THE FOLLOWING IS EXCERPTED FROM A NEW YORK TIMES STORY. AND FRANKLY, BUGS THE CRAP OUTTA ME. And perhaps with this I truly am clearly identifying myself as an old, cranky, bas*ard, but the trend is wrong, and noone is gonna tell me otherwise. I've heard all the excuses about "try before you buy," and all that nonsense. "Try before you buy" makes sense if you're buying a CD, or a camera, or a used car, but my God, relationships? Interpersonal connections sinking to the level of a damn BOOM BOX?! Gee whiz, the whole idea of knowing yourself before you decide to get married to someone else is just old-fashioned, or what? Or does that just take too damn much time?! Every damn day I feel more like the Fiddler on the Roof. (rent the movie if you don't know what I'm talking about.) All I can say beyond that, is that I hope God warns me before He does anything so I don't turn to a pillar of salt......

Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by The New York Times.
Households Across the U.S. In 1930, married couples accounted for 84 percent of households in the U.S. By 1990 that number had declined to about 56 percent. In 2005 it slipped to 49.7 percent. The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples -- with and without children -- just shy of a majority and down from more than 52 percent five years earlier. The numbers by no means suggests marriage is dead or necessarily that a tipping point has been reached. The total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most Americans eventually marry. But marriage has been facing more competition. A growing number of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential social and economic implications are profound. "It just changes the social weight of marriage in the economy, in the work force, in sales of homes and rentals, and who manufacturers advertise to," said Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. "It certainly challenges the way we set up our work policies." While the number of single young adults and elderly widows are both growing, Professor Coontz said, "we have an anachronistic view as to what extent you can use marriage to organize the distribution and redistribution of benefits." Couples decide to live together for many reasons, but real estate can be as compelling as romance. "Owning three toothbrushes and finding that they are always at the wrong house when you are getting ready to go to bed wears on you," said Amanda Hawn, a 28-year-old writer (....and what's wrong with THIS picture?!) who set up housekeeping near San Francisco with her boyfriend, Nate Larsen, a real estate analyst, after shuttling between his apartment and one she shared with a friend. "Moving in together has simplified life," Ms. Hawn said. The census survey estimated that 5.2 million couples, a little more than 5 percent of households, were unmarried opposite-sex partners. An additional 413,000 households were male couples, and 363,000 were female couples. In all, nearly one in 10 couples were unmarried. (One in 20 households consisted of people living alone). And the numbers of unmarried couples are growing. Since 2000, those identifying themselves as unmarried opposite-sex couples rose by about 14 percent, male couples by 24 percent and female couples by 12 percent. Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said gay couples were undercounted because many gay people were reluctant to disclose their sexual orientation. But he said that inhibition seemed to be fading. "I would say the increase is due to people feeling more comfortable disclosing that they are gay or lesbian and living with a partner," he said. The survey did not ask about sexual orientation, but its questionnaire was designed to distinguish partners from roommates. A partner was defined as "an adult who is unrelated to the householder, but shares living quarters and has a close personal relationship with the householder."
And, of course, there's more to the story, but why bother?!