Economic Wisdom to Apply in Your Twenties

Chapter 72

Chapter 9 Section 3 Cohabitation and Trial Marriage: Perceptual Knowledge or Rational Behavior

After graduating from undergraduate, Xiaomei worked as a sales assistant in a company in Beijing. Work pressure was not a problem for her, but the most unbearable thing for her was loneliness.Like many "Beipiao" people, Xiaomei's family and friends are not around, and she has no one to talk to about her grievances or happy things she wants to share.Especially on holidays, it is very lonely to be alone in an empty rented house.

A year later, Xiaomei met her current boyfriend, and they moved in together not long after, "I think we live together not because of love, but because we need each other. When we are tired, we have a shoulder to lean on, and when we are tired, someone confides in us. , we all take care of each other in everything in life. In Beijing, we are all too lonely.”

Every time she comes home from get off work, she sees the lights on in her "home" from a distance, and Xiaomei feels warm in her heart.

For young people in modern society, "cohabitation" is no longer a new term, and the new term "trial marriage" is also becoming increasingly popular.More and more modern people are not eager to get married, or have no plans to get married in the near future, and cohabitation or trial marriage have become rational choices for men and women in love.

For most young people, the opportunity cost of marriage is very high, and love, a purely spiritual thing, is increasingly being impacted by material things in a materialistic modern society.Moreover, the current living conditions and living environment are becoming more and more severe: mortgage loans are required to buy real estate, and the future of work is also unknown... Marriage brings people more and more problems, and the temptation of the outside world is also increasing. People are facing more and more variables in their lives, and the cost of marriage is getting higher and higher.

At this time, cohabitation has become a compromise.Two people living together can enjoy all the fun and benefits that married life brings to people, but without the constraints of a marriage certificate, people are more flexible when faced with choices, the opportunity cost is small, and there are no more sunk costs.

Therefore, modern urban men and women choose cohabitation instead of marriage, which is actually out of rational considerations:

1. Nowadays, many young people go to big cities alone. The pressure of work and life is very high. They are not accompanied by their parents, and they are not bound by them at the same time. Therefore, many people naturally choose the lifestyle of cohabitation.

2. Young people lack rational planning for their future life.Under the market economy, people's mobility is relatively large, and their jobs are unstable. Most companies implement a full-time employment system; the place of residence is no longer fixed for life; people's expectations for future economic income are also unclear.In this context, premature marriage has become a drag on each other.

3. The popularity of cohabitation also lies in the liberation of modern women's concepts. The view that "girls always suffer" is outdated. For economically independent women, they no longer need to bind each other's freedom through the long-term contract of marriage, and do not need to take responsibility for each other.There is no long-term formal contractual relationship between the two parties. It can be said that it is just an "intention" of cooperation, and both parties are more flexible.More women believe that sex is the needs of both parties and the satisfaction of each other, and there is no one who suffers.

4. The cost of getting acquainted with men and women is low.In modern society, there are more and more ways and ways for people to get acquainted, and it is easier and easier, because it is easy to be together, and it is not enough to cherish each other, and it is also easy to separate.Under these conditions, cohabitation has a lower cost of breaking up than marriage.

5. With the advancement of society, the traditional concepts of childbearing, family inheritance, and raising children for old age are increasingly weakened in the minds of modern people. These are no longer the purpose of men and women together. The purpose of men and women together is to pursue Happy, happy.Without the encumbrance of children, two people don't need to make promises. If they get along well, they will stay together, and if they don't get along, they will break up.

Philosophers say that existence is rational.In fact, this is a rational choice of rational economic people, and there is nothing wrong with it, because the opportunity cost that people pay is low, and relatively speaking, the benefits are higher.However, economists do not forget to remind young people that cohabitation strips away many things such as husband and wife status, property relationship, and child relationship. Don't just look at the benefits of cohabitation and forget that there are costs behind it.
Wisdom Pieces: Trial Marriage

As the name suggests, trial marriage is experimental marriage. It is not a formal marriage, but an experiment between a man and a woman before officially entering the palace of marriage.In Chinese Confucian culture, trial marriage is condemned. It breaks people's seriousness about marriage and abandons the sexual morality of monogamous marriage.

Obviously, this "trial" determines the instability of this "marriage".There are three possibilities:

1. The trial was good, the trial was wonderful, and finally entered the wedding hall, and everyone was happy.

2. Try it out, it's tasteless, take two episodes, and find another place to live.

3. Unable to try again and again, changing objects frequently, becoming addicted to trying, eager to try forever.

Some analysts said that trial marriage, on the surface, is to pursue the quality of marriage, but in essence it is suspected of promoting sexual freedom.

(End of this chapter)