Cohabiting with another person is also sharing meals and leisure moments with them.
The notion of cohabiting , coming from the Latin word cohabitāre , has several meanings recognized by the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) in its dictionary. The first meaning refers to living together with another or more individuals .
married life
Those who cohabit, therefore, live together . That is why the term cohabiting is usually used specifically with respect to the development of conjugal or marital life .
Thanks to the social, ideological and cultural advances of recent years, we are getting closer to understanding that married life can be carried out between people of any gender and sex , something that even today is not easy or even legal in certain parts of the world.
live in the same place
Cohabiting, in the broadest sense, is associated with living in the same place . Take the case of the coronavirus pandemic that began to affect the entire world in March 2020. To minimize infections, authorities asked people to stay at home and minimize movement. Simultaneously, those already infected were isolated. In this way, it was sought to prevent cohabitation with the infected.
Cohabit with other species
It is important to mention that humans cohabit with many other species . Cohabiting in a home with dogs or cats, for example, is a decision made by many people. This requires a great deal of adaptation work on the part of both, since certain specific needs are very different in each one.
All living beings have an extraordinary capacity for adaptation , much greater than we imagine. When we face an extreme situation, this valuable resource generally emerges from within us, allowing us to survive episodes that at first glance seemed impossible to overcome. But without going to an extreme, cohabiting with a being of another species inevitably requires great dedication . Dogs and cats have been living in the company of humans for centuries, but that does not mean that they are the same as us or that they do not have different desires.
The same thing happens in our case, it is not always easy for us to keep up with these animals, since their physical abilities and energy considerably exceed ours. If the walks lasted as long as they can handle, we would probably end up in the hospital; Likewise, if we forced them to a sedentary life like the one we usually lead, their organisms would atrophy. Cohabiting requires giving in to reach a middle point in which both parties are happy and live healthily.
In other cases, cohabitation is unwanted but inevitable: in most cities, people cohabit with rats and other animals that can transmit diseases. The measures to reduce their population are very cruel, and many people do not agree with them, but the decision to leave them alive does not seem reasonable either if they put people at risk. In any case, we must remember that these living beings would not be a problem for us if we lived like our most distant ancestors, in direct contact with nature.
Sharing life with other species is also cohabitation.
In politics
In the field of politics , on the other hand, there is talk of cohabitation when different parties coexist in power . In some countries, it is possible that the head of State is from a different political party than the head of Government, thus there is cohabitation.
Cohabitation is also called what two parties do when they govern together , or the situation that occurs between a national leader and a regional or local authority if they come from dissimilar political factions.