SWM 147 – How do you know if you’re sexually compatible
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The most common argument I hear for premarital sex is, “You need to know if you’re sexually compatible before getting married. Otherwise, you might end up stuck in a sexless, unfulfilling relationship.”
And it sounds like sound reasoning. We test-drive cars before buying them. We have probation periods for people we hire at work. We sample foods before purchasing them. Shouldn’t sex, which is one of the most intimate parts of marriage, be tested beforehand to make sure you’re a good match?
It’s a compelling argument that convinces many people to abandon their principles. It makes you question your morality. It promises both immediate and long-term gratification.
However, it’s based on a flawed premise – that sexual compatibility is something that is discovered instead of something that is built. A good spouse, including sex, isn’t something you stumble across. It’s something you create together over time through love, trust and commitment. Your spouse is bespoke to you – custom-made by both you and them.
This flawed premise causes a lot of strife in marriages. As a result, accepting it and either sleeping around or cohabitating before marriage statistically does more harm than good, leading to higher divorce rates, lower marital satisfaction, and intimacy that’s more about performance than connection.
Let’s dig into why.
Why do we think sexual compatibility exists as something to be discovered?
Our society tends to believe that sexuality is something that is buried deep within you, like a diamond waiting to be discovered or a volcano lying dormant.
It’s as if it’s set when you’re conceived and then lies in wait, waiting to be found, when in actuality, we know sexuality is built. Some of it was definitely built during our formative years, but it doesn’t stop there. It is constantly adapting, growing and shifting.
Some are built based on how we grew up or how our brain operates.
For example, if you have parents who are both lesbian, your chance of identifying as a homosexual when you grow up increases by 150% for females and 400% for males (data from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study).
Another example is that there is a high correlation between adults with ADHD and adults who engage in what is considered kinky behaviour (Study: Let’s talk about sex… and ADHD). Now, because ADHD is inherited and ADHD tends to express itself in the bedroom often as kinky behaviour, this leads to the shocking revelation that kink is sometimes inherited – not directly, of course, but through ADHD.
So there are definitely some things that can be influenced from birth or a young age. Sexual abuse also, for obvious reasons, tends to affect people’s sexuality.
But that doesn’t mean we’re stuck with whatever hand we’re dealt. Our brains are incredibly plastic. We can adapt to an impressive array of situations and dynamics, and we do.
I know men who considered themself homosexual who managed to change their attraction and have a happy and fulfilling life married to a woman. I, sadly, have talked to sexually conservative people, being led to experiment with threesomes, sex clubs and more, to the detriment of their marriage. Porn use also changes people’s sexual appetites and desires.
And, of course, people’s sex drives and interests can change drastically due to health changes, stress, hormones and more.
All this is to say that our sexuality isn’t set in stone waiting to be uncovered. It grows with us and shifts based on our context, for good or bad.
But because many people believe sex is the foundation of a successful marriage, they feel compelled to test their future spouse’s sexual compatibility to ensure they’ll want to maintain those activities for the rest of their lives.
In Reality – Marriage Changes Everything
Sex within marriage, however, is an entirely different thing than sex before marriage. Often, people see a shift in their sexuality, seemingly instantaneously on occasion. Many women, in particular, who were highly sexual before marriage find that something shifts overnight or even faster – sometimes, between the wedding ceremony and the honeymoon. It happens so often that there’s a common joke:
What’s a girlfriend’s biggest turn-off? A wedding ring.
Because for a lot of women, as soon as they get married, suddenly the sexual context shifts. What was taboo and exciting is now considered a duty. Should it? No, and we can work on that mindset, but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels like that for many.
It’s not intentional, and it’s not a bait and switch, but it does preclude any “test-driving” of sexual desire, drive or adventurousness because all of that can change in the amount of time it takes to say the vows. I talk to many wives who were excitedly waiting for their wedding night to have it arrive and feel themselves shut down, leaving both them and their new husbands very confused and often hurt.
Now, if you go into marriage without having had sex, this is a disappointment, but also in line with what we see on TV. I mean, we hope that we picked a spouse who likes sex, but decades of TV shows have taught us that wives don’t want sex, so we’re at least somewhat prepared for that. If you had been having sex before the wedding with no issues with a girlfriend and then a fiancee who has a high sex drive, then you think you won! Then, suddenly, it shifts; that’s a much larger shock.
And it’s not only just appetite for sex in general, but also specific activities as well. Probably the most common complaint that husbands have, besides just a lack of a sex drive, is that oral sex suddenly disappeared from their repertoire — that could be giving, receiving, or both.
The test-driving theory doesn’t work because the person you marry will not be the same person you dated or were engaged to. Their context changed, and that made them change.
Marriage provides the framework for building an even better sexual relationship
That doesn’t mean that a married sex life is hopeless. It only means that you can’t assume you can hit the ground running. But what marriage has as its benefit is time.
If you’re married and take your vows seriously, you only have two choices – suffer or get better. Because let’s face it – most of us aren’t good lovers at the start.
Men tend to be too excited and orgasm too quickly. We rapidly push for new and exciting things when we haven’t become proficient in our existing repertoire.
Women tend to be timid about exploring and speaking up about what they need and want – if they even know what they need and want, which many don’t.
Both spouses tend to love the fun differences between genders but have little patience, understanding or grace for the more challenging differences, like differing sex drives or orgasm-ability.
The average time to orgasm for a man is under eight minutes, whereas 70% of women don’t orgasm from penetration, and if they do, it generally takes much longer than eight minutes. About 14% of women under 35 have never experienced an orgasm (Study: Determinants of female sexual orgasms). Many more don’t until later in their marriage. I have talked to wives who didn’t even know they could orgasm until over a decade into theirs. Others knew it was possible in theory, but maybe not for them.
But over time, these things can change. We can grow, adapt, and become better lovers of each other—both in giving and receiving.
As a result, those who dedicate time and energy to becoming better lovers for each other have fantastic sex lives into their 40s, 50s and even later. Many have sex far more often than any 20-year-old that’s hooking up on college campus every weekend, and far better sex at that.
For myself, I would say the sex we have now, both of us being in our 40s and married for over 20 years, is incomparable to the sex we had when we were younger. It’s better for both of us. It’s more frequent, more adventurous and lasts much longer.
My wife says that her capacity for pleasure has grown indescribably higher in the last few years – in large part because we’ve been playing with edging. I could only wish I enjoyed as much pleasure as she does from sex. Despite me having a much higher sex drive, she gets far more pleasure out of it, which I may be a little bit jealous of but also proud of.
Marriage does have its sexual ups and downs
But it’s not straight linear growth, either. Many things can cause hiccups along the way.
Women, in particular, tend to get a lot of speedbumps when it comes to sex. Getting married changes your mindset and context, as we already discussed.
Then, when many women hit 30, their hormones tend to shift. There’s another shift in their 40s, then around 50 with menopause.
Trying to conceive tends to shoot women’s sex drives into overdrive, and then pregnancy tends to do the opposite. Yes, some women have a higher drive during some trimesters, but that’s hit or miss. Unfortunately, this sudden shift from the trying-to-conceive “I want sex all the time” to “I’m nauseous, my back hurts, and sex isn’t appealing at all” is pretty drastic and again tends to make men feel a bit like they’ve been tricked. More than one husband has thought, “Well, they got what they wanted (a baby) and now don’t care about what I want.” Particularly when birthing and breastfeeding tend to lower their sex drive further.
And the biggest problem is that there often aren’t good conversations about these things. Men tend to be demonized for wanting to have sex during this season of life. “She just had a baby!” is often heard – and that is a good reason not to want to, but you know what – it doesn’t remove his drive to want to be close to her. And he can handle not having sex, but handling not being able to express himself or share how he’s feeling, feeling demonized for being alone – that’s pretty rough to go through at the same time.
Having kids also tends to shift women’s priorities towards their children and away from their husbands. Now, part of that is needed; after all, a baby will die if you don’t care for it, as will a toddler and up until they’re an adult – teenagers do some stupid things, after all. But if you still want to have a marriage when they all grow up, you’d better prioritize your marriage.
Too often, I see people put their marriage on the back burner, thinking, “Well, we’ll get back to it when the kids grow up,” only to find that they don’t know or like each other by that point. “We’ll focus on each other when they’re gone” turns into “staying together for the kids,” which leads to the phenomenon of empty-nest divorces.
And on top of all this, there’s work stress, family stress, church stress (far too often), medical issues, relationship problems, crisis of faith or life, porn, affairs and more that can either cause blips or outright nuke your sex life for a while.
We’ve had multiple times in our marriage where sex just didn’t happen for months. Some of them were for good reasons – like a broken back. Some were not – like earlier on when our marriage was clinically sexless because – well, we were both bad at being married.
The point is things go up and down. Be gracious to your spouse because whatever the reason, at least one of you thinks it’s a good reason. Most spouses aren’t malicious towards each other. But keep loving communication open. When you shut down talking about it, dismiss their feelings, and prioritize your own wants or needs over theirs, then you run into trouble. Don’t do that.
Marriage isn’t the same as dating
All of the above is why marriage isn’t the same as dating. With dating, if anything happens, you can walk away. Ideally, you have no shared assets, no kids, and haven’t had sex yet.
But a marriage should be harder to leave. There’s a reason most couples share everything – bank accounts, kids, vehicles, the house, a bed, and everything else. Everything we do that intertwines our lives makes it harder for us to just up and leave. Now, some don’t like that.
More and more couples choose to keep their finances separate, they sleep in separate beds or even separate rooms. Some go on vacations separately.
There’s even a growing idea that marriages should be time-bound, with a renewable contract that could exit at some standardized interval. This idea was popularized in the book Brave New World. Sadly, many seem to have missed the point that it was a symptom of a society in which Marxism had succeeded in its goal of destroying the idea of family and lauded the idea of transient relationships – which is precisely what is promoted in our society today.
Those who think that way have missed the entire point.
Marriage is not supposed to be escapable. It’s the inescapability that makes it completely different from any other relationship. It’s why you can’t test-drive a marriage. It’s an entirely different experience than having a girlfriend, boyfriend or fiancee.
And the stats bear this out – test driving doesn’t work.
Living together before being engaged increases your divorce risk by 50-80%, according to Focus on the Family.
That’s the opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish – finding a good spouse. You’re more likely to lose them. The risk of divorce drops in the first year because it’s less of a transition but then increases after that (Study: Cohabitation Experience and Cohabitation’s Association With Marital Dissolution).
It also lowers marital satisfaction, dedication and confidence (Study: The Pre-engagement Cohabitation Effect: A Replication and Extension of Previous Findings). So, not only are you likely to lose them, but they won’t be as happy if you manage to keep them.
The likelihood of negative communication patterns increases as well. Everyone has these, but why would you want more of them? It also leads to higher rates of domestic violence.
And the longer you cohabitate before marriage, the worse these stats get. If you live together when you’re dating, you’ll be worse off than if you lived together first when you’re engaged, which is worse than if you lived together first when you’re married.
Lastly, it slows down the relationship. The old adage “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” has truth to it—if you’re looking for a spouse, living together will slow that process down.
So, when someone tells you to make sure you’re sexually compatible – the question is – what are you willing to risk for that? Apparently health, safety, happiness, and, ultimately, your marriage – all to test something that cannot be tested.
You are not supposed to be able to test-drive it. It’s a leap of faith in many ways. We are supposed to marry someone who is not perfect for us – that’s how we grow. That’s how they grow.
Our spouse was not created for us. They become bespoke to us as we are in a relationship with them, and we to them.
The sexual compatibility mindset focuses on the wrong thing
Ultimately, the idea of being able to test the relationship focuses on the wrong thing anyway. It’s all about selfishness. About getting what you want and being sure you’ll keep getting what you want long term. It doesn’t work, but that’s the goal.
But, as I wrote in my last post, that is not a mindset that makes for a good marriage in the long term. So, if you go into it with the idea that “Oh, I’m going to make sure I get what I want, “you’re intentionally starting out with the wrong mindset. Most people have that mindset, but it’s not overt. They think they’re loving, but the sexual compatibility argument explicitly goes the other way – it’s about serving me.
So you will enter the marriage with the idea that if it changes, if I’m ever not satisfied with them, then I’m out because that’s what’s important. That’s priority #1.
It’s no wonder it doesn’t work. Even the idea of testing it causes damage to the relationship. This is not what marriage was designed to be.
It also missed the point of sex. Sex is about serving each other, not serving yourself. That’s when it gets really good. Marriage and sex are about loving sacrificially, and you can’t test someone else for something that needs to be cultivated in you.
So, no, I don’t think you can test for sexual compatibility. Right off the bat, it sets you up for failure because the mindset is all wrong. Then it goes downhill because the person you’re testing is not the person you’ll marry, let alone the person they will be 5, 10, 20, 30 or more years later.
You can’t test for real love and sexual compatibility long-term. You create it, nurture it, and continuously reinvent it throughout your shared journey.
“Marriage is not supposed to be escapable. It’s the inescapability that makes it completely different from any other relationship. It’s why you can’t test-drive a marriage. It’s an entirely different experience than having a girlfriend, boyfriend or fiancee.”
I think this is the key insight, and it’s where the modern approach of “We’ve been together for ten years now, I suppose we may as well get married” so completely misses the mark. It makes marriage so much less than it is.
I couldn’t read your observation here without thinking of G. K. Chesterton, writing in his book “Orthodoxy”:
“I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself. Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have any discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible to have any fun. To take an obvious instance, it would not be worth while to bet if a bet were not binding. The dissolution of all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport. Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance, of which much has been said in these pages. And the perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun in vowing. […] Christian marriage is the great example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing.
This is a tough one. When you are the one suffering through and giving your all to please and have not received it reciprocated it is depressing. Makes me wonder about the subject. But knowing that it is not all about me makes me just brush it off and keep on slogging away.
What about numerous married couples who had premarital sex and now have been happily married for 20, 30 or 50 years.? Why premarital sexual activity didn’t /doesn’t have negative influence on their lives..?I mean couples that were sleeping together out of strong attraction, not because they wanted to try out one another.
I’m not sure what the difference is. If you’re sleeping together out of attraction, that’s still out of a selfish desire – “I want that”.
And the stats don’t filter based on motives, only behaviours.
As for those who have been happily married – I’m not saying it’s not possible. 97% of people don’t wait. Only somewhere around 30% get divorced. So, yeah, the majority will still stay married. But statistically, you’re more likely to stay married if you waited. Statistically you’ll be happier if you waited. Statistically you’ll have a better sex life if you waited. See this post: https://www.uncoveringintimacy.com/what-affect-does-premarital-sex-have-on-a-marriage/
It’s not that your marriage can’t be good – it’s just likely to be better if you waited. And it’s pretty hard to tell if it had a negative influence on their life, because they have nothing to compare it to.
Either way, the point of the post wasn’t to say that you can’t have a good marriage if you don’t wait, but rather that if you are trying to test whether you will have a good sex life long term – that’s a not something you can test for by having sex before marriage.
ABSOLUTELY you can address sexual compatibility before marriage !!! =)
Great subject, a lot of great things said here! Yes, there are seasons of sex that have fluidity and can grow in marriage as maturity, unique experience getting to know “the one,” and hopefully other spiritual and personal growth happen. BUT, a major point from the beginning is missed that can help tremendously: The contention I hear is the “test driving” sexual compatibility is narrowly defined only as “doing it before marriage.” I absolutely believe there are other ways to test compatibility before marriage. Here’s two of them:
1) The couple being educated on sexuality in general. I personally experienced this when my wife and I were single and getting to know each other. A church at the time was going through Song of Solomon and it was super helpful to hear how she responded to the material. Instead of avoiding it, or being intimidated, or ick-vibes, or a dog and a high pitched whistle, I realized this gal was certainly open to this aspect of the marriage. Educating couples on what testosterone is, and radically resetting female understanding of the male sexual drive without leaving them feeling “sex is for the guy” or like a transaction of a primal urge– which of course would be a turn-off for a gal.
2) Understand how each person is hard-wired. We can now understand the hard wired nature or drivers of each person, and some types are more naturally suited to physical connection while others approach it more from a “cognitive” or “logical” way based on their type. And HINT: these hard-wired types do NOT align directly based on gender! The old adage that women are emotional and guys are logical actually isn’t true. It’s not directly gender based. There are highly emotional/relationally attuned males all over (think of the shepherding lead pastor type), and there are “surgical,” logical females (think engineers, or that gal in the ER that does triage and sees you as body parts to treat, not so much as a full person).
Why walk into a marriage ignorant of information you could have learned, hoping sex “will work great and if not, we will somehow learn and grow some way in marriage.” That unintentionality is unnecessary. It’s 2025!! We can do a whole lot better than we are– in fact, we MUST, because the smart phone has already been systemically, endemically perverting sex in the early teen years, a decade before boys could even hope to be ready for marriage. We have already lost ground and the global church is waaaaaay behind. Teens are so addicted to sex, devices, video games, online content that we are literally observing boys have total apathy on how to pursue a real girl in the real world. I am a father of 3 teenaged daughters– it’s like I’m praying for a “remnant” of boys that are anywhere near capable of what to do with a real human girl. They are either terrified mama’s boys or sexual predators, with the healthy middle seemingly rare.
Testing to be selfish of course is wrong. Instead, everyone should do pre-marriage counseling that explores sexual compatibility as a standard best practice to head off terrible, known pains in the marriage relationship that happen time and time again stemming from simple ignorance that could be corrected.
Chris resigns in his comment below to, “keep on slogging away.” Marriage is meant for much more than that. But male and female start off wildly different, and when they try to make it work, “hurt people hurt people,” and the best is left to slogging away. Instead, helping the single gal understand and accept male sexuality, and the guy practicing self-control to be patient and lead a gal to discover her sexuality will help a lot. (If I orgasmed before my wife, I always kinda felt like a bit of a failure, I always try to please her first– I wonder if that’s common or I am in some rare space if most women don’t even have regular orgasms.) Research shows women’s sexual drive is responsive, a man’s is assertive. This is why self control relates more to the man, especially in a world of porn & online tech addiction that erodes it.
I agree, there are definitely things you can do to help you deal with differences, shifts and more, but this isn’t generally what people mean when they argue for testing for compatibility.
As well, there are many people who do these things, only to realize that theory and practice are different. It’s easy to promise to always be available when you’re horny and in the mood. Much harder when your drive shifts and shuts down.
Does not matter if you test drive the sex. In a few short months things usually change, better or worse. If you are the High Drive then you will be blamed for any issues. Nearly all coaches and blogs explain away the High Drive feelings and explain how the High Drive needs to understand the low drive better. The important thing is find someone does not think only they are correct in every argument. This potential spouse is more likely to work with through a problem with you (even sexual). Basically The opposite of telling you why its your fault and what should be done about it. If a potential spouse is know-it-all, then think carefully before committing.
The problem with citing stats like “Living together before being engaged increases your divorce risk by 50-80%” is that those stats only demonstrate a correllation. They don’t demonstrate a causative relationship between cohabitation and divorce rate.
One stat – sure. Stat after stat after stat showing the same narrative – that’s harder to dismiss. Add to that years of talking to hundreds, perhaps thousands at this point, of couples and seeing it reflected in their lives. No, I don’t think it’s merely a statistical fluke. Add to that that it lines up with the wisdom of the Bible, and I’m quite convinced.
Divorce rate and likelihood of cohabitation are both strongly correlated with religiosity. Highly religious people are much less likely to cohabit and also much less likely to divorce, mostly because divorce and cohabitation are both frowned on in religious communities. The kind of person willing to consider divorce is the same kind of person willing to consider cohabitation. There are almost certainly other factors involved, but that is a large factor and it suggests that cohabitation does not cause divorce. They’re just correlated with a particular cohort of people.
The rate of drowning deaths is correlated with the rate of ice cream sales. Therefore selling ice cream causes drowning, right? Wrong they’re only correlated because drowning deaths and ice cream sales rise in the summertime.
From one of the studies:
To assess this point, we analyze only marriages with no premarital cohabitation, and find no effect of religion: women with a religious upbringing have about the same likelihood of divorce as other women with the same relationship history and socioeconomic status. Most of the benefit of religiosity in terms of reducing divorce occurs because religious marriages are more likely to be direct marriages, rather than marriages with premarital cohabitation. In other words, one reason that women raised in a religious home are less likely to divorce is that they are less likely to cohabit prior to marrying.
From a different study:
“[T]he relationship between premarital cohabitation and divorce has also changed over time. Not surprisingly, those who were willing to transgress strong social norms to cohabit from the 1950s to 1970 were also more likely to transgress similar social norms about divorce. Indeed, in that earlier period, people who lived together before marriage were 82 percent more likely to divorce than people who moved in together only after marriage. But as cohabitation became more widespread, its association with divorce faded. In fact, since 2000 premarital cohabitation has actually been associated with a lower rate of divorce, once factors such as religiosity, education, and age at co-residence are accounted for”.
Which study? Because it’s entirely possible they’re talking about the lower rate of divorce in the first year that I mentioned. But then it goes up again after that.
Found where that’s from – it’s not a single study, but two studies put together.
Anyways, one of the big problems I have with studies like that is that I would consider a couple that is living together for a decent amount of time, has shared resources, perhaps kids together – that’s marriage, even if it’s not one in name. We don’t have stats for how those are affected, but we do see that cohabitations fall apart more often than divorces, even long term cohabitations. But because they aren’t technically married, they aren’t counted as divorces.
As well, if they had children before being officially married, the divorce rates goes up.
I see this problem in businesses sometimes in sales. Sales people will claim a high closing ratio – the way they do this is to wait to claim it as a “qualified lead” until the customer is basically handing over their credit card. Then they claim the leads were bad. This is the same sort of thing. People are waiting to get married until they’re sure they can live together. If it fails, that doesn’t count because they weren’t technically married – but they still failed at a marriage – we’re just not counting it. If they had kids – that’s still negatively affecting the kids. Even without, it still has the impact of a divorce on an individual and society as a whole.
And we see the same pattern emerge if we count a cohabitation as a marriage. Divorce leads to a higher rate of divorce – that is if you have a divorce, you are more likely to have 2nd, then 3rd, then 4th, and so on. This also occurs with cohabitation. The more partners, the higher the chance that the next cohabitation will fail, and ultimately that a future marriage will fail and end in divorce. One study showed a 60% increase in divorce rates for those who had 2 or more cohabitation partners first (https://ifstudies.org/blog/cohabitation-doesnt-help-your-odds-of-marital-success).
So, this becomes a problem of shifting goal-posts, not proof that cohabitation has no effect on marriage.
It’s from this, a summary of a longer study. Interesting insights on the different divorce and cohabitation rates among the college-educated and the less-educated as well: https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporaryfamilies/2018/10/08/premaritalcohabitation/
As for “the more partners, the higher the chance that the next cohabitation will fail” or “divorce leading to more divorce”, you are again confusing correlation with causation. Someone who is willing to consider divorce as an option in their first marriage is also willing to consider it as an option in their second marriage, and so on. Someone who doesn’t believe in divorce (for religious or other reasons) is probably still on their first marriage. It’s self-selecting. All it proves is that people who believe that divorce is an option…believe that divorce is an option.
Perhaps, but then it seems that there is a large overlap between people who believe divorce is an option and that cohabitation is an option. So, don’t be like those people.
If you want to be the kind of person with a lower divorce rate then you should have a college degree and marry later in life (late 20’s to early 30’s). That cohort doesn’t generally cohabit but they aren’t practicing premarital chastity either…
Both early marriage and cohabitation are correlated with having a lower level of education. Religious observance tends to indicate whether they will opt for cohabitation or early marriage.
True, if you want to be the kind of person with a lower divorce rate, then don’t have sex before marriage – the research is abundantly clear on that.
The divorce rates for those who do at 1/5th of those that two or more partners prior to marriage.
Fewer sexual partners correlates strongly with lower divorce rates in study after study – and zero is the lowest rate.
This holds even when controlling for beliefs, values, religious background, family relationships, personality characteristics and even mental health.
So, religious observance may correlate, but even removing it from the equation, the premise still holds true – having sex before marriage leads to higher rates of divorce, and who cohabitates and doesn’t have sex? Not many.
As for education, personally, I’d rather be happily married than have a PhD. There are multiple reasons I don’t suggest most people go to university – this is yet another one.
Having a college degree corellates with a lower rate of divorce. A college degree is really just an indicator of socioeconomic class; it is really income level that effects divorce rate. Even before the 20th century most people didn’t bother to abstain from cohabiting before a church wedding. Why do you think the concept of a common law marriage came about?
I thought you wanted people to tick every box that corellates with a lower divorce rate. So why not tell people to get a college degree and marry in their early 30’s? Do you know of many people who went to college, married late, and kept their virginity intact in the process? Life isn’t a checklist and nobody is going to tick every box. Assuming that correlation is causation in regards to premarital sex, what does it matter if people have premarital sex as long as they balance it out by ticking some other boxes that correlate with a lower divorce rate?
I honestly am not sure what you’re arguing for anymore.
Do I want people to tick every box that correlates with lower divorce rate? Obviously not – not getting married results in a 0% divorce rate – I don’t recommend that for most people.
Why not tell people to get a college degree? Because I think they’re overpriced and don’t actually provide much value. I would actually actively recommend not getting a degree unless your job requires it.
I think marrying in your early 30s is too late. Ideally you should be finishing up having kids by that age.
Anyways, not even sure what you’re arguing anymore, and divorce rate wasn’t the only metric – neither is a clear one as I mentioned above.