Literally zero of the things in the author's marriage are necessarily attributable to the marriage itself, or necessarily consequences of marriage for that matter.
And never mind co-habitating, all of the transformative stuff could have happened regardless while simply living with an upbeat roommate.
"The case for living with or near positive people that share similar ideals" probably wouldn't get as many eyeballs, but it would be more to-the-point and true, I think.
Maybe I should write that article anyway. I've had roommates literally my entire life, sharing a room with my brother until college, then dorming with one guy, then seven people, then two guys, then three girls, and now that I've graduated I live in a huge victorian-era house and rent to three friends (my "rent" therefore is free, sans house upkeep). I've been fortunate enough to never have a bad roommate, and communal living can be a lot of fun, significant other or not.
I think living and working alongside loving and caring people is great, but I think restricting it to marriage is maybe a tad myopic. I love all micro-societies and think they have very similar values.
From the article: "...[A]mong the women that report being "highly satisfied" with their lives, 29 percent are cohabitating, 33 percent are single, and 47 percent are married."
That would seem to suggest that "upbeat roommates" are, on average, worse for women than singledom or marriage, no? Your personal experience notwithstanding, the statistics (at least for this claim) are on the side of the article.
No it wouldn't. This statistic is highly misleading and the article author is basically lying by putting it in the article. If there are twice as many women who are married than there are those who are cohabitating then cohabitating is on average better than marriage.
Note that 33 + 29 + 47 = 109, not 100. Her wording makes it sound like they computed from one pool of "very satisfied" people the amount that were single, cohabitating and married, but the numbers in the infographic don't support that interpretation. It looks like instead they separated the groups by gender and status, and then tallied up the number that said they were "very satisfied" which I don't think is vulnerable to your rebuttal.
Literally zero of the things in the author's marriage are necessarily attributable to the marriage itself, or necessarily consequences of marriage for that matter.
And never mind co-habitating, all of the transformative stuff could have happened regardless while simply living with an upbeat roommate.
"The case for living with or near positive people that share similar ideals" probably wouldn't get as many eyeballs, but it would be more to-the-point and true, I think.
Maybe I should write that article anyway. I've had roommates literally my entire life, sharing a room with my brother until college, then dorming with one guy, then seven people, then two guys, then three girls, and now that I've graduated I live in a huge victorian-era house and rent to three friends (my "rent" therefore is free, sans house upkeep). I've been fortunate enough to never have a bad roommate, and communal living can be a lot of fun, significant other or not.
I think living and working alongside loving and caring people is great, but I think restricting it to marriage is maybe a tad myopic. I love all micro-societies and think they have very similar values.