Living or having lived in a couple is no less frequent than it was in the past. On the other hand, couples are formed later and later and separate more often. An average of 290,000 cohabiting couples (in which at least one of the partners was aged between 25 and 60) separated each year between 2009 and 2012. Moreover, one person in five separated from their first partner before they had lived together for five years. Conjugal trajectories are more diverse today than in the past and it is more frequent to have several relationships in the course of a lifetime. At the end of 2013, 25% of people aged between 26 and 65 had been in two or more cohabiting relationships. Men form new relationships after separations more quickly than women. The arrival of the first child is increasingly dissociated from the start of a cohabiting relationship: it happens later and later in the life of each of the partners and the proportion of children born from a first relationship has fallen, although this continues to be the most general case. The arrival of a first child in a second relationship is thus no longer a rare phenomenon. However, couples continue to have children almost as frequently as before, regardless of whether the couple lasts or not, leading to a greater number of dependent children who experience the separation of their parents.