Although we live in a culture that is dominated by the thoughts and opinions of secular leftists, science provides useful information for those who want defend Biblical morality. Consider the issue of sexuality and marriage. Secular leftists claim that sex outside of marriage is natural, and produces happiness. Bible believing Christians and Jews say chastity is best. Who is right?
Here is the latest study authored by Dr. Nicholas Wolfinger, a sociologist at the University of Utah. His previous book on relationships was published by Oxford University Press. In his analysis of the data, Wolfinger controlled for divorce rates, religiosity, and socioeconomic status.
Here’s the most important graph:
Other factors that increased marital happiness: having a 4-year college degree (5%), having a salary > 78K (5%), regular church attendance (6%). Notice that women are more dissatisfied with marriage (in general) than men are, and they tend to blame the spouse they freely chose for that unhappiness.
The Federalist also reported on previous research relevant to this study:
Psychologists Galena K. Rhoades and Scott M. Stanley found that women who have had sex with someone other than their husband report statistically significant drops in marital quality over those who don’t. A 2004 study by sociologist Jay Teachman showed that intimate premarital activities such as cohabitation and intercourse increased the rate of marital dissolution by anywhere between 28 and 109 percent, depending on the activity.
Wolfinger also noted in a previous study that only 5% of women were virgins when they married.
Wolfinger noted that a possible explanation for the link between promiscuity and unhappiness is that people look back on their past partners and compare their spouse unfavorably to them. This is especially the case with women. My concern about this is that feminism has taught women to try to increase their social standing by having hook-up sex with attractive bad boys. If those women ever marry, they do it when they are older, less fertile, and less attractive. The husband they eventually “settle” for will (in their minds) always compare unfavorably to the hot bad boys they had sex with when they were younger and prettier. This, I believe, is what leads to their unhappiness with the man they chose to marry.
More partners also means more marital instability
In a previous post, I blogged about several studies linking virginity to marital stability. Couples who don’t have sex before marriage, or even who delayed it, reported better communication, higher satisfaction, better quality sex, and a lower chance of divorce.
Men ought to be aware of this research when they are choosing a spouse. Obviously, you want a virgin, for the increased happiness and increased stability. For marriage-friendly character, you want to avoid women who are promiscuous thrill-seekers. You want to avoid women who run up debt doing easy non-STEM degrees and traveling. You want to avoid women who hook up with hot bad boys aren’t serious about commitment. Women who choose fun and thrills in their teens and 20s are setting a pattern of using sex as a way to get happiness in the moment. Later on, they’ll continue that pattern of seeing relationships as commodities that are designed to make them feel good, moment by moment. They’ll look at marriage as a way to fulfill their needs. They’ll have internalized the view that relationships are not commitments to invest in self-sacrificially. The pattern will be: “if it doesn’t make me feel happy right now, then it should be ended”. Men who aren’t serious about evaluating the character of the women for the marriage enterprise are running the risk of divorce, it’s that simple.
The best way to make sure that you have a clear head when evaluating a woman is to stay sober, and keep her hands off of you. When a man refuses to let a woman cloud his judgment with sex, then she is forced to learn how to love him, help him, and submit to his leadership. Male chastity encourages women who have been influenced by feminism to abandon selfishness, fun-seeking, and thrill-seeking, so that they learn to care for others. Male chastity also helps a man to resist older women who chose bad boys in their teens and 20s and want to get married to a good provider in their 30s. The studies discussed above clearly show that such women are more likely to be unhappy, and their future marriages are more likely to be unstable. Avoid them.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
God didn’t outlaw extramarital sex just to be a cosmic wet blanket. He knows better.
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Suprise! The Bible is right again. Who expected that?
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I agree! Not having baggage from every other guy you slept worth come into your marriage cuts down on a lot of drama and speculation! You make a good point too, Wintery Knight that it goes for guys too! Nothing like getting a girl pregnant to run your life and wallet for the next 18 years 😉😉😉 hook up culture must be stopped!
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I know a lot of men who messed around with women, then married one who was physically attractive but had a ton of experience seeking thrills and getting into and out of relationships based on her feelings. Those women divorced those men because they became unhappy. The men have no one to blame but themselves for choosing poorly. Character counts!
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Indeed! Hook up culture is a lose- lose for everyone!
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I don’t know how young guys find women now. Where I live many young women can’t even cook.
In today’s culture it sounds sexist but it is true to me. If a woman can cook me a good meal I care about that long term. Sex is much further down the list if you are with someone.
There are many other things like being a good person and having a nice soul a person wants to be around or any life skill.
It seems like a lot of young women have few useful skills after. Willing to have sex. That isn’t a life skill.
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I think men overestimate the importance of sex in a marriage, compared to other feminine character traits and skills. Also, men think that a woman who is attractive will provide great sex. The truth is that there is an epidemic of sex withholding. If a husband wants great sex, he should choose someone who sees sex as part of the marriage commitment, not something that is used to get what you want, then you stop when you don’t feel like it anymore.
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It is true sex actually isn’t the. Most important thing in your life or the pinnacle of your existence.
It is why celibacy is considered a biblical choice and not a strange possibility, or a sign that a person is so bad no one would have them.
In lieu of a prescription for proper relationship ordained by God celibacy is the correct choice and you won’t be missing out.
You will gain a life free from worry of sex diseases, spending finances to raise kids. You can put time into a ministry if you choose and still have some personal time if you don’t have a family.
Only secular ideas push that you can have sex as a fun game with no consequences.
Even in life if you figure all the time they waste in bars, and various ways to hook up with people it could be spent on far more constructive things
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We’ve emailed a bit about this already, but let’s also bring up infidelity within marriage and sexual partners previous to marriage:
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2013/07/24/relationshipstrategies/the-definitive-survey-of-infidelity-in-marriage-and-relationships/
Even with the eyeball test, there’s a positive correlation between chances of cheating and number of sexual partners prior to marriage (r=0.911, r^2 confidence interval = 0.829, which is very scary). This wasn’t even conducted by Christians.
Translation: As many Christians have pointed out, “your view of sex is not going to change with a walk down the aisle.”
If two people view sex as a fun activity to do between two consenting adults, really, what’s going to change that view after marriage?
The more partners one has had in the past, the less one is going to view sex as “this is the one thing that I reserve for my spouse, that I share with him or her, and no other.”
(The Bible is also chalk full of examples of how adultery destroys all involved, for instance, in Proverbs: 2:16ff; 5:20-23; 6:24-35; 7:5ff)
And with the data above, to no one’s surprise, the lowest probability that you have for your partner to cheat is if both partners are virgins.
In any case, not only do virgins have the happiest marriages but they also have the least chance of infidelity. More sex partners means more unhappiness and more probability of infidelity.
But there’s probably something fundamental to this, as I’ve read by many writers across continents. It’s primarily devout Christians, who want to honor God, who are choosing to not be sexually involved — choosing to focus on discernment and developing other aspects of their relationship like emotional connection and spiritual connection and communication.
When you invest in all of these things together, it is a virtuous cycle.
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The post you sent me on infidelity studies is so good. Do men really understand that all this behavior in women that is so cute and unpredictable is a sign that the woman is more prone to cheat? It makes sense, but so many men seem to ignore it and get involved with these women then complain that they are victims. Look, if you want marriage with regular sex, pick a virgin who has developed the character to be a housewife and a stay-at-home mom.
I was once told to marry a woman who takes the Bible seriously if I wanted to avoid sex-withholding by my wife. If she believes the Bible, then she’ll take the passages about not denying her husband sex except by mutual agreement and for short periods seriously. I once told this to two different Christian women I MENTORED and they both denied that verse, saying that having sex with your husband to keep him from being tempted was too “transactional”, and they wanted to be more free to do what felt good to them “in the moment”. Even women who claim to be Christians seem so interested in wiggling out of the Bible’s commands. Scary.
Note: one of them later went back on her old position after she got married. Still waiting to hear back from the other one now that she’s married.
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Granted this happened on twitter so take with some grain of salt…
But it was quite surprising how women react when a man asserts that he doesn’t want to get involved with women who have ’emotional baggage’. That’s about as close as you can say ‘a promiscuous slut’ without really making them go off. They think we should love them ‘just as they are’…or they go victim ‘do you think I wanted to have this emotional baggage when I jumped on Chad and then he left?’
It was shown with Lori Alexander’s men prefer debt free virgins with no tattoos.
Long story short…while women are a-ok holding men to impossible standards…they don’t much like it when men have some standards. The most important is things like virginity because it is a huge indicator of marital stability.
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