When they DO change you, all you get is "You aren't the man I married"
I think the elevated failure rate for those who cohabit first is, as I hinted before,that if you say "marriage is a big step , let's try living together first" what you may well be meaning is "I'm not convinced I want to make a lifetime commitment"......all well and good as long as there are no resulting children.
Completely agree. And, ironically, I think there are some aspects of cohabitation that actually suck you into commitment faster than you would have liked. People move in together and think that it will be a nice middle ground between dating and marriage, but then they get themselves trapped into sharing leases/titles, bills, appliances/furniture, food, and (sometimes) children. They never intended to make the commitment of marriage, but all of a sudden they're so trapped in this relationship that there's no way they could leave anyway. So marriage simply becomes a validation of their poor decision to trap themselves with this person to whom they otherwise wouldn't have made such a large commitment. Meanwhile, those who didn't cohabitate still have the freedom and luxury to objectively evaluate the relationship and end it if it's not what they thought it would be.