Boyfriend · GirlfriendCohabitation · CasualRomantic friendship · Sexual partner

Friendship · KinshipMonogamy · Same-sex relationship · Non-monogamy · Polyamory · Polyfidelity · Polygamy ·

Mistress (lover) · Cicisbeo · Concubinage · Courtesan ·

Romantic relationship eventsBonding · Breaking up · Courtship · Dating · Divorce · Infidelity · Mating · Meet market  · Romance · Separation · Singles event  · Transgressing · Wedding

Feelings and emotionsAffinity · Attachment · Compersion · Intimacy · Jealousy · Limerence · Love · Passion · Platonic love · Polyamory · Psychology of sexual monogamy

Human practicesBride price (Dower · Dowry) · Hypergamy · Infidelity · Sexuality

Relationship abuseChild abuse · Elder abuse · Dating abuse · Infidelity · Spousal abuse ·

Cohabitation is an arrangement whereby two people decide to live together on a longterm or permanent basis in an emotionally and/or sexually intimate relationship. The term is most frequently applied to couples who are not married.

Today, cohabitation is a common pattern among people in the Western world. People may live together for a number of reasons. These may include wanting to test compatibility or to establish financial security before marrying. It may also be because they are unable to legally marry, due to reasons such as same-sex, some interracial or interreligious marriages are not legal or permitted. Other reasons include living with someone before marriage in an effort to avoid divorce, a way for polygamists or polyamorists to avoid breaking the law, a way to avoid the higher income taxes paid by some two-income married couples (in the United States), negative effects on pension payments (among older people), and philosophical opposition to the institution of marriage and seeing little difference between the commitment to live together and the commitment to marriage. Some individuals also may choose cohabitation because they see their relationships as being private and personal matters, and not to be controlled by political, religious or patriarchal institutions.

Some couples prefer cohabitation because it does not legally commit them for an extended period, and because it is easier to establish and dissolve without the legal costs often associated with a divorce. In some jurisdictions cohabitation can be viewed legally as common-law marriages, either after the duration of a specified period, or the birth of the couple's child, or if the couple consider and behave accordingly as husband and wife. (This helps provide the surviving partner a legal basis for inheriting the deceased's belongings in the event of the death of their cohabiting partner.) In Saskatchewan Canada a married person may cohabitate with other married or single persons and become the spouses of all of them under the Saskatchewan Family Property Act. Consent of the "subsequent spouse" is not required. Although Canada has federal criminal code law prohibiting polygamy, which includes anyone who authorizes more than one conjugal union at a time, Saskatchewan judicial authorities who unilaterally authorize multiple conjugal unions have not yet been charged under this federal law.