Coming from the female side of it, because its an excuse to wear a fancy dress and be pampered and invite everybody over for a big party with cake and dancing 
(there are also legal issues, which you may or may not have to deal with, that are easier with that formal recognition).
My vote: I believe in sex before marriage. That’s because there’s so little of it after marriage.
I didn’t read the thread so maybe that was already posted…if so, just add a tally mark to that column.
The reasons you mentioned seem to me the same as the reasons I mentioned, just phrased differently. If someone believes that sex prior to marriage is shallow and meaningless, they presumably also believe that it doesn’t lead to happiness or satisfactory relationships. If someone believes that the marriage bond is special, they presumably also believe that it leads to happiness.
As for my measurements of happiness, I really don’t know what to say beyond the obvious. Would you agree that an alert person can observe the people around him and distinguish happy and unhappy people, with decent accuracy? If so, then there’s a measure of happiness.
Once a society leaves behind the traditional values regarding sex, it moves inevitably towards people adopting more and more partners. A sexually healthy person feels sexual attraction towards many other humans. Without the idea that a monogamous marriage is something sacred, moral, or worth striving for, all that’s left is to view sexual decisions like any other decision of personal preference. And that means most people will tend towards multiple partners. There will be some who do stick with one partner, but remain unmarried. For them, though, one might ask, why not marriage? Marriage provides support (legal, religious, social, and personal) that could help keep the relationship together when the going gets rough.
That’s because sex is not like those other areas. Most people want their sexual lives to be the most private and intimate part of their lives. It would be crass and demeaning, in most people’s view, to have one’s sexual behavior publicized, discussed, and judged. For the same reason, it would be crass and demeaning as a way to determine compatability. That reduces sex towards something economic and mundane.
Fundamentally, I don’t think most people look for compatability in a marriage partner. They look for love. Where love is genuine and the partners have persistence and determination, major differences in many areas can be overcome. It happened for my grandparents, who had a very successful 61-year marriage despite being different in almost every area.
How many wives?
You have a rather odd view of marriage. Even my mother-in-law (hardly a hippie or free sex advocate) once said that she didn’t get married just to do laundry. What do you think marriage is about?
I’m sure two people who hate sex could have a fine marriage. But people with mismatched libidos are going to have a problem. There is a clear evolutionary reason for sex helping to bond two people.
If sex is important to someone, it makes sense to check it out before legally committing. Why consider it less important than food and money preferences?
Believing that sex before marriage is a good thing doesn’t mean believing the marriage bond isn’t special. My family doesn’t do divorces, and I wanted to be damn sure before I got married.
There are plenty of married people with multiple partners too. I wonder how much of this happens because of dissatisfaction.
Do you think compatibility gets determined through a quiz or in a lab? That’s what dating is all about. That’s why we have engagement periods.
Compatibility doesn’t mean being identical twins. It might involve accepting the other. But you couldn’t be more wrong about love. Passionate love isn’t something that lasts undiminished for decades, but it comes and goes. There is a deeper love, which I doubt has developed when people get married, that can last for decades. That love has a lot to do with compatibility. Don’t you want to be a friend to a spouse also? Compatibility takes many forms. Maybe both like to live on the edge, maybe they like to argue. But I doubt you’ll have love for very long without a lot of compatibility. You can be married and just be roommates, but that doesn’t sound like much fun to me.
Someone needs to tell my parents this. At it like rabbits as unmarried teenagers. Married since 1961 and still at it like rabbits.
You’d have thought the prostate issue would have slowed them down, but nooooo.
That doesn’t follow through at all. Firstly I was saying that those who do agree with not having sex before marriage may see it as shallow and meaningless, so if this is your argument it works against you, not for it. Secondly marriage being thought of as special does not mean it therefore be thought to always lead to happiness; I would say rather that people would tend to believe marriage is a recognition of happiness, rather than seen as something that will lead to it.
Like I said, if your personal experience is valid, so is mine, and mine disagrees with yours. Add to that the point that you make no claim to be able to percieve the reasoning behind the unhappiness, only that you see it. Add to that that i’m pretty sure i’m younger than you and so perhaps more in touch wit da yoof, and I think that lends my opinion more credence.
Interesting. I suppose that in order to back this up, you have cites? Because I personally find that people can value monogamous relationships. I find that people can have sex before marriage yet still value marriage. And I find the idea that this means not just some but “most” people will tend towards multiple partners hilarious. Stats, please. Or is this yet another thing you’re guessing at?
Perhaps indeed were it the only way used. But i’m not saying people should have sex and that’s it. I’m saying sex, among other things, is a good idea to determine compatibility.
Compatibility doesn’t mean you’re a clone of the other person. It means you work together. I think you’re right, people do look for love; but if you simply can’t get along with the other person, if your personalities are too far apart or indeed too similar, it may be that it will fail.
I don’t have any moral problem with sex before marriage, but I think one of the reasons for people who do object to it is actually the opposite of this. It’s not that it makes good relationships weaker, it’s that it can make bad relationships stronger.
If, as a young man, you’d been involved with a young woman who was eager to have sex and a real tiger in the sack but proved to otherwise be a terrible girlfriend – manipulative, dishonest, violent, whatever – how quickly would you have broken things off? Probably not as quickly as if she’d outright refused to have sex with you.
Waiting (although not necessarily until marriage) to have sex is one way to avoid winding up in a relationship that has little going for it other than sexual compatibility. I do think that the “no sex before marriage” or even “no sex unless you’re really in love” camps sometimes shoot themselves in the foot on this one, though. I’m afraid that some young women especially get the idea that if they shouldn’t have sex unless they’re really in love, then “obviously” they must really be in love with whoever they really want to have sex with.
Which begs the obvious question… So what?
I may regard marriage as sacred once it’s happened, but I certainly don’t regard it as something inherently moral and worth striving for as a goal in itself. You get married because you’ve met the right person. You don’t get married because it’s The Done Thing, and just *hope *they’re the right person.
It would ruin **my **marriage. Bad sex is a dealbreaker for me. After all, in a monogamous relationship, the one fundamental thing that differentiates your SO from everyone else you know is that you have sex with them. They’re the ONLY one you have sex with. So it damn well better be good sex.
That’s pretty much what I was getting at - though I did a piss-poor job of making that clear.
What I had meant by “marriage IS intimacy” is that if you have intimacy then you ARE married - with or without Papal / civic sanction.
Sex is just sex and carries only the weight that you put on it.
Ah, good point. Marriage in our society also comes with a bunch of advantages, but I agree that these have nothing to do with intimacy. But for some people, at least, marriage is a signal of agreeing to a greater level of commitment, and is useful for that reason. Not everyone, but some.
I think sex before marriage is a great idea for many reasons, not the least of which is that I am 26 and not yet married. It may be many, many years before I find someone I want to marry. I would hate to be a virgin well into my 30’s or 40’s just because I don’t have a ring on my finger! Also, I have had sexual experiences that were very, very bad and I am so glad I didn’t wait until I married one of those guys to find out that there were no orgasms in my future with that man, in part because we weren’t physically compatible and in part because they weren’t willing to communicate with me about what I needed in bed.
Something else to consider is that sexual experimentation can be an important part in figuring out who you are. I say this as a woman who took some time figuring out where I fall on the Kinsey scale and as a woman who has been propositioned twice in the last year by women who are now doubting their sexuality years into their marriages. One of them was a virgin and one had only been with one other man when they got married and now they are both confused about whether or not they are straight and they are looking for experimentation outside of their marriage to figure it out. If you go take a look in the craigslist W4W section you will find a plethora of ads from women who are looking for a discreet affair to figure out their sexuality. I can’t help but think that these are people who would have benefitted from a little more premarital sex so that they could have a better grasp on their sexual needs before tearing apart their families.
Companionship and childrearing, usually. There are a few other variously rare and esoteric reasons as well, such as joining of families or business legacies or hitching one’s wagon up to the other person’s finances. Sex, other than as a mechanical prerequisite for the most common approach to childrearing, isn’t even on the list of reasons - because your average person can have all the sex they can handle without bothering with marriage at all! If you just want ready access to casual sex, you want a boy/girlfriend, not a spouse.
I don’t really find this argument credible. There is an evolutionary advantage to being able to reproduce, but I don’t believe there’s an evolutionary advantage to having the same fetishes or approaches to position. And I honestly think that you could match up heterosexual pairs at random without bothering to match ‘libidos’ and have a very respectable rate of reproduction nonetheless - and I believe this has basically been done and proven effective throughout large swaths of history when marriages were arranged or whatever.
Money “preferences” can make or break a household, at real ruin-your-life levels. Food preferences, not so much. And sure, if people know about their ‘libido preferences’ in advance, then they can casually discuss them amongst their other ‘get to know each other’ discussions, along with the other mildly relevent but not really important things like food preferences. But by my reckoning if they lack that knowledge, it’s going to make no real difference. Worst comes to worst they find other ways to pass their time.
Not to say that if sex is ‘important’ to a person, that they shouldn’t try and find a match with somebody who can happily satisfy or accomodate whatever bizarre desires they may have. Just like I should probably clear my collecting habits and hobbies with any potential spouse. But I can’t imagine either topic either making or breaking the potential coupling on its own.
Really? There seems to be a big business in computer dating which doesn’t seem plausible if everyone is getting all they need. I doubt even a poll of single dopers would reveal that. Now, seriously living with someone is functionally equivalent to being married as far as sex goes.
Child birth isn’t the issue, child rearing is. And why the religious and cultural aversion to divorce (until recently) unless it was a way of forcing a man to stay around for child rearing despite the mismatch. Clearly evolution was not operating at the level of position or fetish - I suspect very few cavewomen had little French Maid outfits. But the need for sex to keep a man for child rearing explains why primate females are in heat so much of the time - as compared to my dog, who goes into heat once or twice a year.
You think a devout vegetarian and a devout carnivore would do very well together? There are lots of problems with getting to know you discussions. First, who is going to say they’re not interested after marriage? Second, how does someone even know what frequency is desirable without actually finding it through experience. Third, I really wonder how extensive the discussion will get, and fourth, how do you even know what you like together until you try?
Sexual incompatibility is one cause of infidelity which is certainly a cause of divorce. You might want to talk to Mrs. Spitzer about the impact of incompatibility on a marriage. Yeah, other ways of passing the time that break the very bond of trust that marriage is based on. This isn’t to say that marriages won’t fall apart for other reasons - I think money is still #1 - but it is more than a way to pass the time.
That just says something about your imagination. I read the journals of John Cheever in the New Yorker, and a lot of the entries stem from a mismatch of libido.
I know you qualified this with a ‘usually’ but I want to take issue with it anyway. I’m happily married to someone (and have a great sex life with her) but we plan in no way eve to have anything to do with child-rearing. Medical steps were taken to make sure it wouldn’t happen. We’re both well within ‘child-rearing years’ (I’m 40ish and she’s 25). But the issue is completely out of the picture for us.
Companionship is fine but you can get that from friends. Although I will allow that your partner can bring a different level of companionship than your friends. Sex, sure you can find that anywhere. To me it is more a combination of the sex and companionship (along with a lot of other things). I can’t imagine us having been married without having sex first (and a lot of it). Incompatibility in the bedroom (or living room or wherever) could have been a deal-breaker for us. We didn’t want to be room-mates.
It has been a deal-breaker for me in prior relationships. Incompatibility means a no-go. I never entered any sort of relationship where my partner wasn’t interested in sex and plenty of it – waiting for it wasn’t in my gameplan.
You realize we’re talking about *human *marriage, here, right? And that for most people, it is emphatically *not *a business arrangement?
I’ve never been married. I don’t lack for companionship, or money, and I seem to have done okay with the childrearing. I clearly don’t need a spouse for those things. If you want help with the kids or the rent, you hire a nanny or get a roommate, not a spouse. If you want a romantic relationship, including sex, with someone you love, that you know you can count on, *then *you get a spouse.
That’s a pretty profound failure of imagination. I’ve already stated here that I could not be married to someone I didn’t have good sex with. Do you think I’m just making that up?
Revenant, I simply don’t understand most of your arguments in your last post directed at me. I first responded to the approach of premarital sex as “way to determine compatibility”. You say no, you’re thinking of it as an “idea to determine compatibility”. So you say idea, I say way. The point is that most people would regard that as crass and demeaning.
As for your first paragraph, I’m afraid that I completely don’t understand what you’re getting at. What is the argument that you’ve heard, that does not rely on the happiness that results from the competing approaches? If the people you hear do not mention that happiness specifically, are you sure they’re not just taking it for granted?
Apologies for not being clear. My objection was to your apparent point that using sex as a way to determine compatibility is a poor plan and as you say here, thought of as crass and demeaning. My argument wasn’t for a different term, but that I wasn’t saying sex alone is a good way of determining compatibility. I would agree that to say that sex alone is a great way of determining overall compatibility is pretty demeaning. But i’m taking it into account along with everything else - one of my arguments in this thread has been that generally we tend to get to know people in many ways before we’re ready for marriage, and that sex is notable for being the opposite for some people.
IOW, it’d also be demeaning to determine compatibility solely by religious beliefs, or solely by political preferences. We can’t tell if we’ll be compatible with someone purely by knowing one or two things about them; sex should be a part of (not the only) getting to know someone before you decide to get married.
Again apologies for being unclear, though i’m afraid I don’t understand your point here either.
Here’s my basic point. I like cake. It’s enjoyable. Eating cake makes me happy. Yet I would be the first to admit that eating cake is a pretty shallow act, devoid of much meaning. Nevertheless, simply because I find it shallow doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause me, or many people, happiness. Simply finding sex meaningless and shallow does not imply that it will lead to unhappiness, since it can cause happiness. As for unsatisfactory relationships, finding sex meaningless and shallow only suggests that a relationships will be unsatisfactory if it is built only on sex. And again that’s not what i’m suggesting; i’m saying sex should be a part, and not the only part, of a relationship if you want to know about the other person. And that if sex is thus shallow and meaningless, then there is nothing to say against it if depth and meaningfulness are there as part of the relationship too. And so it’s probably a good idea should you plan on having sex after bonding yourself in marriage to give it a try first.
Likewise, believing the marriage bond is special may mean people believe it leads to happiness, but does that mean other ways do not? I would suggest it doesn’t. Valuing marriage doesn’t mean that being in a relationship where there are no current plans to wed cannot be happy. In fact, it’s pretty much the norm that a marriage (should there be one) comes after a long period of just being a couple, which presumably must have turned out well. I think marriage has value, but that doesn’t mean I think any other kind of relationship therefore doesn’t have value, cannot lead to happiness.
Hey, I never said that getting a date is easy. It just strikes me as easier than getting married, so if all you’re in it for is just sex, there’s no particular reason to take the extra step, especially if you can get to the point of living together and just stop there.
I think that the historical aversion to divorce (and infidelity) probably was an outgrowth of the societal views of marriage as an insitution for establishing clear inheritance routes. And, primates are far from the only type of animal that mates for life - if your arguement is correct, shouldn’t all species that mate for life be in heat all the time?
The minute you start bringing terms like ‘devout’ into the discussion you thrust it into the realm of the outliers, which makes the argument largely irrelevent to most of society. Yes, if you have an fervent genophobe and an ardent nymphomaniac, then they’re likely to have strife over it - but not only are they not the average couple by any stretch, they’re also people who are very likely to express their preferences early in the relationship anyway.
I’d say that it’s quite likely that those people who are so focussed on their sex life will already have started having sex prior to marriage without waiting for either of our opinions, which means that you’re basically arguing that people who are demonstrably able to choose to get along without any sex at all, when you advance arguments for the expansion of the habit. Now, it seems to me that people like that are not the sort of people who aren’t going to be able to handle an insufficiency of sex in their lives.
Admiddedly, such people may find that their partner wants too much sex for their preferences. Which is an argument for abstaining people to be wary of people who are sleeping around on them, or pressuring them for sex all the time. It’s not an argument for them to drop trou and get it on.
I’m not familar with Spitzer. And isn’t the sort of marital infidelity you’re talking about likely to happen later in the marriage after libido levels have changed? In which case experimentation before would be useless and irrelevent.
Not familiar with that reference either.
I meant that in the sense of “The two main reasons for marriage are companionship and childrearing” - some combination of them applies, often both, but sometimes just one or the other.
It has been a deal-breaker for me in prior relationships. Incompatibility means a no-go. I never entered any sort of relationship where my partner wasn’t interested in sex and plenty of it – waiting for it wasn’t in my gameplan.
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That’s good for you - you self-select away from persons preferring abstinance prior to marriage, which resolves the question of compatibility there completely - it wouldn’t even get that far. I’m not arguing that anybody shouldn’t be able to choose to go out there and hump like rabbits; I’m arguing against the stance that abstinence is an invalid position.
You saw where I said “rare and esoteric reasons” right? Obviously most people are in it for one or both of the first two reasons I listed, childrearing and companionship. As you say, you can do childrearing (and financial security) without marriage; of course, you can also do sex and companionship without marriage too. Some people prefer marriage as an institution for formalizing and validating that close companionship relationship, and/or for providing a socially and legally secure environment for joint parenting of children, of course.
I don’t imagine you’re the sort of person who waited until you were married to try it out, either, were you? If you were, if you had abstained until marriage, do you think it would still be a make-or-break issue for you?