Of course, there is nothing new in the idea of two people living together without first marrying. What is new is the number of people candidly doing so.
After all, I know of a certain man in Koforidua who has 3 grown up children with 3 different women to which he did not marry any of them. Aside those 3 trial marriages, he had a 4th trial marriage, and now he is in the 5th trial marriage.
Besides the obvious conflict for religious conscience and societal values, the question is: Do couples who engage in trial marriages enjoy such marriages? Does this cohabitation lead them into a permanent relationship?
The truth is that, though some unwed couples may live together for a lifetime, some also may be short-lived. The fruitage of short-lived trial marriages may be as bitter and often as emotionally disastrous as divorce.
One definition of trial is experiment. Can anyone afford an experimental marriage? After all, we are not discussing sharing a piece of clothing. If the cloth is torn, one simply goes out and buys another garment. But the emotional scar tissue of a broken intimate relationship is far-reaching; it has brought some to the point of suicide. Even those couples who genuinely care for each other face an emotion-jarring problem: insecurity.
In trial marriages, the people involved live together and do everything together as married couples without much commitment. The goal of such marriages is for the parties involved to assess themselves and see if they can really live together as married couples.
The first time I ever heard of this trial issue was when I once asked a lady (who liked me a lot & I liked her too) if we could start a relationship. I was quite shocked by her answer when she told me she wants us to be in a trial relationship before we proceed on to a real one.
In the trial relationship, we did everything that those in normal relationships do. So I said to myself, if this is all the trial thing is about, then I don’t want to proceed to the normal relationship.