Why haven't you proposed to the love of your life? Why haven't you accepted your long-time beau's marriage proposal? Could it be that you are afraid of divorce?

If this is the reason, you're far from alone. A new survey of cohabitating couples in Columbus, Ohio, suggests that a majority of couples avoid getting married because they are afraid that their marriage will eventually end in divorce. And couples in the survey said that they worry about the social, economic and emotional fallout of divorce, according to a recent story by Time Magazine.

In the survey of 61 cohabitating couples in Columbus, researchers from Cornell University and the University of Central Oklahoma found that 67 percent of respondents were worried about their potential marriages ending in divorce. According to the researchers, this is one of the main reasons why these cohabitating couples had lived together for so many years without getting married.

The study results may seem shocking, but respondents told researchers that the legal and financial distress caused by a divorce wasn't worth the risk of getting married. It's easier to split, the logic goes, when you're just living with someone without being married.

The marriage rate in the United States is actually on the downswing, according to the latest numbers from the Pew Research Center. According to Time's story, Pew found that just more than half of adult U.S. residents are now married. This is the lowest rate in decades.

A fear of divorce might keep this number down for the foreseeable future.

Source: Time, "Is Fear of Divorce Keeping People from Getting Married?" Belinda Luscombe, Dec. 22, 2011