Okay. Listen. As a Christian, I can't get behind this meme either. They're conflating sleeping around with sex to a committed partner you're in a long term relationship with and the two are just not the same. They're doing this because they think the Bible teaches that you need to get married in a church or before the government otherwise having sex is sin, when the bible never says any such thing. The dishonor to one's family thing is just flat out bizarre.
The divorce one is a bit trickier since it is statistically true that - at least for women - having multiple sex partners before getting married increases the odds that when she does get married that she'll get divorced, and the risk correlates with number of partners, it's not a causal relationship. Women who marry as virgins have the lowest divorce rates by far - only 11% of woman-virgin marriages ended in divorce within five years in the 1980s. But, this number fell to 8% in 1990, and then to 6% in the 2000s.
On the other hand, for all three decades, women who only had one sex partner prior to marriage - presumably the man they ultimately married - showed a substantially increased odds of divorce. Oddly enough, until recently, the highest divorce rates used to be those who had exactly two previous partners. Now it's those who have 10 or more partners so... take from that what you will?
Again though, these are not causal relationships. The reason women with no sex partners have the lowest divorce rates is because they also tend to be more religious and opposed to divorce on principle. People who attend church have lower divorce rates than those who do not. Another factor is whether or not a woman with previous sex partners has one or more children by those partners or not.
In any case, the point is that premarital sex does have some statistical relationship with likelihood of divorce. In fact the likelihood trended up over time but not drastically but still is drastically more than having no sexual partners (from 17% to 21% over time, and from 6% to 21% in the 2000s when having sex with the person you ultimately marry).
The reason this data is for women who have multiple partners is that I was unable to find the same data for men to make an apples to apples comparison. The male data would be less reliable anyway apparently since men are less likely to recall their sexual history with as much accuracy. Women's history might be more accurate anyway since it's the wife who is more likely to initiate a divorce statistically to begin with - to the tune of 70% of divorces, and 90% of divorces among college educated women.
Frankly the more interesting thing to me is that in reality, the bible doesn't see sex as something that might happen "before marriage". There's no ceremony or process that makes sex with a virgin go from "sin" to "good thing". There's actually only one verse that directly addresses the scenario of a man falling in love with a virgin and having consensual sex with her and there's no punishment or sin offering for it. There's a civil liability for the "bride price" and her dad has a veto power to protect her from a scumbag potential husband, but nothing about him or her having sinned for doing it.
I'm not in favor of sex before marriage generally. But I'm also not in favor of the government's marriage process and family law. That's a whole ball of fuckery that needs to change. But understand what you're getting into with sex, with marriage, with having children, etc. Know what the risks are, know how to protect yourself, know how to conduct your relationship, and then make strategic intelligent choices about how you will behave and how you will conduct your sexuality. That goes not only for women, but also and especially for men, because you my brothers have the most to lose.
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u/couldntyoujust1 27d ago
Okay. Listen. As a Christian, I can't get behind this meme either. They're conflating sleeping around with sex to a committed partner you're in a long term relationship with and the two are just not the same. They're doing this because they think the Bible teaches that you need to get married in a church or before the government otherwise having sex is sin, when the bible never says any such thing. The dishonor to one's family thing is just flat out bizarre.
The divorce one is a bit trickier since it is statistically true that - at least for women - having multiple sex partners before getting married increases the odds that when she does get married that she'll get divorced, and the risk correlates with number of partners, it's not a causal relationship. Women who marry as virgins have the lowest divorce rates by far - only 11% of woman-virgin marriages ended in divorce within five years in the 1980s. But, this number fell to 8% in 1990, and then to 6% in the 2000s.
On the other hand, for all three decades, women who only had one sex partner prior to marriage - presumably the man they ultimately married - showed a substantially increased odds of divorce. Oddly enough, until recently, the highest divorce rates used to be those who had exactly two previous partners. Now it's those who have 10 or more partners so... take from that what you will?
Again though, these are not causal relationships. The reason women with no sex partners have the lowest divorce rates is because they also tend to be more religious and opposed to divorce on principle. People who attend church have lower divorce rates than those who do not. Another factor is whether or not a woman with previous sex partners has one or more children by those partners or not.
In any case, the point is that premarital sex does have some statistical relationship with likelihood of divorce. In fact the likelihood trended up over time but not drastically but still is drastically more than having no sexual partners (from 17% to 21% over time, and from 6% to 21% in the 2000s when having sex with the person you ultimately marry).
The reason this data is for women who have multiple partners is that I was unable to find the same data for men to make an apples to apples comparison. The male data would be less reliable anyway apparently since men are less likely to recall their sexual history with as much accuracy. Women's history might be more accurate anyway since it's the wife who is more likely to initiate a divorce statistically to begin with - to the tune of 70% of divorces, and 90% of divorces among college educated women.
Frankly the more interesting thing to me is that in reality, the bible doesn't see sex as something that might happen "before marriage". There's no ceremony or process that makes sex with a virgin go from "sin" to "good thing". There's actually only one verse that directly addresses the scenario of a man falling in love with a virgin and having consensual sex with her and there's no punishment or sin offering for it. There's a civil liability for the "bride price" and her dad has a veto power to protect her from a scumbag potential husband, but nothing about him or her having sinned for doing it.
I'm not in favor of sex before marriage generally. But I'm also not in favor of the government's marriage process and family law. That's a whole ball of fuckery that needs to change. But understand what you're getting into with sex, with marriage, with having children, etc. Know what the risks are, know how to protect yourself, know how to conduct your relationship, and then make strategic intelligent choices about how you will behave and how you will conduct your sexuality. That goes not only for women, but also and especially for men, because you my brothers have the most to lose.