"My thinking is that cohabitation presents an intrinsically false model for marriage because it represents the reverse of the structural power relationship within modern marriage. In a cohabitating relationship, the man usually holds the structural upper hand and the woman's behavior is relatively submissive because she knows he can end it at any time without any significant cost to himself.
Once the marriage takes place, the power balance shifts heavily towards the women thanks to the current divorce laws and her behavior tends to change significantly whether she realizes it or not. Even if she is a genuinely committed wife who is totally unwilling to abuse, or even take advantage of, her legally superior position, she is much less likely to be operating with a mindset of pleasing her husband in order to persuade him to continue the relationship because she no longer needs to be concerned about the possibility of the relationship being easily ended without substantial cost.
This is why couples who cohabitate successfully cannot reasonably assume that the comfortable living arrangements they have made will survive the structural shock to the relationship that takes place after marriage. In fact, the more comfortably the couple cohabitates pre-marriage, the more likely it is that they will have serious problems once the legal aspects of that relationship change with the wedding.
One can certainly make a reasonable case for cohabitation as a substitute for marriage, but the evidence suggests that it is unwise to consider cohabitation a precursor to it."
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