<p>I am sympathetic to these kids. I think you do have to refrain from judging people who have different values, but that's a 2-way street. Many of my D's friends weren't even in the "I want to wait until I'm married" league. They only belonged to the "I want my first experience to be with someone I really love" league and some classmates mocked that. That's one part of the "I Am Charlotte Simmons" book that is accurate and sad.</p>
<p>Personally, I think it's more that a little strange that the age to legally drink booze is 21 and in some states the age of consent to sex is 14.</p>
<p>As I grow older and reflect more upon my life, there are a few things that stand out as those I wish I had had MORE of and not less. Children, fun, time with family and good friends, days at the beach, and good sex.</p>
<p>People who screw around with a lot of partners before marriage become unstable spouses in marriage. They divorce in disproportionately high numbers, so their kids grow up in broken families, and the cycle continues. Ain't rocket science to see that sex outside of marriage is harmful...</p>
<p>People who screw around with a lot of partners before marriage become unstable spouses in marriage. They divorce in disproportionately high numbers, so their kids grow up in broken families, and the cycle continues. Ain't rocket science to see that sex outside of marriage is harmful</p>
<p>I think pastor ted would beg to differ?</p>
<p>But whatever gets you through the night is alright.. is alright...</p>
<p>That's basically hooey, but if it works for you, great.</p>
<p>
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People who screw around with a lot of partners before marriage become unstable spouses in marriage. They divorce in disproportionately high numbers, so their kids grow up in broken families, and the cycle continues. Ain't rocket science to see that sex outside of marriage is harmful...
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</p>
<p>My dad married at 24, he had only one girlfriend before meeting my mom and didn't screw around with a lot of partners (according to him and to relatives, whom I believe). Yet he was a miserable husband to my mom and incapable of shouldering the responsibility of having a family. So the converse is probably often as true.</p>
<p>
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Ain't rocket science to see that sex outside of marriage is harmful...
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<p>You can say that, again, with confidence, because it ain't any kind of science. Even if you could prove that "people who screw around with a lot of partners before marriage . . . divorce in disproportionately high numbers" (how disproportionately high?), that wouldn't tell you much about people who only screwed around with a few partners before marriage (i.e., practically everybody). Stable marriages are very much the norm in my world, and so was premarital sex. In fact, when I look at the people I know who are 10-15 years older than I -- people who came of age before the sexual revolution -- two things stand out: (1) Many of them married very young, often because they were desperate to have sex or because having sex carried with it a moral obligation to get married, and (2) if you want to see a disproportionately high divorce rate, look at those marriages.</p>
<p>I don't have a problem with people who decide that they want to save themselves for marriage. But I don't think it's any kind of moral imperative. And, personally, while I'm not proud of everything I did around sex when I was immature, I'm very glad that I didn't mix the anxiety-stew of sexual initiation with the critical life decision of whom and when to marry. What a recipe for disaster that would have been!</p>
<p>If you feel like you are doing something against your will, against your beliefs, you aren't going to be happy, whether it is pressure to have sex- or to be chaste.</p>
<p>If you marry someone who has had more partners than you, but you resent them for it, that is going to cause problems.</p>
<p>If you would have * liked* to have a more casual attitude about a physical relationship, but couldn't find partners that shared that perspective, that is also a problem.</p>
<p>I have to say, that with all the problems that my H and I have had, the fact that I had , had more sexual partners before we got married ( I was 23) than he ( he had been in a very long term relationship wheras for me- 9 months was a long time ), hasn't been an issue. ( the problems came from family of origin things)</p>
<p>We went out for 4 years before we were married, and will be married 26 years , this spring.</p>
<p>I did however wait 3 days after I met H, to sleep with him ;)</p>
<p>You just never know, so applying a bunch of interference to the situation harms it either way. Imagine if you did sleep with the right person for you, the first time out, then your guilt causes you to drive them away. How are you better off? You just don't know.</p>
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siserune--I think that's what the Harvard students are objecting to--the assumption that "meeting" necessarily implies "mating."
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<p>They can also object to all the unicorns trampling the grass in Harvard Yard or the murder rate in Cambridge, but that wouldn't mean that the complaints have any basis in reality. There isn't any oversupply of meeting or mating, but the pool of opportunities is spectacular and hard to replicate later on.
M.R. or M.R.S. is not at all a bad plan, as you said.</p>
<p>And people who never have sex before they get married are frigid, don't like sex, and stay in abusive marriages, both verbal and physical, because Pastor Joe told them divorce is immoral. (/snark)</p>
<p>That makes about as much sense as your assumption.</p>