What is the problem with live-in relationships? Don’t you think that living with someone and getting to know him or her before marriage is much better than ending up in divorce later?
Marriage ceremony conducted according to authorised scriptural directions sanctifies the union of a man and a woman in the presence of family members and friends. This enables them to live together in Grihastha-ashrama (house-hold) to lead a life together on religious principles in a regulated manner.
Ashrama is a place where Shri Shri Radha-Krishna, Shri Shri Lakshmi-Narayana or Shri Shri Sita-Rama are worshipped according to scriptural guidelines. This will ensure the couple advancing spiritually also while accepting permitted pleasures of worldly life.
Human life is basically meant for advancing spiritually and not for sense gratification. As excessive salt makes a food item unpalatable, inordinate sense enjoyment ultimately leads one to frustration. Material enjoyment is allowed only in a restricted way because we have been addicted to it since innumerable past lives. It is just like adequate salt makes a dish enjoyable.
Due to the influence of immense technological progress and global connectivity, many become gradually tempted to break the traditional norms as well as time-tested codes of moral behaviour and to try out alternative methods of man and woman living together.
The collective inheritance of sinful inclinations of previous lives give rise to perverse desires that provoke people to invent various methods of man-woman co-habitation and indulge in guilty pleasures. In the process, because of lack of any publicly acknowledged definite commitment, one may fall victim to “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Thus, such relationships may not last long, far from culminating into marriage.
Driven by adventurous spirit, digressing from time tested format in any acts of life is always risky as one is not sure about achieving the desired result. This has been tried out since a long time in the Western countries, which has resulted only in such adventurists’ hopping from one relationship to another without even the botheration of a divorce formality. As a result, the society is becoming more and more polluted, suffering from severe depression.
At the time of writing this, we find in the Western countries there are more and more instances of suicides, some by even very famous celebrities, as well as many cases of dementia are being regularly reported by both electronic and print media. These are the consequences of whimsical ways of cohabitation and the resultant dissatisfaction.