SAC-Wk122 — Is Cohabiting called Marriage?

Is cohabiting marriage? For me, I think the question has answered itself and someone will say what do you mean? Let's see how that question has answered itself.

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Before I attempt answering the question, let's look at the meaning of marriage and cohabitation.

Marriage;

a legally accepted relationship between two people in which they live together, or the official ceremony that results in this:
They had a long and happy marriage.link

While cohabitation is;

the act of living and having a sexual relationship with someone, especially someone you are not married to:link

From the definition, marriage is a legally accepted union between two people. That’s to say that cohabiting or cohabitation is "illegal." Of course, if something is not legal, it is illegal.

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From my point of view, living together and having children is not marriage, such staying together is illegal even if both families know that you are both living together. For me, as long as there's no legal consent, it is not marriage.

It is even serious in African culture that in Ibibio culture of south southern Nigeria, that when a woman who was cohabited by a man dies, the man must surely pay the dowries, which is a token that binds the union between the two. If not paid, the corpse of the deceased may not be buried and in a case where the man is dead, his children or family members must pay the dowries before the woman can be married.
So, living together, no matter the number of years, it remains illegal and cannot be called marriage.

That's what people think, but that's not the truth. Cohabiting doesn’t lead to marriage in some cases. People, especially women, think when they move in with their boyfriend or a man who has proposed marriage that it will prompt the man to hasten to marry them. Some even go as far as getting pregnant and having children to get the mans attention. For me, I call that desperation. If he won't marry you, he wont. Even after you have children, he can push you out and get married to whomever he wants. I have seen a typical case like that with someone I know very closely, the man left her with 3 children and legally married another woman after he moved out of the apartment they lived together.

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I'll take the question one after another.

• Are there advantages? I will say no, as a Christian, I see that as defilement. See, I used to say " that people are doing some things doesn’t make it right." That’s simply the truth. Most of us engaged in cohabiting without understanding that it's not good. I mean, where is the morality stooping so low to present yourself so cheap to a man? I understand that life sometimes happen but I know that some of us ignorantly engaged in cohabitation, if we're to be sincere to ourselves, there's no gain it.

Getting legally married and discovering yourselves as a couple is too sweet, its just like making a trip for an adventure and discovering new things. Meanwhile, see finish in cohabitation make a marriage relationship boring and even brings disrespect in marriages.

No need to test, sometimes, testing before marriage used to look sweet when you finally get into marriage the whole thing will just be detestable. There's no gain or pride in cohabiting and testing, it's called sexual immorality.

Let me invite @okere-blessing, @comfortpeter and @meehu