I recently experienced an interesting conversation at work. We were on break and the television blared Anderson Cooper’s new talk show. Cooper’s topic for the day was “purity ceremonies”. (You can watch the preview at the show’s website here.) Purity ceremonies look similar to weddings but instead of pledging to love their spouse through richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, young women were pledging to their fathers to remain virgins until their wedding night.
The family that had this ceremony was displayed on the stage like zoo animals as they explained their conservative Christian beliefs. The mother described her own divorce and how that influenced her and her husbands decision to place such importance on their daughter’s purity. Unfortunately for her, it only increased the vitriol spewed by the crowd. How you can be so old fashioned? restrictive? intrusive into your kids lives? seemed to be at the center of the questions asked by Cooper and his audience. Likewise, many of the same questions were asked in our break room, and as the nearest Christian, they were aimed at me. I awkwardly described the ideas behind the families purity ceremony and hoped I was making some sort of sense. My co-workers are good people so they listened respectfully to what I had to say. I appreciated their thoughtfulness and openness to my minority opinion. After ten minutes or so of civil discussion, we went on with our work days.
I have thought about that conversation quite a bit since then. Mostly, how the church has taught me that God’s instructions are meant to help us enjoy the most fulfilling lives possible. I do believe this but wish I had some evidence supported by research regarding God’s directive to save sex until marriage. So, I decided to check into it a bit.
Here are some interesting articles I found after a brief internet search. If you have any research on the topic whether for or against pre-marital sex, please post it. After all, I could be wrong in my reasoning and invite any dialogue. I also want to add a disclaimer that this post isn’t directed at any specific person, just as a collection of thoughts after an interesting conversation. I wish everybody nothing but the best.
* Couples who wait to have sex report higher levels of sexual quality, relationship satisfaction, perceived stability, and better communication. Busby, D. M., Carroll, J. S., Willoughby, B. J. (2010). Compatibility or restraint: The effects of sexual timing on marriage relationships. Journal of Family Psychology, 24, 766-774. Click here for a short article summarizing their results from the Economist. Here is some more reaction, this time from Science Daily.
* Having more pre-marital partners decreases marital satisfaction (at least in Lithuanians!). Legkauskas, Visvaldas., Stankeviciene, Dzeralda. Premarital Sex and Marital Satisfaction of Middle Aged Men and Women: A Study of Married Lithuanian Couples. Springer Science Online. 2008
* On average, people who lived together before marriage, report less marital stability and quality. To read this article, click here. Claire M. Kamp Dush, Catherine L. Cohan, and Paul R. Amato, “The Relationship Between Cohabitation and Marital Quality and Stability: Change Across Cohorts?” Journal of Marriage and Family 65, No. 3 (August 2003): 539-549
* More data that couples who live together before engagement struggle. You can read another Science Daily summary here. University of Denver. ”Couples Who Cohabit Before Engagement Are More Likely To Struggle.” ScienceDaily, 13 Jul. 2009. Web. 31 Jan. 2012.
* Here is one well written, and well supported, article on the Christian perspective by Dr. Steven Tracy. The first point under Pre-Marital Abstinence Based on the Goodness of God is particularly interesting.
Feb 05, 2012 @ 09:55:59
I think that this is a very great topic for discussion. I understand this blog is showing your perspective on things but I’m curious, is all of the information you found out there overwhelmingly anti-cohabitation and premarital sex? Since this is being made a discussion I would have expected at least one article showing that either of these activities are not so bad. I lived with my now wife for around two years before we were married and I think it was an invaluable experience. We learned a lot about each other during those times out of marriage, and sure we could have learned them while married, but we got to find out that we both truly love with each other and this made me confident that if I married this woman, it would last forever, no questions or worries. Too often people seem to get married just because they seem to click together but never really getting to know the other person, thus the high divorce rate in this country. I think that we were lucky in the sense that we didn’t find any weird quirks that we couldn’t stand, its little things like that which can be a beginning towards a bitter end. In my experience its the little things that seed the big disagreements. Another idea on cohabitation, how many people do you know that were in a serious relationship spent every moment they could with each other until it was time to go to sleep. Only then did they part ways, unless they were sneaky or on vacation where they became very excited to spend the night with each other. Sure stealing a night or two here or there isn’t quite the same as everyday living, but when you do everything with someone you love, why is sleeping under the same roof frowned upon. If the only answer is to prevent sex out of wedlock than the ideal is a ridiculous one. Sex can happen at any time of day, not only under stars, if having or not having it is important to someone, that is the way it will be. No question about it. Think about it, if you really want to be with someone and they firmly believe in waiting, you will wait, and so will they. I say that from experience, the best form of knowledge.
Feb 07, 2012 @ 14:52:53
Hi Tony! Thanks for your comment and thoughtful ideas. I’m sorry that I didn’t get back to you sooner but my schedule has been full and wanted a chance to give you a quality response.
You are 100% right, I should have included one reference I saw on Wikipedia’s Cohabitation page. It’s an article (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-03-02-cohabiting02_N.htm) about a National Center for Health Sciences study in USA Today that says cohabitators have the same divorce rate of people who do not cohabitate. In my opinion,one of the strongest parts of this survey is its large sample size; over 12,500 people. To be honest though, there really wasn’t much other data suggesting equal divorce rates but as I admitted in the original post, it was a brief search.
One thought I have on this is that if the reason people co-habitate before marriage is to see if they are compatible for marriage, wouldn’t those who co-habitate have a lower divorce rate? I reason this because I am assuming incompatible couples would break up before they get married. In my (again admittedly brief searches) I never found one study in which those who co-habitated have lower divorce rates. Any thoughts on this?
My opinion is that love is about self-sacrifice and commitment more than anything else. If people are only in relationships for what they can get out of them, then once you have to give more for the relationship, you will start looking for other options whether or not you have lived together before hand.