In a 2007 edition of the New Oxford Review, Dr. A. Patrick Schneider II, who holds boards in family and geriatric medicine and runs a private practice in Lexington, Kentucky, did a statistical analysis of cohabitation in America, based on the findings of a number of academic resources. Here are five conclusions Schneider draws from his studies:

1. Relationships are unstable in cohabitation. One-sixth of cohabiting couples stay together for only three years; one in ten survives five or more years.
   
   

God has made [our] fantasies … so preposterously unrewarding that we are forced to turn to him for help and for mercy. We seek wealth and find we've accumulated worthless pieces of paper. We seek security and find we've acquired the means to blow ourselves and our little earth to smithereens. We seek carnal indulgence only to find ourselves involved in the prevailing erotomania.

—Malcolm ...

Based on a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults:

• Forty-eight percent of men still have feelings for an ex-girlfriend or ex-wife.
• Thirty-seven percent of women still have feelings for an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband.
• Overall, two in five adults feel they let the "right one" get away.

The State of Our Unions 2005, an annual report put out by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, highlighted the dismal state of the family in the United States. Among the findings:

Only 63 percent of American children grow up with both biological parents, the lowest percentage among Western nations.

The U.S. divorce rate has declined over the past 25 years, but that is offset by the even ...

According to government reports, almost four in ten babies born in the United States during 2005 were born out of wedlock. That means of the 4.1 million babies born that year, more than 1.5 were brought into the world by unmarried couples. This number represents an all-time high.

Several factors contributed to these statistics. While the teen birth rate did drop, unwed mothers in their twenties had ...

Carrie was a casual acquaintance from church—an outgoing person with a quick smile and ready words of encouragement. But something in my spirit discerned that all was not as it seemed on the surface. She was, in fact, a single Christian woman who was in a compromising sexual situation. I had been watching from a distance and quietly interceding for her for some time when I distinctly felt the ...

Americans aged 13 to 17 who believe unmarried couples living together is acceptable:

Teens overall: 70 percent
Churchgoing teens: 50 percent

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God's holy ordinance, through which he wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls ...

While recent federal data indicates that family violence has declined over the past decade, too many women still suffer violence. An estimated 1.8 million women are assaulted each year by the men they live with—mostly by boyfriends. Husbands account for only about 2 percent of violent attacks on women; strangers account for 44 percent.

Elizabeth Sandoval does not reveal her religious orientation, only that she is a "neo-feminist," (definition: "One who respects her body so much that she won't allow it to be used as someone's playground"). She explains and defends her commitment to abstain from sex until she is married, and challenges what she sees as weak justifications for pre-marital sex, including the argument that it is important ...