I’ve always hated the idea of living with a man unless we’re married and vetted him thoroughly, but I genuinely think the high rates of rent are what keep women in my generation and older romanticizing cohabitation. Most of them don’t want to admit that they are letting men use them to survive. I would say the same can be said in reverse but most women lose more than they gain by splitting living arrangements with men

I genuinely think if we had universal housing or caps on rent, cohabitation would almost become nonexistent and in turn birth rates and marriage rates would fall because we wouldn’t need men in order to survive anymore. Plus cohabitation when neither party can afford to leave can make things like abuse and reproductive coercion easier. Sometimes I wonder if housing continues to get more and more expensive in order to insure that men have some leverage over women. Of course there’s larger implications in terms of wealth transfer and political stuff, but forced cohabitation is definitely a way to keep population rates up.