HelenM

Why is it that I haven't seen a single post by anyone showing that the only reason they didn't marry someone - or the only reason they got divorced - was because of 'sexual incompatibility'?

(Were there some that I missed?)

Helen

keyser_soze

There was a girl once that I almost married, but we decided against it. She craved sex much more than I did(to my surprise and hers). She would eventually have had to go outside the relationship, so we reasoned that it was better to end it. We were very much friends for a long time after that. Of course I've also dated girls that could be labeled "frigid".

JamesKrieger

If we didn't work it out, it would've been a deal-breaker for us, despite the fact that everything else about the relationship was fine.

luvluv

Didn't read the whole thread, but I have a few comments.

1) To whoever said that premarital sex prevents divorce, that would be statistically incorrect, if I recall correctly. Two married virgins, statistically speaking, have a lower divorce rate than any other group.

2) Despite the enormous divorce rate, statistically speaking married couples stick together longer than non-married couples, and cohabitating couples have a higher rate of separation than married couples.

3) People who live together, then get married, have a higher divorce rate than couples who never lived together.


The above is counter-intuitive, but them's the facts. You probably won't believe me until you see statistical documentation yourself (I've read this in a couple of books, no idea where it is on the internet) but once you've looked into it a little bit you'll probably be shocked at what you find. The scientific, statistical data does not support the contemporary wisdom.

This is not surprising to me. If one looks around at the world, you will see that marriages in the post sexual revolution world are less stable than marriages before. That does not take a brain surgeon to notice. Divorce rates are obviously higher now than they were before extra-marital (not non-marital, Comestible) sex lost it's stigma.

Newsflash: having lots of sex with mutliple partners before saying your vows is not good for marriage, in fact all the statistical data so far shows the EXACT OPPOSITE.

I don't know what the whys and the wherefores are. I think a lot of people assume that the institution of marriage and life-long fidelity are the outgrowths of religious hegemony. I think anthropologists would tell you a different story. The fact of the matter is folks, that unrestrained sexual appetites can wreak some freakin' havoc on any society. You guys are coming at the whole issue in far to individualistic a fashion if you ask me. Will the institution of absolute virginity until marriage and absolute fidelity aftwerwards make us as individuals happier people? I don't know. Will it make a more stable, healthier society? Probably so. Socieities benefit a lot more from stable families and cared-for children than they do from the sexual satisfaction of it's constituent members (many of whom would not be satisified regardless of social arrangements for various reasons). A society filled with people trying to maximize their commitment to their family will be more succesful than one filled with people trying to maximize their sexual pleasure. I realize this is a gross oversimplification of the ideas involved, but I think it is indicative of a concept that is not being considered here.

Where I'm from, it's called a trade-off. Simple fact is, you might not find a person whom you truly love AND who is sexually compatible with you. And, depressing as it may sound, you are likely not to find anyone who is both. So you might have to choose between great sex and great everything else. If incompatiblity is truly inherent, so much the worse. Likewise, it is likely that we can either have a society in which sexual freedom is held up as the supreme valule or where commitment is. We tend to believe that sexual freedom and committed relationships can go hand in hand having no causal relationship to one another. Hogwash. A society in which unrestrained sexual activity is permitted, perhaps even encouraged, will tend to be a society with unstable relationships. (See America, United States of)

So the religious laws do not emerge out of a vaccum, nor do they emerge from what will make us as individuals happiest. In my opinion, they come from what will make a society work the best. In marriage, the sexual needs are not ignored, and the need for stable community is preserved. The opposite ends of the spectrum, total lifelong abstinence, and total unrestrained sexuality, are the extreme positions. Marriage is the sensible institution that takes into account that the race cannot survive without taking measures to satisfy their sexual urges, yet it also cannot survive if those sexual urges are given unrestrained free reign.

My two cents. *

(* Actual financial value of opinions may vary.)

JamesKrieger

What books? Do the books have literature citations of the studies that these statistics came from?

And of course it makes sense that a married couple will stay together longer than a non-married couple. A divorce is much more messy than a break-up, encouraging a couple to stay together. The presence of children after a marriage may encourage a couple to stay together.

The same goes with cohabitating couples. It's actually not counter-intuitive at all. It's a lot easier for a cohabitating couple to separate than a married couple, thus it will be more likely for them to separate.

But is this a cause/effect relationship? I only see a correlation here. Ice cream intake goes up during the summer. So does drowning incidence. Does that mean eating ice cream will cause somone to drown?

Since when has extra-marital sex lost its stigma? I think the stigma has always been and will continue to be there.

Where is this statistical data?

And let's say that the correlation is there. Is it a cause/effect relationship? OR, could it be that people who have sex with a lot of partners have certain personality qualities that increase the likelihood of a failed marriage? Thus, it's not the multiple partners itself, it's the personality quality of the individual which leads him/her to be more sexually uninhibited.

How would it make a more stable, healthier society? What would be the mechanism?

It sounds like to me that you've set up a false dichotomy here. Either a person is attempting to maximize commitment to family, or a person is trying to maximize sexual pleasure, and that somehow the two are incompatible.

Where I'm from, it's called a false dichotomy.

That's a bunch of bull. I have found someone who is both. Where is your evidence that someone is not "likely" to find someone who is both?

False dichotomy, again.

Again, you're assuming a cause/effect relationship here but have yet to show any.

Really? Then why is it that progressive societies, like the Netherlands, where the laws are anything but religiously based, fare better than societies with religiously based laws?



Once again, you have set up a false dichotomy. Satisfying sexual urges does not necessarily entail giving them free reign, no more than satisfying my hunger means eating anything and everything I can get my hands on.

Here in the U.S., people are getting married at a later and later age. Do you suggest they wait until marriage for sex? People aren't getting married until their late 20's or early 30's. I am 29 and I am not married. Don't you think it is just a bit unfair to make people wait so long to enjoy a healthy sex life?

seebs

A couple of comments.

First off, I think all the arguments raised against luvluv's statistics apply just as well to the claimed statistics supporting premarital sex. I think the statistics are a wash; we have no way of extracting information about causality from them.

James, you ask a very interesting question:

You are begging the question. If, as some people think, non-marital sex is immoral, then it may be impossible to have a "healthy" sex life outside of a marriage. Now, I happen to suspect that your conclusion is correct, but your argument begs the question; the question is whether or not sex outside of marriage *can* be healthy, and if it can't, then the number of years you have to wait is not relevant at all.

As to the second question, I'm not sure fair and unfair enter into it. If there are indeed risks associated with a given activity, then it's not a question of fairness or unfairness to tell people they should be careful with it.

I tend to feel that we should not attempt to legislate behavior in this respect, but I do think people should be advised about the potential complications, both emotional and biological, that sex can create.

JamesKrieger

This is true.

Regarding the morality of premarital sex, that would depend upon what one defines as "moral" and "immoral."

But doesn't that also beg the question of whether sex inside of marriage can be healthy? If sex inside of marriage is healthy, and sex outside of marriage is not, then why is this so?

seebs

Indeed. I think that gets us back to the core question, and I think the point here is that how long you do or don't have to wait before having sex is probably not relevant to that discussion, unless we're arguing from apparent-harm, and we can argue convincingly that waiting to get laid is a substantial harm.

Rational BAC

This is a great post. Somehow most everyone on this forum has forgotten what is the NORM sexually and are concentrating on all the bad but very "unlike the norm" things that could possibly happen on a honeymoon.

Believe me------2 very horny young people who are attracted to each other in a sexual sense --because so many things in nature made that so---are going to do very well --enormously well in fact--even if, and especially if, they are virgins on their wedding night. They will have a super- memorable honeymoon that will last in their memories for a lifetime and help prevent divorce, -----

-----that those who have lived together for months or years before their so called "honeymoon" can only imagine in their wet dreams.

Like I have said before---you can tell by the sparkle in the eyes of honeymooners who were doing it for the first time (and an AWESOME amount of times for days afterwards)------

-----And you can tell by the lack of sparkle in the eyes of those who have lived together before marriage also on a honeymoon ----for whom the best thing they had going for them on their honeymoon was the rides at Disneyworld. And not the great rides on each other.

That is the truth and I am sticking to it.

seebs

I dunno about that. I've known a fair number of people who slept together before marriage, whose honeymoons sounded pretty special... or whose "honeymoon" just happened to be a few months before the civil ceremony.