Sex, Relationships, and the Value of Human Restraint

Recently, two articles concerning the relative merits of premarital sex appeared on Associated Content: Leena Ingegneri's Why Sex Should Be Saved for Marriage and Mr. Absolute's Open Response.   In short summary, Ms. Ingegneri wrote an essay detailing the reasons she has personally chosen to abstain from sexual intercourse and Mr. Absolute replied with a juvenille riposte saying there's no reason to wait until one is wed. 

Before going further with my own opinion, I want to make something clear.  First, I write nothing here from the perspectice of my religious beliefs, nor do I fall back on disease prevention.  Many may find this odd, but what I write has its basis primarily in social evaluation and philosophy.  With that respect, here are some blunt, cold-as-I-can-make them facts:

1.  The divorce rate has skyrocketed in the last century.

2.  Researchers have found that couples who live together before marriage have significantly higher divorce rates than those who do not.

3.  A study in the 1990s found that between 1965-1988, women who abstained from sexual intercourse before marriage had a significantly lower risk of marital disruption than those who did not.

4.  In both 2 and 3, researchers attributed the discrepencies not to a direct causal effect, but rather to indirect mitigating variables (such as people who chabitat or have extensive premarital sex are less inclined to marriage and traditional norms than those who do not).

5.  Stable married individuals report higher sexual satisfaction than sexually-active single people or couples in unwed monogamous sexual relationships, and the levelof satisfaction rises when the married couple claims they had sexual restraint before marriage.