Why Waiting For Sex Until Marriage No Longer Makes Sense

Waiting until marriage to have sex is a very old tradition and expectation that has been with us for most of civilized human history. Written human history only goes back about 6,000-8,000 years, based on current knowledge, but we have anthropological records going back much further. Clearly, the concept existed for good reasons to have lasted so long - so why is this concept suddenly obsolete?

Why Waiting For Sex Until Marriage No Longer Makes Sense

We can’t understand the rationale behind this rule without historical context, so, let’s take a look at how it came to be.


At first, humans and pre-humans were nothing more than exceptionally smart animals, but eventually, we developed communication, which lead to organization and relative stability of life, which we call Civilization. You can’t have civilization without a widely-recognized set of rules, and in the beginning, the things that mattered were the very basics: survival, shelter, sustenance, and reproduction. All of those things were organized and had guidelines established, and subsequently refined, to help civilization run smoothly.

Why Waiting For Sex Until Marriage No Longer Makes Sense

Among the first things to be given rules were issues regarding power and leadership - key issues for stability. Clan names evolved into “house” or “family” names, and titles, positions, possessions, and incomes were passed down through generations (which were often quite short, when the average lifespan was in the late 30s or early 40s). Further rules about inheritance were created to ensure that a clear line of succession was understood by everyone - the better to prevent a war every time a leader died and a successor had to be named.


Marriage, especially among the upper (leadership) class, became very important to civilization, not only for the passing of titles and holdings but also as a political tool to create unions between former enemies or reluctant allies. If you’re a fan of Game Of Thrones, or the books the show was based on, you’ll be very familiar with all of these issues - and the author borrowed heavily from actual European history for those concepts.

Why Waiting For Sex Until Marriage No Longer Makes Sense

This leads us to one more critical piece of the puzzle: whether or not a child was “legitimate”, meaning the child of an officially (and often religiously-recognized) married couple, or if that child was “illegitimate” (aka a bastard), meaning the biological parents were not legally wed. Historically, this is a very important distinction, because illegitimate children *could not inherit*; only legitimate children were allowed to take the family/house/clan name, and titles and possessions generally passed to the eldest (legitimate) son. The reason this was so important to civilization was because, when the rules were not followed, the result was often war, with the attendant loss of thousands (or tens or hundreds of thousands) of innocent lives.


Before modern times, having sex inevitably led to pregnancies and children, so rules had to be created to ensure that those children - especially those of the upper (ruling) classes - were legitimate. This was accomplished in a simple, practical way: marriage - marriages that took place not long after the onset of puberty and the natural, biologically-driven start of sexual desire.


More simply, girls were considered to be “women” by 12 or 13, and boys considered men by 15 or 16, and marriages started taking place once these ages were reached. In fact, the *average* marriage age for women prior to the 1600s was about 14, and since the 1600s was about 15, while men’s average marriage age was about 16. Keep in mind that these are averages, and that is was not at all unusual or remarkable for women to be married at 12 or 13, and men at 14 or 15.

Why Waiting For Sex Until Marriage No Longer Makes Sense

Today, these ages seem extremely young, but it is important to realize that WE are the weird ones - biologically, those ages are and were much more reasonable and practical. It meant that men had a wife during his peak sexual years (roughly 16-25), and it meant that women had a husband during her peak fertility years (roughly 15-30), which meant that the odds of that couple successfully reproducing and having children that survived into adulthood to reproduce themselves was maximized. Infant mortality was often 30-40%, and even the children who survived to 5 years of age were still likely to die prior to reproductive age about 35% of the time, due to disease, hunger, or violence. It also meant that the children that resulted from these marriages would be legitimate, and could inherit the family name, titles, and possessions.


All of this continued for thousands of years, until the first minor adjustments happened in the late 1800s as part of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution resulted in the need for greater levels of education of workers, who were needed for more complex jobs, and this in turn increased the importance of education across the developed world. The first public schools were opened, and education became less of a paid privilege and more of an expectation.

Why Waiting For Sex Until Marriage No Longer Makes Sense

The big change, though, came as a result of World War II. WWII greatly accelerated not just the industrialization of the world, but also advanced technology at an incredible rate. Massive medical breakthroughs were made as well; for example, the first antibiotics. And when the war ended and the world looked to the US for help rebuilding Europe, Japan, and other places that had been destroyed in the war, the US transitioned wartime technology advancements into the civilian sectors. By the 1960s, the fruits of this work, also fueled by the Cold War and the Space Race, were beginning to make huge changes to society.


Industrial and factory work was the beginning of a trend where workers needed to be educated, and as time went on, and as technology enabled many diverse careers, the minimum level of education needed by those workers continued to increase.


The impact on women was especially dramatic. Many of these new jobs no longer required brute strength or physical endurance like factory work or farming, but they did require education, so women began to not only finish high school (prior to WWII, 8th Grade educations were the standard), but many began to go to college - something previously unheard of outside of the wealthy or the exceptionally gifted. And armed with their new educations, these women (as a whole) went to work outside the home, by choice, for the first time.

Why Waiting For Sex Until Marriage No Longer Makes Sense

Women were also able to manage their reproduction for the first time, with new access to the Birth Control Pill and other birth control methods, and to legal abortions. Feminism fought for equality in the workplace and the right to choose a career instead of being a mother and housewife by default.


All of this saw the marriage age start to increase for the first time starting in the late 1960s, moving from the historical average age of 15 through the later teens, and into the early 20s in the 1970s, and continuing a rapid rise through the early 1990s when the average marriage age hit 30 - and that number is still increasing today.

Why Waiting For Sex Until Marriage No Longer Makes Sense

What’s important to remember, though, is that this is VERY RECENT change, and even though many reading this will have never known anything else, from a human biology perspective, this is very massive and very rapid change - far faster than biology can accommodate. Scientists estimate that it takes about 1000 generations - or 20,000 years - before human biology will show significant change, and it’s barely been 60 years. That is rapid change!


But our parents are still teaching us the values that their parents taught them, and their parents did the same, etc. And 3 or 4 generations ago, those values and expectations made perfect sense - when women married at 14, 15, or 16, and men at 16, 17, and 18 - waiting for marriage for sex was realistic and reasonable - it aligned with human biology.


Today, with the average female marriage age in western society being 32(!), obviously that expectation (to wait for marriage to have sex) is not at all in line with human biology, and it isn’t reasonable or practical. Things have changed - massively and quickly - and our parents and grandparents haven’t updated the values and expectations they’ve been teaching to reflect those changes - which naturally causes a lot of confusion and emotional uncertainty, because the way we feel, and the way everyone acts today, doesn’t reflect what we were taught to expect. 60 years ago, and virtually any time before that, those expectations matched up well with society, but they don’t anymore, and people who still teach those outdated expectations are doing everyone a disservice. That doesn’t mean that values aren’t important, but it means that we all must be aware of the breadth and depth and speed of the chances in society after WWII, and realize that we must create new rules to live by - rules that reflect *today’s* society, and not the one our grandparents and great-grandparents lived in; a society that is long gone.

Why Waiting For Sex Until Marriage No Longer Makes Sense

It makes absolutely no sense to waste a decade or more of time that your body is naturally supposed to be sexually active in - and in fact when reproduction is at its most optimal and safe - just because you aren’t married. It goes against nature and biology, and against emotional, spiritual, and mental health. Yes, we have to make adjustments, but at least let’s be aware that the old rules are obsolete and impractical (and WHY), and be okay making new, sensible rules for ourselves that work for us and society as it is today.

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Most Helpful Girl

  • I agree with this 100%. I just thought to myself, what if I don't get married one day, isn't it waste of my time to wait? Secondly, there is no guarantee that you won't get divorced in the future. Then the idea of "the one and only one" is no longer worth it.

    • Also virginities no longer a big deal for most guys and after 30 or so i think even for women it starts to become a question of why haven't they and you start to worry do they actually like sex rather than the idealistic positive of won't it be so special that some guys have.

    • There is no guarantee you will live tomorrow or you will not dye today (as creepy as it sounds). If you don't live by faith you will live by insecurities and that's not living, you'll not enjoy anything, trust anyone like that in many aspects of your life.

    • @DiegoO Much better than "having faith" is having common sense and thinking out the big decisions in your life the risks and if there's a tangible benefit. "having faith" doesn't help you make good decisions in life!

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  • You think the average age of marriage was 15 until the sixties?
    •_______•

    Son... #FactChecking
    Especially when the "fact" in question is obviously ridiculous.
    www.infoplease.com/.../median-age-first-marriage-1890-2010

    • Before the 1800's from what I read.

    • @DiegoO... except still nope. Even more nope, actually.
      internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/.../marriage.html

      In non western cultures, sure. But that's basically irrelevant here, since those marriages are a different thing entirely from our conception of marriage.

    • I don't trust that page info

  • And why studies have shown that those who had premarital sex, especially as teenagers, and doing cohabitation raises one's risk of divorce.

    https://www2.cortland.edu/dotAsset/199337.pdf
    family-studies.org/.../
    www.webmd.com/.../theres-benefits-in-delaying-sex-until-marriage
    www.yahoo.com/.../...s-divorce-risk-144722762.html
    www.huffingtonpost.com/.../...young_n_4227924.html

    And birth control of any kind is not healthy. I do not condone the message after the risk listed:

    bodyecology.com/.../dangers_birth_control_pill.php

    Young marriages are still realistic. But parents, society, and humanity as a whole are not making it realistic for their children. They're promoting sex more than they are about making sure their kids 'grow up'. Marriage is about growing up. And marriages especially young marriage is beneficial:

    www.mensjournal.com/.../does-marriage-helps-you-live-longer-20140610
    www.huffingtonpost.com/.../...young_n_4227924.html

    Also, porn is even a bigger culprit nowadays since it first started. Regardless of that crap in ancient times. The younger your exposed to it, the more likely you are to become sexual and experience sex at very young age:

    aifs.gov.au/.../children-and-young-peoples-exposure-pornography

    We're more screwed up than it was in the past. Many issues could have been avoided if we had learned to adapt those beliefs and do BETTER than they did.

  • It may be completely impractical in the biological sense, but for many, it isn't just about biology--clearly. For some, marriage in their minds, is the extension of the application of love. To have sex without love, is not practical to them. Also having sex at a young age we know leads to increased risks of unwanted pregnancies and STD's which do tend to happen to that younger set who is mentally unprepared or without the knowledge of preventative measures or flat out ignores them. Our society today, vs. back then, does not openly support "children having children," so it's just not enough to say, people should be having sex at younger ages for biological purposes. Back then there was no question that a family would support you or your child, or the community would because it was celebrated. Now, even at say 20, things can be very difficult for someone, especially if that someone is a single parent.

    Just as you say times have changed as we increase the age of people being marriage, so too have advancements in reproduction. Back then, 75% or more of women who gave birth at those young ages lost their children or a child or their lives in childbirth. Now there are quite a few advancements in health care that do allow older women in particular to give birth in relative safety. I think most women are aware the clock is ticking but if they have neither the resources, nor a partner, in or out of marriage that is willing to help raise the child, and/or an unwilling family, having a child is impractical. At least with more education under the belt which more and more women have these days, and better job prospects, even if a partner does leave, they are more able at the older age, to be able to raise their child or children with more success.

    Now if it's "just sex," then biologically there is no reason to wait BUT there is also no need for sex for survival. They've done studies to prove that there are no real benefits to sex (outside or procreation for women which can help decrease cancer risks later on to a small degree) or stress relief (which one can find other ways to achieve)... so we are where we are. Grandma isn't going to tell her kid at 15 to go have sex--not going to happen. Neither is Dad. Politically, law makers are now hell bent on making birth control much harder to get and shutting down clinics that help women with more than just abortions, so sex/procreation at a young age is seeming less like a viable option for society to promote.

  • if you aren't going to have kids, why sleep around? there's always that risk that you could get pregnant. Plus marriage means that you are more serious about the relationship, especially religiously speaking because when you become one and you make a vow in front of God and others you are more likely to honor that vow... because most of these sleep with as many people as you can because you don't have to be married first is going to become a pattern in your marriage... in this thinking that if the relationship doesn't work... well hey! you were able to break up and get into a new one like you weren't even married. I was never in a relationship and then I realized I wanted to be at the age of 24... and guess what there's nothing wrong with that. we were more financially able to be married and have kids at that age than at 16-18...

    • You can have sex without "sleeping around" and you can have sex with very, very low risk of pregnancy. Sex is a normal, important, necessary human function, which most of us have a very strong biological drive to do. It is NOT normal to go without sex through your prime sexual years - a fact that was widely understood; that's why people were married at those ages in the past. There's nothing wrong with starting to have sex in your teens, and there never was - and that's never changed. The only thing that's changed is the average marriage age, which has shot up like a rocket in a very short span of time. That's got to be adjusted for, don't you think?

    • sex is not just sex, there's feelings and other things like that involved... like she could be or he could be too young to understand how relationships work. I don't think you need sex to live, I mean look at me... I lived till 24 before having sex and I am fine... and I'm glad I had kids later in my life... accidents happen... there is a huge teen pregnancy problem in the USA probably due to having sex before marriage... and also teens who have sex just to have sex, they treat the other person... as if they are not a person and it ruins their self esteem... teens are just not mature enough to handle that kind of rejection... it's just better for adults and out of High school. look at that new drama... 13 reasons why, it's all about teens wanting sex... and it's ok to have it outside of marriage so the guy pretty much pressured her into it.. and the rest of the show depicts how poor teens handle how other teens have been used for sex... she kills herself at the end

    • All those problems exist, but most of them aren't due to having sex, but due to other reasons. Yes, I agree that in those situations, having sex can compound the problem, but plenty of people in their mid/late teens and older have sex responsibly and without issue, and there's nothing wrong with that. We don't have to limit ourselves to the lowest common denominator, even if some should be.

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  • Love and sex are basic needs. Although they aren't physically vital, they are still affecting ones mental and emotional wellbeing. Having to opress these needs is not healthy. Trust me, I have first hand experience. So I can only encourage hooking up.
    Having sex and having children are two different things (nowadays), and while having children can be an urge too, it is far from necessary. It can, and should be prevented if not planned. Not having sex is the safest method, but there are others (and harmless ones) too, so why compromising the more important needs so strictly?
    A great junk of society, mostly primitive men, tend to act on their urges quite irresponsibly, which is an issue of intelligence and moral education.
    Marriage is only a tool to put a couple together under dedicated laws with intention of securing fair treatment of all parties involved, especially care for children, in case of disagreement and separation. It can help, but can't ensure a childs wellbeing.
    Our livespan has hugely increased. Expectation is 83 years.
    People change. In 10 years, most individuals become quite different people. For a couple, it might not work out anymore, and not only divorce statistics show, it frequently doesn't. Making a decision to comit to a single individual to be with for the rest of ones life is something few can do with certainity.
    So marriage or not, sex or not, the important part is being a moraly educated adult and be prepared to take responsibility "if shit happens" and expect it to happen, if one isn't careful.

  • I'm not exactly advocating waiting until marriage, but, uh, single parenthood rates?

    • "single parenthood rates" Birth Control? And, sadly, marriage doesn't (even remotely) eliminate single parenthood. The majority of the single parents I know were formerly married (granted, YMMV).

  • You can tell this was written from the point of view of a man!

    • And what do you mean? What's your point of view?

    • @independentman I feel that modern society is not supporting the emotional needs of the family as a whole, or the children it produces. I am not sure what the answer is, but what we are doing now.. e. g. Couples not marrying ( and breaking up years later in children in tow) or people just have casual sex resulting in children. Isn't working. And it's the children who suffer. It's becoming a rarity for children to grow up in a happy household with their mum & dad. I think the act of marriage takes commitment, and thought. ( and if you get married in some churches 6 months of pre-marital therapy)

    • Nice said, but even kids in family suffer to be honest I agree with the therapy but some people just distance themsel from kids even in a lasting mariage

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  • Sorry, but waiting until marriage NEVER made sense. It was religious nuts that pushed that agenda.

    • I agree. Sexual incompatibility is one of the many reasons people have extramarital affairs and actually end up leaving their marriages if worst came to worst. Im definitely not of the notion of waiting till marriage

  • Not too much to add to what @btbc92 said so well.

    I'd underscore the fact that people should simply get married sooner. Most of what I learned for my finance/accounting job could have been learned by me in high school. There really is no need for 4, 6 or 8 years of college to do most jobs.
    Unless you're a medical doctor or college professor, you can be equipped intellectually for running a household and marriage at age 20. People aren't emotionally equipped for marriage and family at that age largely because we allow them to have the pleasures and freedoms of adulthood without the corresponding responsibilities.

  • Guaranteed, the girl you end up marrying will not be a girl. She will not wait for you so why the hell wait for her. Go get yours. She hasn't met you yet but she is doing some guy right now as we speak.

  • Well you should wait and get to know the person before sleeping with them to see how they are as a person. If they are crazy, too jealous all the time, just want to get in your pants etc its better to wait it out and see if your willing to have sex with them or until they willing to start a committed relationship with you.

    • No one is suggesting that you sleep with people on the first date or anything. There's absolutely nothing wrong with having a sensible waiting period and spending that time to get to know them, investigate compatibility, attitudes, morals, and so forth. The choice is not "wait for marriage OR be a drunken party slut" - there's plenty of middle ground between the two.

    • Well I don't believe someone a skank before marriage and because it is believed that marriage was created from slavery anyway. (owning women and trading daughters for wealth etc).

  • I wish marriage made sense still. So many divorces now.

    • Another reason why waiting till marriage is unfeasable, high divorce rate.

    • Nobody respects other people's relationships. You can be a guy with a girlfriend or wife and women still wanna sleep with you.

    • @Listening5 Agreed, women find men in relationships more attractive, yes that was a generalization. I have noticed some people "glow" when in a relationship, probably due to being laid. There are females that don't respect boundries, other women, or relationships. They see a man they like in a relationship, that is their dating demographic. I'm not talking about homewreckers, I'm talking about females that have no boundries, know how to illicit sex from a man in a relationship, and manipulate him via his basal desires to be her little sex toy.

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  • I can appreciate the effort it took to write so much. I think this veiw is too reductionist, too oversimplified. One major contention for starters is people marry for more reason than biological survival of the species, or for fertility reasons. The main argument is it's impractical to wait to have sex after marriage because it's harmful or pointless to wait until after you've reached past peak fertility in relation to a number of age that is common for people to be married at. On the contrary, if it were survival based or fertility based, we wouldn't need to have to reproduce as often because we survive more easily. That number to my guess probably includes a broad number of people that marry, including those that have children out of wedlock, and perhaps it doesn't reflect the people who hold onto such conservative beliefs. Those different groups could reflect many different things, including at which age somebody first has sex and why. The people that do marry do so for a large magnitude of other reasons, many of them being pragmatic and fiscally responsible. That pragmatism is to ensure a healthy marriage, a healthy relationship for healthy child rearing. If those values are removed, the goal of being financially, or emotionally secure, than sex before marriage is either a backwards choice of parenting, or it's to take careless risks that cause unwanted pregnancy, excluding those who do not wish to marry but are otherwise responsible.

    I think we do need to be aware of the trappings of old thought, not that I think they all apply, and I think we do need to change with the times. As in doing so the nature of marriage evolves too, whereas it may have only been about titles and survival in the past, it means a lot more today. I would agree that people might find it more suitable to produce children before their later ages, but that only means that marriages could happen sooner, which I would like to have a differention between those who marry for conservative reasons vs those that marry after having children. The prerequisite to that is that the two engaged in a romance are equally capable of marriage sooner.

    But then again I don't think marriage is neccessary to achieve those things. Marriage is just symbolic of them. If people want to go without marriage and they can responsibly look. after there own lives then fly-at-'er.

    But that said, I think you did a good job writing. I haven't been to post secondary schooling so I wouldn't say I could count it among the top tiers. But I like the passion you had to go through the effort.

    • Thanks for the kind words. Obviously any MyTake on such a complex subject is reductionist - it's a post and not a book after all, so there's only so much depth you can go into, and most people don't even want to read this much. But I find a lot of people have questions about this, and it's clear that a lot of them have zero historical context for how these expectations came into being in the first place, or why they were important at the time. You need to know those things in order to be able to figure out if you still need to follow those rules or if the circumstances that led to their creation have changed, making the need for those rules obsolete.

  • It never did make any sense to me, never mind "no longer". In my opinion, it's a "mistake" to wait. You need to know if you're sexually compatible with the person you're going to marry, and sex is important in a marriage.

  • Marriage is no longer what it used to be so I kinda agree with you but if someone wants to wait, then let them be. It's their decision.

    What I don't like that people are much less fair and backstab you all the time. Guys just wanna get laid so they'll do pretty much everything (except some serious things) to get the girl and then go for another.

    • You don’t think guys had their mistresses back in the old days? It was just more hush-hush.

    • @lumos I'm sure they had but I don't think there was so much of it. Maybe we just didn't know though.

    • I think it was even more widespread than it is today. Nowadays there are consequences to people's actions and men can't hide as easily behind the excuses "boys will be boys" and "men have their needs". Women had little to no say and people didn't think women had any needs. Therefore it was perfectly acceptable for men to fuck around as long as they kept it on the dl.

  • How about we let people make their own decisions when to have sex?

    • he's not coercing anyone... just saying it doesn't make sense anymore.

    • @Tdieseler Of course... having sex until marriage doesn't make sense, having sex before a long-term relationship doesn't make sense, having sex before marriage doesn't make sense, having friends with benefits doesn't make sense, etc. Who fucking cares! There's always something that won't make sense to someone. People who wait until marriage is none of my business!! Let them do it, I don't care what people choose to do with their bodies sexually. Guess what, because it's none of my business!

    • just saying... he's not forcing anyone. just expanding on something I've been saying for years. Hey... it ain't none of my business either... but they better not say nothing when i continue (and i will continue) to call them idiots. Insecure, nothing else to offer idiots. Both males and females. I know its unfair... but im not against their choice, if they can do that in this day and age... good for them. mind you, i dont mean the religious/family/society reasons... im talking bout people who aren't bound by anything but their own choice. Cuz all they need to do is look around them. But hey, like you said, none of my business... till they come crying to me about cheating and divorce... because all they had to offer a lifetime commitment was their sexual organ. How long you think that would hold up a marriage?

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  • Nice stories within this with some historical accuracy.. But, biology didn't change.. You're confusing that with societal, and culture changes.. Also I doubt people got married at 13, 14, and 15 in the sixties.. LOL.. But, waiting til marriage will always make sense, because look at what happens unwanted pregnancies, and children all in adoption agencies, STD's, and all that..

  • Great job at explaining the topic in a way that people dont get offended and actually backing it up with facts

  • 1 reasons because sex is becoming too important to people and cheating isn't ok anymore (in century before it was ok to have a mistress for men and kind of expected too).
    It's not anymore so if they're aren't compatible this just lead to divorce.

    • As a man I have never experienced cultural acceptance of men cheating on their spouses. Mistresses have never been acceptable behavior for men, they always have to hide her away and hope they don't get caught.

    • @Wwwyzzerdd No, not back in the history think of the years when they were king. They were expected to have mistress after in the 1900 years, they had to hide it but it was still considered cool to have one and manly (by other men). And just think of the muslim country, some men can have as many bride as he want. Too I heard about Russian men being kind of expected to cheat on their wife (for this one I don't know if it's true though only things i've heard)

    • @Wwwyzzerdd @alice55 is exactly right. From the 15th through the 19th centuries, it was very common for men of at least minor means to have mistresses, and they were tolerated and publicly acknowledged. As long as the man didn't abandon support for his wife and children, or bring his mistress to an official function instead of his wife, this was considered acceptable.

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  • No, no, no! I am still going to wait! U-U

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