Who's happier ever after?

More Americans are cohabiting--living together out of wedlock--than ever. Some experts applaud the practice, but others warn playing house doesn't always lead to marital bliss.

At one time in America, living together out of wedlock was scandalous. Unmarried couples who "shacked up" were said to be "living in sin." Indeed, cohabitation was illegal throughout the country until about 1970. (It remains illegal in 12 states, although the laws are rarely, if ever, enforced.)

Today, statistics tell a different tale. The number of unwed couples living together has risen to a new high--more than 4.1 million as of March 1997, according to the Census Bureau. That figure was up from 3.96 million couples the previous year and represents a quantum leap from the 430,000 cohabiting couples counted in 1960.

The bureau found that cohabiting is most popular in the 24-to-35 age group, accounting for 1.6 million such couples. The next highest group, younger-than-25, includes 931,000 cohabiting couples. Sixty percent of cohabitants live with someone who has never married.

Cohabitants say they live together primarily to solidify their love and commitment to each other, studies report. Most intend to marry; only 13 percent of cohabitants don't expect to make their relationship legal.

But the reality for many couples is different: Moving in doesn't lead to "happily ever after." Forty percent of cohabitants never make it to the altar. Of the 60 percent who do marry, more than half divorce within 10 years (compared with 30 percent of married couples who didn't live together first).

Cohabiting partners are more unfaithful and fight more often than married couples, according to research by the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, a traditional family-values group in Rockford, Ill. Other studies have come to equally dour conclusions:

* Cohabitants have higher levels of conflict and abuse and the highest rates of severe domestic violence; live-in couples often are estranged from extended family and less likely to have clear division of responsibilities and duties, researchers say.

* Cohabitants cheat on their partners more often than spouses. One study found that 68.6 percent of co-habiting men had but one sexual partner in the last year, compared with 95.8 percent of husbands. Another study found similar behavior in cohabiting women.

* Cohabiting couples have the most sexual intercourse--an average of 7.4 times a month for live-in men, compared with 6.8 times a month for husbands, says researcher Linde Waite. Married couples, however, score higher when asked if the sex is emotionally and physically satisfying. Spouses invest more emotionally in each other, she explains.

Still, the number of cohabiting couples is likely to grow, predicts Joseph F. Coates, president of the World Future Society, a research group based in Bethesda, Md. As the children of the baby boomers come of age, they're likely to defer marriage, as did their parents. This will lead to more cohabitation and nontraditional families.

Analyst Robert Knight of the Family Research Council agrees the trend will hold for the near future. Until people discover that living together has pitfalls, it won't wane in popularity, says Knight, author of Age of Consent: The Rise of Relativism and Corruption of Popular Culture. Cohabiting has been portrayed with "careful neutrality" in the media, and Hollywood celebrities who move in and out of each other's homes set the standard.

But Warren Farrell, the San Diego-based author of Why Men Are the Way They Are, argues that living together is a good idea for a short period. "To make the jump from dating, when we put our best foot forward, to being married"--without showing each other the "shadow side of ourselves"--is to treat marriage frivolously, he says.

Living together has its own set of rules, write lawyers Toni Ihara and Ralph Warner of Berkeley, Calif., the authors of The Living Together Kit: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples. Cohabiting couples benefit at tax time because they can avoid the higher tax rates (the so-called "marriage penalty") that married couples pay.

But live-in couples should beware of mixing bank accounts, cosigning loans and buying property together. Keeping properties separate is the best way to keep a lover's creditors from coming after you, advise Ihara and Warner, who married recently after living together for 19 years. (A big reason for their marriage, the couple wrote, was that their 6-year-old daughter was being teased; because her parents "weren't married" she "couldn't have been born.")

Certainly there are voices cautioning young people to think carefully before sharing living quarters. Rarely a day goes by without Laura Schlessinger, host of the nationally syndicated Dr. Laura radio show, scolding someone for "shacking up with your honey." It's the "ultimate female self-delusion," says Schlessinger, listing cohabiting as one of the "Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives" in her book of the same name. "Dating--not living in--is supposed to be about learning and discerning" about a prospective mate, she says.

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