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the number of unmarried couples who are living together has been well-documented in many
countries. For many couples, living together is a trial marriage of sorts, a way of getting to know
each other well enough to find out whether a marriage would work.
The research shows (Bumpass and Sweet) that there seems to be a negative correlation
between cohabitation and marital stability. It turns out that the divorce rate for couples who
lived together before marriage is significantly higher than for couples who did not.
Some experts believe that people who choose cohabitation prior to marriage have "a
different set of values, values that carry with (them) an ethic that relationships are breakable if
they're not personally satisfying" — in other words, they may be people more likely to terminate
a relationship that is not completely satisfying. Sociologist Andrew Cherlin proposes some
other reasons — the increasing economic status of women, increased sexual freedom among
those who are not married, and increased emphasis on personal satisfaction in intimate
relationships, less emphasis on working together.
According to Knapp, if a relationship reaches the integrating stage, both people must
intensify at least some aspects of their personality and minimize others. If a relationship goes
on to the bonding stage, that commitment is in some sense formalized. In a romantic
relationship, the commitment might be the announcement that the couple is "going steady," or
it might be an engagement or a marriage.
Some people consistently avoid such a commitment. One reason may be that a previous
commitment proved disappointing of constricting.
There are people who have never made a complete commitment to another human
being. One psychologist describes the fear of commitment as characterized by "the Dance-
Away Lover":
The Dance-Away's repeated romantic disillusionments are the consequences of his
discomfort with the intimacy and commitment love entails and the fear of being trapped. He
clings to his independence lest, in her eagerness to possess him, someone succeed in sucking
him into a web of obligations and responsibilities. (Goldstine et al., 1977, p. 27)
Even if he makes a partial commitment, he will later maneuver to avoid intimacy by
becoming unavailable—forgetting appointments, working late, withdrawing emotionally, or even
withholding sexually. Of course the Dance-Away Lover may be male or female.
In trying to examine the difference between "love" and "commitment," Lund (1985) found
that commitment has to do with the expectation a relationship will continue, whereas love has
more to do with desire. Although a high correlation exists between the two, love and
commitment are still independent.

3. Dominance
Like the need for affiliation, the need for dominance can be imagined as a continuum:
At one end is the person who always wants control over others; at the other end, the person
with an extremely submissive style of communication. The vast majority of us fit somewhere in-
between.

Dominant people tend to have a strong need for achievement. An associationalso seems
to exist between dominance and self-concept. A person with an unfavorable self-concept tends
to be submissive rather than dominant. In a dyad, he or she often defers to the other person.
This is true not only of friendships and romantic relationships but of work and classroom
situations.
When we combine what we know about behaviors associated with the needs for
affiliation and dominance we see some of the communication patterns that are possible in a