While romance has traditionally been regarded as a private affair between two people, Americans may soon have to rethink that notion.

In 2005, for the first time in our nation’s history, the majority of women (51 percent) were living without a spouse, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

I fear the ramifications of this new trend will have a ripple effect across society. If, after eliminating widows, divorcees and delayed marriages from the equation, we still see the number of heterosexual marriages sagging, we may indeed be witnessing the disintegration of a long-held social institution and, more alarmingly, the ushering in of a new tolerance for casual cohabitation.

One need only flip through the TV channels to see unmarried couples such as Goldie and Kurt extolling the merits of cohabitation while Oprah points an accusing finger at marriage’s identity theft of women. In fact, many defenders of cohabitation even argue that cohabitation has had a minimizing effect on our decades-long divorce epidemic and has improved the well-being of children.

However, according to the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The number of children born to single parents is on the rise. One in three children today are born to a never-married mother and more than 60 percent of American children live in a household headed by singles or couples other than married parents. According to the Center’s figures, these children are much more likely to use drugs, drop out of school and commit crimes. Somehow that doesn’t spell solution to me.

I also question whether women are as happy being alone as the media would have them believe. A brief walk down the self-improvement aisle of Barnes & Noble reveals an endless myriad of How-to-Snag-the-Man-of-Your-Dreams titles - a telling hint of another truth: we simply don’t know how to make relationships work.

So when new solutions are leaving women unhappy and children at risk, perhaps it’s time we bark up a different tree. Instead of avoiding the complications of commitment, we need to find out what does and doesn’t make commitment work.

This issue is exactly what Dr. Emerson Eggerichs is tackling in his increasingly popular Love and Respect Marriage Conferences held nationwide. In his latest book titled “Cracking the Communication Code,” Eggerichs suggests happy and solid marriages are created by understanding the differences in communication styles between women and men.

Even Dr. Phil, in his pithy, direct manner warns us to avoid the mythically perfect soul mate and advises that good relationships just take common sense, emotional maturity and hard work. Hard work, now there’s a concept we haven’t heard much about in while. It sounds like, well, a lot of hard work.

Have we gotten so lazy in our technologically sophisticated world that we have grown complacent, forgetting that some things in life still require some elbow grease and hard scrubbing?

While research into the scientific basis of romantic love abounds, from hormone tracers to mating intelligence, recent trends in our families cry out for the necessity of more socially-directed studies. As long as falling in love continues to be a valued American tradition, staying together should be too.