
Studies: Premarital Sex, Cohabitation, and Divorce - mgh2
https://www.focusonthefamily.com/about/focus-findings/marriage/premarital-sex-and-divorce
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tomohawk
This is research that people do not want to hear, but is quite interesting.

If you develop a habit pattern, and then want to change your life and follow a
new habit pattern, you're going to be less successful at achieving that 2nd
habit pattern.

If you want to live a healthy life, giving smoking a go is not a good start to
that, and will make achieving healthy living much harder.

So, it's not really a surprise that engaging in non-monogamous behavior would
set someone up for failure in marriage.

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seba_dos1
Uhm... How and why did you go from premarital sex to non-monogamous behavior?

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1000units
There are very few people who don't believe the claims in the linked article
who have never engaged in non-monogamous behavior (this is not a euphemism for
cheating, it is a category that includes it).

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rsyring
Could have swore I saw this on the front page for just a moment, but it's gone
now. Did it get downvoted into oblivion or is there some other reason this was
on the front page with under ten points?

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dang
Users flagged it. When enough users do that relative to upvotes, the
submission falls in rank.

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1000units
[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

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dang
Paul Graham developed this flagging system.

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1000units
I understand; I don't mean to criticize the flagging system or moderation
team. I just wanted to nod at the fact that we can't talk about this.

~~~
dang
It's ok to talk about it! we answer questions about things like flagging all
the time.

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1000units
I mean the content of the flagged submission, which is morally unfashionable.

~~~
dang
Ah, now I get you. Took me a while.

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jelliclesfarm
Sincere question: when will ‘marriage’ become unfashionable? It has outlived
its usefulness. We can test paternity..women are financially independent and
shared dna can claim shared costs. You can store genetic material.

There is literally no reason for marriage ..an archaic social institution..to
exist.

I can only see two (arguably questionable) purposes for legal union, health
insurance(in America) and filing taxes jointly.

ETA: Ok. One more. Immigration.

Change my mind.

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siphon22
Only reason you need: It exists in most places and is so ubiquitous that you
will probably never get rid of the concept of marriage no matter how hard you
try, so you might as well live with it and work around it. Maybe it's useless
to you, but a lot of people like to do it. It's like asking why some cultures
still eat really unhealthy(but hella delicious) stuff when they have access to
organic cow-fed vegetables. Because it's their culture they always had, and
it's just really delicious.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
That sounds defeatist. We don’t have to accept anything we don’t reasonate
with..I would like to believe that we have at least come that far..

I agree that people can do whatever they want but like I said earlier, it
restricts people. I beckon the same examples...immigration, taxation,
insurance etc.

Why can’t I include my elderly neighbour in my health insurance? If my parents
visit me and they are not citizens, I have to purchase a tourist health policy
for them and they are family..why should only my spouse and children be
considered family.

If I have a partner I love and would like to travel to another country to live
for a few years, I can’t do it unless they are a spouse. Etc.

I don’t want to touch taxation. But you get the idea.

We reward legal and religious marriages while unions and friendships or other
relationships are not equitable. Why?

~~~
1000units
The state subsidizes marriage primarily for the purpose of subsidizing child-
rearing. This has been obfuscated in recent times, but there is little other
reason for these subsidies to exist and your confusion is warranted.

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aey
Lol,

reducing risk of divorce != increasing happiness

~~~
1000units
You're joking, but this is true at the individual level because you can marry
the wrong person. At the population level, reducing divorce does increase
happiness and is something we should design for.

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aey
Not at the cost of forcing people to stay with the wrong partner.

What’s the likelihood of a person who is unlikely to engage in premarital sex
to stay with a bad partner? Seems like set has large overlap because religion
would be a common factor for both.

~~~
1000units
I agree. The idea is we all be extremely selective about who we choose to give
ourselves to.

Your comment raises the question, what is a bad partner? How do incompatible
relationships arise? I'd say most often the dominating force behind bad
relationships is strong physical attraction. To give a personal example, I
married a very beautiful woman who turned out to be immensely destructive to
myself and everyone I loved, including her and her family. She had a serious
personality disorder. I was immediately blinded by how attractive she was, how
good the sex was, and how intimately we engaged with each other in general
(though often this had dark sources like codependency and fear of
abandonment). There were warning signs I could have chosen to pay attention
to, but I thought at the time this is an incredible woman I've met and if
things don't work out, that's O.K., there's nothing to lose.

But I lost a lot. I fell in love deeply enough to tolerate all sorts of
madness and it ended tragically. I won't even allude to the details here.

If I really forced myself in the beginning to think about whether I could in
fact devote my life to this woman and our future family (which is the calling
of sacramental marriage) before choosing to date her, my life would be
unrecognizably different and certainly contain less tragedy.

Sex allows unstable relationships to develop into failed serious
relationships. Failed relationships harden the heart, reducing one's ability
to love, trust, and enjoy other people. It's terrible but it's true, and
anybody who's had at least one bad relationship will tell you. If you're lucky
you can mostly recover but the damage is still done and it shows in the
numbers.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I agree with everything this person just said.

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jschwartzi
Why did you post this here?

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mgh2
I thought HN community was a data/evidence driven community no matter the POV.
I am afraid I am mistaken for the 2nd time, liberal thinking is the norm, so
something diff just gets flagged... sigh

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1000units
This is a specific brand of left-wing liberalism causing the trouble. I've
always called myself a liberal and I'm tremendously disappointed that James
Damore got fired from Google and basic survey articles get flagged off HN for
involving "dangerous facts". It's hard to be a straightforward and honest
person in these conditions, and it only encourages people to retreat into
insular and subversive communities. Those complicit with left-wing censorship
have an incomplete appreciation for the dangers of building a community that
doesn't care about truth before hurting people's feelings or fumbling
negative-sum political games they've accidentally participated in.

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dfeojm-zlib
Thanks for flagging this Christian conservative propaganda.

~~~
1000units
This may be Christian propaganda, but if it is propaganda it is such in the
classical sense: a truthful presentation designed to influence your thoughts
and behavior toward a particular worthwhile end. It resides in the same
spiritual realm as Plato and Epictetus.

God bless,

1000units

