
The link between premarital sex and marriage stability - mgh2
https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-link-between-premarital-sex-and-marital-stability
======
brobdingnagians
At university I took a class about this sort of stuff and one of the eye
opening things was the studies about how the couples with the best sex life
were actually old, married, religious couples. If you want great sex, then
going to church and having a lifelong, selfless, loving commitment to your
partner seems to help a lot; but that sure makes sense anyways...

There are a lot of studies about how pornography and such also makes it hard
to have healthy, connected relationships. Church-going folks probably avoid
quite a bit of those pitfalls as well, which helps in the longrun.

Also, if anyone is looking for world class research on family/couple stuff,
Gottman institute is awesome:
[https://www.gottman.com/](https://www.gottman.com/)

~~~
gus_massa
> [...] _the couples with the best sex life were actually old, married,
> religious couples._

How did the measure the quality of the sex in religious couples to compare it
with the quality of sex in non religious couples? Self report? Gesell chamber?
Videos? Some attached sensors?

Are all religions equal?

------
petercooper
_The odds of divorce are lowest with zero or one premarital partners._

Makes sense to me. Those people are either the least interested in pursuing
sexual relationships solely for pleasure or the least able to do so, so might
feel more compelled to stick with a marriage that isn't 100% as they either
won't be doing it for sex or might feel unable to find someone else.

However, I think the more interesting thing to research would be links between
_peri_ marital sex and marriage stability :-D

~~~
CardenB
This is mostly because low divorce rates as well as virgin marriages are both
highly correlated with religion, which is explained in the article.

------
tqwhite
This guy mentions and then dismisses without rationale the idea that women who
have ten partners might have other life experiences that make them less likely
to stay married. He doesn't even consider the notion that a woman who has zero
partners is damaged in ways that make her unable to leave a bad relationship.

That he is does not even mention the effects of the man's sexuality (or the
nature of a man who would choose a virgin or a woman who had ten or more
partners) tells me that this is polemic.

This IFS is a conservative organization working to convince us that
'traditional' families are the bedrock of society. This article is
manipulation.

~~~
api
Keep stuff like this in mind when reading all social science papers. In softer
sciences the bias of the researchers seems to have a very strong effect on the
outcome.

------
gnud
Wow. Not a word about the man's number of sexual partners in the marriages
that stayed together or divorced.

On the other hand, it's apparently very interesting if the woman is a virgin
or not when married.

~~~
petergatsby
End of 5th paragraph:

>"unfortunately, the NSFG doesn’t have full data on men’s premarital sexual
behavior, and in any event they recall their own marital histories less
reliably than do women)"

~~~
api
Men can't remember if they had sex?

~~~
zimpenfish
I believe they tend to over-remember, if anything.

------
Mc91
In the USA, there are a number of factors which lead to marriage stability.
One is education - high school dropouts have a high divorce rate, college
graduates have a lower divorce rate. Another is age at marriage - people who
marry before the age of 23 tend to have a higher divorce rate than those who
marry at or after 23. Income factors in as well - those with a good income
tend to have more stable marriages (
[https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-
divor...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-
patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm) ).

In terms of premarital sexual partners, the given chart shows divorce rates
after five years of marriage. It doesn't tell me much - I would think if one
were going to divorce, the best time to do so would be within the first few
years, before having children. There are many studies of divorce rates after
15 or 20 years, that is what I would be curious to see.

~~~
tokai
>Divorce rates show a trend in couples that, on average, divorce around seven
years.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_seven-
year_itch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_seven-year_itch)

(sorry for a tertiary source)

------
xchaotic
So much about quantity and nothing about quality? How about If women had
better premarital sex they were more likely to get a divorce?

~~~
davesque
Sure, but the author is really just trying to explain the data that is
available.

------
srameshc
Doesn't mention much about how Men's relationship between divorce and the
number of sexual partners influence in those cases of divorce.

~~~
sshumaker
The article mentions that this data is not available (and that men are also
less reliable w.r.t. accuracy)

------
api
I have issues with this study but this is definitely flagging abuse. Mods need
to clarify that flagging is for spam, trolling, and ads, not disagreement.

------
Sportsmetal
Usually, I just read HN, but I signed up to ask HN about this.

I really hope I'm not a crackpot, and would love to get my view changed.

I've been thinking that marriage and relationship-seeking as a man is just a
bad bet if you aren't a "top tier" man in terms of looks, income, charisma -
the "full package". I'm objectively at the middle of the bell curve (run-of-
the-mill software engineer, got good grades at an average school, not short
but not tall, not fat but not fit, face a "6") but with a hint of (diagnosed
as a child) Aspergers that dings my "full package" rating, and I've only had
one good relationship.

Statistics like this show that premarital sex and divorce are correlated.

Anecdotally, it seems the U.S. judicial system heavily favors the woman in a
man-woman divorce. My father, my uncle, 2 of my coworkers - much of their
assets completely wiped. I have read research indicating that this is true in
general i.e. divorces tend to be a greater loss for the man.

I believe premarital (and extramarital) sex is far more easily found in these
times due to the profileration of dating apps, and as a consequence of
internet-scale, the sheer number of options for women (who are typically the
ones with choice) are exponentially greater than any other time before this.

As another commenter mentioned, people are only as faithful as their knowledge
of their options. It's now common knowledge that you have an INCREDIBLE amount
of options, if you're desired.

So, with the onus of choice and the economy of scale, it seems like a woman
will always be able to find a superior replacement to an average or below-
average man - even if only for one night.

I can't make myself smarter or more beautiful (I can and do work out, but
those improvements only do so much). I already have enough problems socially
that dating is an uphill battle. Why should I try when there is a charismatic
9/10 a "swipe" away?

Cards on the table - after finally seeing romantic success after 20 years of
life, saving my paychecks for a ring and marriage, and then having it all come
crashing down early this year really broke me, and I found myself easily
trapped into reading and studying "incel" and "red pill" ideologies to try and
provide the right model to be viewing the world of human romantic
relationships, and it was a good deal of work to rise out of that trap, but
I'm left with wondering what parts of "the black pill" are very real and what
parts are useless. It really seems like given the premises 1) as a living
organism, I should be in the business of making my species survive another
generation and 2) Others in my species deem me unfit to reproduce, then I can
only accomplish (1) by increasing the amount of resources in the world
available to those who ARE fit to reproduce, which can be done in 2 different
ways...

------
Svoka
Correlation is not causation.

------
tokai
I think it is interesting that a conservative think-tank uses the term
'studies' in their name. Disciplines with a <object of interest> studies title
usually denotes a theoretical kinship with Critical theory or generally
adhering to a postmodern humanistic philosophy of science.

The author is a professor of Family and Consumer Studies at University of
Utah. That discipline is usually denoted Family and Consumer Sciences or
domestic science. The same discipline being split between researchers favoring
either a studies or science name is nothing new. But almost all examples I can
think of involves a dispute between a hard/soft approach.[0] Which is not
really the case here. So in my opinion would a generalist be excused from
presuming that this institute is rooted in the liberal goals of critical
social theory, instead of what it really is.

I have no evidence that professor Wolfinger is nothing but a serious scholar.
But it still smells a little like scholarly black hat SEO'ing to me.

[0] Crudely said a soft approach involves a focus on theory, relativizing
empirical evidence, and activism.

------
gammateam
Reinforcing that people are as faithful as [their knowledge of] options.

This is a study about women, it applies to men as well.

The remaining question would be the utility of marriage stability. As in, this
study and most responses to this would be about a desired outcome, about
premarital sex or marital stability being "good" or "bad".

There are lots of examples of problems people and families have outside of
wedlock, or in unstable marriages, but I would say that is a societal fault
for not providing additional frameworks to follow, leaving people to guess and
fail at it.

~~~
shoo
> The remaining question would be the utility of marriage stability.

Completely agree. Context about specifics of marriage matter. There isn't even
a single notion of utility.

Perhaps another way to drive the point home is to enumerate possible
(immediate) causes of divorce:

infidelity, money, poor communication, frequent arguments, weight gain,
unrealistic expectations, lack of intimacy, lack of equality, lack of
preparation for marriage, abuse. +

In many cases, ending an existing marriage is going to be a much better
outcome then alternatives for at least one of the partners involved.

Cherry-picking a more extreme example: what's the utility of a stable abusive
marriage to the person getting abused?

\+ 10 most common reasons for divorce, Marriage.com . Who knows if this data
is any good, but it's enough to start taking

------
hnaj
Why does the article's title say this is "counter-intuitive"? If anything, it
seems completely intuitive to me; promiscuous people, regardless of sex, are
most likely to cheat and not want to stay married.

~~~
castlecrasher2
I can only assume it's because of the "have fun first, settle down later"
mindset many people tend to have with regards to sex and relationships. I
agree, though, it's not a great title.

------
cultus
Great, can we get an article from the Family Research Council next?

[https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Family_S...](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Family_Studies)

This is a right-wing think tank that's promoting barely-disguised "traditional
values." The quality of their "research" is garbage.

~~~
davesque
I had the same initial reaction when I saw this. But the article appears to be
pretty reasonable actually. I didn't catch strong hints of an agenda.

~~~
ceejayoz
The best sort of agenda-driven study is one that doesn't openly look that way,
though. Lots of ways to subtly mislead with cherry-picked stats or the "men
don't report reliably anyways, so we can't consider that" hand-waving this
article does.

~~~
thoughtexplorer
> Lots of ways to subtly mislead with cherry-picked stats or the "men don't
> report reliably anyways, so we can't consider that" hand-waving this article
> does.

Yikes, let's not be misleading in turn. That's not why they don't have those
stats. Here's the actual reason and context you conveniently left out:

" _unfortunately, the NSFG doesn’t have full data on men’s premarital sexual
behavior_ , and in any event they recall their own marital histories less
reliably than do women)"

Demonstrate why they are incorrect or misleading as opposed to setting up a
strawman.

------
ourmandave
Is this a joke?

Hey men, thinking of putting a ring on it? Better find out how many guys she's
fucked before you showed up.

Never mind how many women you've slept with. That's not part of our study,
Because Sluts. Amirite?!

~~~
hnaj
Yes, that's exactly how it works. This is nothing particularly new.

------
clubm8
Great research, next up, a more granular look: what specific types of sex
increase stability the most? Oral? Anal? Role play?

"Honey we need to purchase this anal training kit with matching strap on. _For
the marriage_. I read it on Hacker News!"

~~~
brobdingnagians
The best type of sex to have a stable marriage is the loving, selfless type
where you are actively trying to promote the well-being and happiness of your
partner. That sort comes from a relationship where you are actively trying to
promote the happiness and interests of your partner in all parts of your
relationship, which is the most stable anyways.

