationship ProblemsCasual Daters

• Communication
• Lack of commitment
• Jealousy
• Other problems sex, alcohol/drugs, etc.
• No Problems
• Different Values

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Relationship Problems Involved Daters

• Communication
• Other problems sex, alcohol/drugs, etc.
• Jealousy
• Time for relationship
• Lack of money
• Places to go

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Dating After Divorce

• Over 2 million Americans divorce annually.
• 3/4 of divorced people remarry.
• The divorced who date are 10 years older than
  those dating/marrying for the first time.

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Where do you meet new partners?

• Advantages

• Disadvantages

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Youve got mailTips for Internet Dating
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What is a date?http//www.thirdage.com/romance/da
ting/

• An agreement between two people to meet at a
  designated time and place to exchange personal
  information and to share some kind of pleasurable
  experience

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Follow these 5 basic premises

• Single adults are entitled to date
• Youre entitled to freedom of choice
• Dating is not monogamy
• Substance is paramount form insignificant
• The only decision is whether to do it again

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Dont shut down prematurely.

• Choice anxiety
• internal impatience to force a relationship
  decision before the basis for resolution exists
• just because you wish all the arrangements were
  settled in your life, dont foreclose your
  options before you know someone well enough to
  commit your life to them.

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Meeting someone new.

• Find a place where you feel comfortable visiting
  with friends, eating a meal, or having a
  cappuccino and reading the paper. Alone
• Get to know the staff and management
• Become a recognized and welcome customer

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This need not be a bar, in fact probably should
not be a bar only

• But it does need to
• Be within easy walking distance from your home
  (specifically for urban dwellers)
• Be open as many hours a day as possible
• Have a social atmosphere congenial to you
• Have a friendly service staff
• Offer comfortable chairs

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• Feeling confident in public places widens the
  range of eligible persons to whom a single
  individual might be exposed.
• It lessens the chances of being approached by the
  truly predatory, who are more interested in the
  wounded, fearful or anxious (especially men
  seeking such women)

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Cohabitation

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• COHABITATION

• Two persons, of the opposite sex, sharing living
  quarters, economic responsibilities
• and engaged in a sexual partnership(POSSLQ)

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Cohabitation

• 60 of U.S. women who married in the 1990s
  cohabitated before marriage.
• In Sweden, 90 of first marriages preceded by
  living together.
• In Iceland, norm is to have children, cohabitate
  with children, then marry.

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Increase in Cohabitation

• Reasons
• Career commitments.
• Fear of marriage.
• Increased tolerance from society.
• Birth control technology.
• Avoid legal control of relationship. 

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Types of Cohabitation Relationships

• Here and now future plans uncertain.
• Testers test to see if relationship is right for
  marriage.
• Engaged partners are formally engaged.
• Money savers partners live together out of
  economic convenience.

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Types of Cohabitation Relationships

• Separated partners are divorcing previous
  partners.
• Pension partners live with new partner to keep
  health benefits from deceased partner.
• Cohabitants forever live together forever
  instead of getting married. 

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Experience of Cohabitation

• Deciding to move in together
• Couples drift into living together by spending
  increasing amounts of time together
• Rarely is there a decision to live together.
• Money and property
• Most keep money/property separate.

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Sharing money in cohabiting relationships

• What should happen in the case of large
  discrepancy in incomes?

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Experience of Cohabitation

• Sexual values and behaviors
• More likely to have less traditional sexual
  values.
• Higher frequency of sexual behavior than marrieds
  or singles.

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Advantages of Cohabitation

• Happiness happier than noncohabitant singles but
  less happy than marrieds.
• Delayed marriage better to live together than to
  marry at a young age.
• Learning about self and partner.
• Less traumatic ending.

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 Disadvantages of Cohabitation

• Higher depression levels among cohabitant
  mothers.
• Partner most involved may feel used or tricked.
• Some hide cohabitation from parents, which can
  strain relationship.
• Partner may receive no health, Social Security,
  or retirement benefits.

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Considerations in Ending a Relationship

• Consider improving a relationship before ending
  it.
• Acknowledge that ending relationship will be
  painful.
• Blame decision to end relationship on self, not
  partner.

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Considerations in Ending a Relationship

• Cut off relationship completely if you are the
  person being terminated.
• Learn by looking at issues that ended the
  relationship.
• Allow time to heal it takes 12 to 18 months to
  heal from an intense relationship.

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To see or not to see?

• What are advantages of continuing to be
  friends?
• What are possible disadvantages of continuing
  to have contact with one another?

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Dating on the rebound

• How soon?
• How quickly to become intimate?
• Would you date some-one on the rebound?
• Why or why not?
• What can be learned?