It is very clear from the foregoing that living together relationships or cohabitation and premarital sex are new trends that are on the rise and are becoming more practiced and increasing day by day in Nepalese context. Marriage makes a new social relation, rights and duties between spouse and their relatives, and defines children’s rights and status in birth time but not by living together relationships. Living together represents a private choice for individuals or has implications for society as a whole and when individual behaviors are invested with a public discourse or carry a value for the society as a whole, they acquire social meaning. On the one hand, the differences between cohabitation and marriage may have substantial implications for social welfare (e.g., union stability, children’s outcomes, well-being), especially since cohabitation is often not as well-recognized in the legal system as marriage, which may have implications for how states support vulnerable individuals. On the other hand, living together relationship contributes to family diversity and may indicate greater acceptance of alternative lifestyles.

This paper seeks to apply anthropological theories to the concepts of marriage and living together in Kathmandu in present context. I have tried to examine living together relationship using sociological micro-theories such as phenomenology theory and the macro-theories such as conflict theory, functionalism, and post modernism are used in order to analyze love as it relates to marriage and the ways in which the meanings of these concepts and their positions in society have changed.

living together, cohabitation, marriage, kinship, norms, values, social, cultural etc.

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