If you’re living with a dating partner, why did you move in together? Did you make this step for convenience? To care for a child? To simply spend more time with each other? Living with a dating partner might be commonplace in the U.S. today, but that doesn’t mean people are entering cohabitation for the same reasons.

Why Dating Partners Live Together

The reasons people live together are quite varied, from the practical to the idealistic. It could be that a couple wants to cost-split an apartment or wants a trial period before making any longer-term commitments. Maybe they have grown children from prior marriages or have no interest in the institution of marriage. Maybe they just want to see each other more often.

A strong body of literature tends to converge around three main reasons that people move in together: 1) to test a relationship, 2) for convenience, and 3) to spend more time together (Rhoades et al., 2009).

Reasons for Cohabitating Are Linked to Relationship Functioning

Are some reasons for moving in together “better” than others? Possibly. Reasons appear predictive of important aspects of relationship function.

For example, a recent longitudinal study (Chapman et al., 2025) followed 485 adults over five years and assessed why they moved in together and how their relationship progressed. Those who cohabitated to spend more time together had a strong relationship well-being over time. Further, and consistent with early research (Rhoades et al., 2009), couples who cohabitated to test their relationship had worse relationship health over time (Chapman et al., 2025).

Interestingly, cohabitors’ relationships may have been on their quality trajectories prior to any decision-making about moving in together. In other words, people’s reasons for moving in together may reflect underlying relationship health, rather than serving as a turning point in any specific relationship trajectory (Chapman et al., 2025).

Cohabiting Reasons May Be Multi-Dimensional

What we know about cohabitation reasons tends to come from research that looks at associations between motives and outcomes. For example, scholars might evaluate the extent to which people say they live together “for convenience” and see how this correlates with relationship satisfaction. While this technique is a helpful first step, recent use of latent profile analysis (LPA) allows for a more sophisticated consideration of motivations (Beauparlan et al., 2025).

After all, are people’s motivations really one dimensional? Maybe someone agrees that convenience is a factor, but they also want to test their relationship and spend more time with their partner. Maybe all three are strongly endorsed or all three are only somewhat endorsed. LPA allows researchers to cluster people based on patterns across their answers.

The Six Types of Cohabitors

Beauparlan and colleagues (2025) applied LPA to data from two samples of approximately 550 individuals to better understand why people live together. The researchers identified the following types of cohabitors (type names were modified for this blog; Beauparlan et al., 2025). Which best describes you?

1. Convenience Seekers (16 percent). These people barely endorsed time or testing, but they did see the benefits of convenience when they thought about cohabiting. Convenience is not an overwhelming motive but is endorsed at an average level for these individuals, and more than the other motives.
2. Time Seekers (8 percent). Possibly the most romantic of the group, this type of cohabitor prioritized time with their partner and only minimally endorsed the idea that cohabiting serves a practical purpose or an opportunity to test the relationship. For them, it’s all about quality partner time.
3. Testers (25 percent). A quarter of the sample indicated that their primary motive is one of investigation: Could their relationship work over the long haul? Moving in was seen as a key way to test their relationship. This group did not strongly endorse time together or convenience as reasons for cohabiting.
4. Practical Cohabitors (11 percent). Utility plays a major role in why these people cohabitate. This group strongly endorsed the opportunity to test a relationship and the benefits of convenience linked to moving in together. They were not motivated to cohabitate as a way to spend more time with their partner.
5. Convenience Prioritizers (27 percent). More than a quarter of people strongly endorsed motives of convenience, and moderately endorsed time together and the chance to test their relationship. In other words, all motives were relevant, but convenience held priority.
6. Many Motives (12 percent). Some individuals strongly endorsed all three reasons for cohabiting. They saw cohabiting as a chance to test their relationship, to add convenience, and to allow them to spend more time with their partner.

Cohabitor Type Predicts Relationship Well-Being

Are some cohabitor types better predictive of relationship success? Yes, and in a surprising way. This new research (Beauparlan et al., 2025) shows that the Many Motives group reported more relationship satisfaction than the other types, save for the Time Seekers. This suggests that it’s not the concept of wanting to test a relationship that’s the problem; it could be the relative standing of that motive compared to the others that matters.

Testers faired poorly compared to other cohabitor styles on commitment (Beauparlan et al., 2025), a finding that is consistent with early work in this area. When it came to conflict, however, groups were not different from each other.

What This Means for Relationships

It’s difficult to assess reasons for cohabiting without relying on retrospection (“why did you” versus the better “why are you”), but the use of LPA is a critical step forward in this research area. Beauparlan and colleagues (2025) demonstrated that people often believe their cohabitation reflects multiple motives at the same time. Of particular interest, holding multiple motives (i.e., high levels of all three main reasons) can be a strong predictor of relationship success. Future research that applies longitudinal methods to examine how these types might be linked to relationship outcomes over time will be especially important moving forward.