A Lousy Week for Romance?

(March 4) -- Two new studies combined to make it a bad week for love, especially among those living together without a wedding ring or considering marriage in a state that won't endorse their union.

The separate studies have concluded that cohabitation before marriage doesn't improve marital outcomes, and that gays and lesbians living in states that prohibit same-sex marriage are more likely to suffer from serious mental health problems.

Cohabitation has increasingly become a route to marriage for young couples, but new research out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics confirms that twosomes who live together before marrying aren't fortifying their eventual union.

Twenty-eight percent of men and women lived together before marrying, compared to 23 percent of women and 18 percent of men who married without having lived together first, according to the study.

One-third of all marriages ended before the 10-year mark, but among those who cohabited first, the likelihood of a decade-long marriage decreased by 6 percent.

Nevertheless, "I think the gap in divorce rates between those who live together and those who do not is narrowing," Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, told MSNBC, citing cohabitation as an increasingly common pathway to eventual marriage. Indeed, an earlier CDC study had the "cohabitation gap" at 9 percent.

But even if cohabitation might dampen the prospects of a long-term union, Americans aren't listening: The percentage of women in their 30s who had cohabited has doubled in the past 15 years, to 61 percent. Half of cohabiting couples marry within three years.

And no matter what their preference on cohabitation, wedded partners have their work cut out for them. One in five marriages will end within five years, and one in three within 10 years.

While newlyweds who shacked up early might drive each other crazy, at least they aren't suffering as much from clinical psychiatric disorders because of their sexual orientation.

A study published this week in the American Journal of Public Health concluded that lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals were more prone to mood disorders, anxiety disorders and alcoholism if they lived in a state that had a ban on gay marriage as of 2005.

The researchers surveyed 34,000 people as part of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, once in 2001 and again in 2005. They used criteria from the DSM-IV, the American Psychiatry Association's mental health guidebook, for diagnosis.

And the differences they found in mental health were major. Those living in one of 14 states that opted to ban gay marriage experienced a 36.6 percent increase in mood disorders, a 41.9 percent increase in alcohol use disorders and a whopping 248.2 percent rise in anxiety disorders.

None of the mental health problems increased among those living in states that had not opposed same-sex marriage.

"Before this study, little was known about the impact of institutional discrimination toward lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals in our society," Dr. Deborah Hasin, the study's lead author, said in a statement. "The study highlights the importance of abolishing institutional forms of discrimination, including those leading to disparities in the mental health and well-being of LGB individuals."

No news on how same-sex relationships fare in the face of cohabitation before marriage, though. The CDC study defined cohabitation as "people who live with a partner of the opposite sex."