Dr. Nancy Moore Clagworthy spent ten years researching people who lived together without being married. When she began her research, she was "convinced that living together apart from marriage was a good thing. Maybe better even than this whole stuffiness of marriage. Let's just live together. Isn't that more natural?"

She wanted to prove that in a scientific way. She interviewed couples who were living together. She observed the development of hundreds of people as their lives unfolded. She found that living together without marriage is one of the worst things that can happen to anybody. Why? Because the context of safety is gone.