However Graham Allan and Graham Crow (2001) explain that marriage is no longer seen as a contract, but it's seen as a relationship which offers mutual care and affection for the individuals, sometimes this is not the case therefor resulting in divorce, similarly functionalists such as Ronald Fletcher (1966) argue that the cause of high divorce rates could be due to the romanticization of marriage, people now marry for love therefore have very high expectations of marriage and when their expectations aren't met they're unwilling to make compromises hence leading to divorce
Over the past 45 years cohabitation has increased significantly, this form of relationship was previously frowned upon and seen as immoral as it would undoubtedly result in premarital sex which is shunned by the church and many other religious institutions. Cohabiting couples have doubled since 1986. one of the reasons for this could be secularization, which means that the influence of religion has decreased therefore people don't see cohabitation and divorce to be immoral as a result of this Churches and other religious practices have loosened their views on divorce in order to maintain what little followers that remain. As secularization has increased divorce and cohabitation no longer hold a social stigma, people are more accepting of these forms of relationships, this was recognized by Juliet Mitchell and Jack goody (1997). During the 1980s premarital sex was still frowned upon within society as 56% of people were against the idea of premarital sex, this could be due to the influence of religion within society, however in 2000 the majority of the population felt that premarital sex is okay, therefore more couples began to cohabit. There's a correlation between the number of people marrying and cohabiting, as the number of people marrying decreases, the number of people cohabiting increases, however Robert Chester (1985) suggests that the majority of couples who cohabit see it as a trial before marriage, Ernestina Coast (2006) supports this as she discovered 75% of the cohabiting couples said they planned on getting marred in the future if their relationship is healthy.
