Marriage still gets talked about as the obvious next step for a couple that loves each other, which makes the hesitation so many people feel about it seem like a personal failing, cold feet, commitment issues, something to push past. Two studies looking closely at what’s actually behind that hesitation suggest it isn’t irrational at all, and in some cases it’s picking up on something real.
The clearest evidence comes from a 2012 study by Justin Lavner, Benjamin Karney, and Thomas Bradbury, published in the Journal of Family Psychology. The researchers followed 232 newlywed couples in Los Angeles for four years, having asked each partner, just before their wedding, whether they’d had doubts about getting married. Those doubts turned out to be common, reported by 47 percent of husbands and 38 percent of wives, not some rare warning sign but something close to the norm. What mattered was what happened next. Wives who reported premarital doubts were divorced by year four at 19 percent, compared to 8 percent of wives who hadn’t, roughly two and a half times the rate. Husbands with doubts divorced at 14 percent versus 9 percent of husbands without them. The doubts predicted real marital breakdown years later, even after accounting for how satisfied couples said they were with their relationship at the time, suggesting the hesitation was tracking something the satisfaction surveys weren’t fully capturing.
A second study helps show that hesitation about marriage isn’t only emotional, it’s often structural. In a 2018 study by Christina Gibson-Davis, Anna Gassman-Pines, and Rebecca Lehrman, published in Demography, the researchers analyzed data from 4,444 lower-income couples, building a measure of the specific financial markers, steady employment, adequate earnings, that couples seem to feel they need to hit before marrying. Meeting that economic bar was associated with roughly a two-thirds increase in the likelihood that a couple actually went on to marry. What stood out was what the bar didn’t apply to: it had no bearing on whether couples simply moved in together instead. The financial standard, in other words, wasn’t a general readiness threshold for commitment, it was specifically attached to marriage, which helps explain why cohabitation increasingly becomes the default when that bar isn’t cleared, not because couples don’t want to marry, but because they feel they can’t yet.
Together, these two studies offer a more forgiving read on why marriage can feel like a put-off. Lavner, Karney, and Bradbury’s research shows that hesitation before a wedding isn’t just nerves to be talked out of, it’s information, and ignoring it carries real statistical risk. Gibson-Davis and colleagues’ research shows that even when the emotional readiness is there, an unspoken financial standard can hold couples back from marrying specifically, while leaving cohabitation open as the path of least resistance. Between the two, the reluctance so many people feel about marriage looks less like immaturity or fear and more like two entirely legitimate signals, one internal, one economic, both worth taking seriously rather than pushing past.
It’s worth being honest about what these two studies don’t establish. Lavner, Karney, and Bradbury’s research involved a specific sample of Los Angeles newlyweds, and doubt that predicts divorce in that context might not carry identical weight in every relationship or culture. Gibson-Davis and colleagues’ research focused specifically on lower-income couples, where financial barriers to marriage are especially pronounced, and the same economic-bar effect might look different among couples with more financial security.
Within those honest limits, the research offers a genuinely useful reframe for anyone who feels put off by the idea of marriage. That hesitation doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong with the relationship or the person feeling it. Sometimes it’s real doubt worth examining honestly, and sometimes it’s a financial reality quietly doing the deciding, neither of which deserves to be waved away as cold feet.