While living together before marriage was once considered scandalous, it is now a widely accepted practice –in fact, over 70% of couples do co-habitate before getting hitched.

Researchers believe the increased divorce rate could be a result of couples getting married for the wrong reasons. “We think that some couples who move in together without a clear commitment to marriage may wind up sliding into marriage partly because they are already cohabiting,” said University of Denver researcher Galena Rhoades. San Francisco family attorneys say other reasons couples may opt to get married include a joint lease, mutual ownership of a pet, or an unexpected pregnancy.

Of subsets of the couples who moved in before marriage, the study found that the reason the couple moved in also affected the happiness of the couple. Those who claimed financial reasons and a desire to spend more time together had overall happier marriages and fewer divorces than those who wanted to test out living together before marriage. “Cohabiting to test a relationship turns out to be associated with the most problems in relationships,” Rhoades said. “Perhaps if a person is feeling a need to test the relationship, he or she already knows some important information about how a relationship may go over time.”

To read more about these findings, see the article on Livescience.com. Image Via dsearls [Flickr].