Waiting to Have Sex Makes for Stronger Marriages

Waiting to Have Sex Makes for Stronger Marriages

According to a new study, couples who wait a month or more after starting to date to have sex tend to have stronger and more stable marriages. Can you guess which university sponsored this study?

That's right, Brigham Young University! The one owned by Mormons. Now, obviously, I don't have any reason to be suspicious of studies put out by BYU in general, but it's a little odd when one hews so closely to the Mormon church's position on sex before marriage? And when the study subjects are all straight married couples? And also, when the lead researcher, Dean Busby, sounds so suspiciously like a Sunday School sex ed teacher?

"Curiously, almost 40 percent of couples are essentially sexual within the first or second time they go out, but we suspect that if you asked these same couples at this early stage of their relationship—'Do you trust this person to watch your pet for a weekend many could not answer this in the affirmative'—meaning they are more comfortable letting people into their bodies than they are with them watching their cat."

Well, first of all, Dr. Busby, my cat is really important to me. Second of all, anyone in a good relationship knows that you should never trust important things to your significant other, because that will upset the delicate power balance you have forged over the course of your silent, bitter partnership. And third of all, she was really hot, so, like, did you actually want me to wait a month?

http://gawker.com/5720111/waiting-to-have-sex-makes-for-stronger-marriages

waiting a whole month before engaging in the most intimate of acts with someone is just outrageous. Shocking I tell you.

Waiting a month is no hardship.

When a couple...no matter what gender...is serious, sex is not the major consideration. Intimacy is not only an important part of "courtship" but vital...without it special bonds aren't connected. This is emotional AND sexual...just one and the relationship will ultimately fail.

I don't need anyone to tell me how a long term relationship develops and endures...I'll let my 34 years of a very happy and healthy relationship speak for itself. I also don't pay much heed to the moralists who also see sex as some kind of weapon to show their "superiority". Almost always seems that eventually we learn that these moralists have their own pecadillos that openly conflict with their pontificating.

Humans have been connecting on short and long term relations for millions of years...fighting the natural needs is a power game used primarily by organized religions to make themselves relevant.

and your use of pecadillos and pontificating in the same sentence is simply awesome! :thumbsup: :hi:

Truth is I've wanted to use the word "pecadillo" for a long time :spank: :rofl:

Hope you're warm and all settled in...

Cheers...

:toast: :hug:

but in both of my marriages more than a month was the case. One did not work out well and the other has. As marriages in this country run about 50:50, and I am batting 0.500 I cannot attest personally to the success of this approach.

still going strong after 26 years. Guess we should have waited so it would be even longer I guess.

He didn't even expect me to call him back after the first night, but I did. If you have all of the components of a good relationship, it doesn't matter when you have sex.

I think if I had slept with him even once before I married him, I would NOT have married him. (But this was the 'fifties, chastity was valued and abortion was illegal.)

I have since learned that "sex" is not just a sweaty business of the man getting his rocks off so he can snore peacefully while his wife cries herself to sleep again.

Not a big fan of "waiting," here . . .

http://www.livescience.com/culture/delay-sex-makes-better-relationships-101228.html has the following

In the new study, Busby and his colleagues looked specifically at timing of sexual relations. They recruited 2,035 heterosexual individuals who had an average age of 36 and were in their first marriages. Participants reported when they first had sexual relations with their current spouse; they also answered communication questions, which evaluated how well they could express empathy and understanding toward their partners, how well they could send clear messages to their partners, and other questions. <10 Things Every Woman Should Know About a Man's Brain>

Other items on the questionnaire focused on relationship satisfaction and stability, with the latter gauged by three questions: how often they thought their relationship was in trouble; how often they thought of ending the relationship; and how often they had broken up and gotten back together.

Individuals were categorized as either having:

•Early sex (before dating or less than one month after they started dating).
•Late sex (between one month and two years of dating).
•And those who waited until after they married.
Relationships fared better and better the longer a person waited to have sex, up until marriage, with those hitting the sack before a month showing the worst outcomes.

Compared with those in the early sex group, those who waited until marriage:

•Rated relationship stability as 22 percent higher
•Rated relationship satisfaction as 20 percent higher
•Rated sexual quality as 15 percent better
•Rated communication as 12 percent better


(more at link)

----------------
*They're relying entirely on self-evaluation from these couples, both on relationship stability and on when they had sex.
*They're not taking into account the fact that the only couples they're looking at are the ones still together, leading to possible selection bias.
*It's correlation being reported as causation, although in fairness that appears to be the media, not the people doing the study - shame on the journalists responsible if so!
*They're only studying heterosexual couples.

So it's not altogether worthless as a study, but it's heavily flawed. That said, I'd be somewhat surprised if there weren't some correlation between waiting to have sex and stability of relationship (although I don't imagine it's a causal link).

As you mention we're going on a media report of peer reviewed journal article and reporters often take license with science reports.


Self-evaluation is not a a flaw -- it just has its limitations like most data collection methods do.

The use of couples still together might lead to overall higher satisfaction level, but not explain a difference on the predictor variable.

Yes, the correlation and causation thing is almost always the creation of the reporter.

Only using heterosexual is not a flaw -- just a limitation of generalization.

No study is perfect and it usually takes many studies using different methods, people, places, etc, converging on a topic to properly understand it.

:shrug:

:rofl:

And then develop into something more

It could get awkward. Some are relatives. :P

is the kind of brain that would accept religious programming against divorce, no matter how abusive a spouse. That skews the stats in favor of their preconceived notion.