For a long time, traditions around the world preached abstinence. Abstinence, they said, will place more value on yourself, your family and as a member of society.
But with the evolving society and their preference on sexual behaviour, research has now shown that virginity is linked to a happy marriage.
According to a 2016 study, Counterintuitive Trends in the Link Between Premarital Sex and Marital Stability published in the “Institute for Family Studies Blog” by Nicholas Wolfinger, virgins were found to have the happiest marriages.
He said,
“As premarital sex became more acceptable, it’s reasonable to anticipate that its negative effects on marital stability waned. In general, Americans became more accepting of nonmarital sex. Certainly fewer men entered marriage with the expectation of a virgin bride. All of the fanfare associated with hooking up is evidence that some young people have become comfortable with the idea of sex outside of serious relationships.”
To arrive at this finding, he used the premarital sex data and divorce information from the National Survey of Family Growth in 2002, 2006-2010 and 2011-2013.
With about 5% of the US population being virgins before they got married, the researcher found that those who married as virgins had the lowest rate of divorce among other groups within a five-year frame. Next in line were the women who had one sex partner.
“Contrary to conventional wisdom, when it comes to sex, less experience is better, at least for the marriage, ”
W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the Institute for Family Studies, Utah, tells the Atlantic.
This is because
“Having more partners prior to marriage makes you critically evaluate your spouse in light of previous partners, both sexually and otherwise,”
Wilcox adds.
However, there is an oddity: a woman who had two sex partners before marriage will have a higher divorce rate than a woman with three to nine partners.
“Perhaps it is not unexpected that having many partners increases the odds of divorce. The greater surprise is that this only holds true in recent years; previously, women with two partners prior to marriage had the highest divorce rates,”
said Wolfinger.
“In short, if you’re going to have comparisons to your [future] husband, it’s best to have more than one,”
he added.
According to his data, the highest so far were those who had had up to 10 sex partners by 33%.
