I didn't mean that sex alone brings about happiness. If I'd be happy to be with a man that cares/loves me but also want to have sex, then ideally marriage is the way to go. However, all those other bits of info about dating, healing, blended families are thrown out there which I consider as well. Makes my head want to explode lol.

The being "ready" is maybe the million dollar question. I went out on a date, three weeks after my D was final...and it was GREAT!!! After all the affair drama/fallout, divorce process...I was ready. Some people may view that as too soon. I did not feel lonely and vulnerable at that point nor did I have any expectations other than hopefully having a nice time with a nice guy, so I made the leap. We hit it off (he was also a BH)...no romance came of it but I met a nice guy who I am still on friendly terms with.

I take exception to the implication, made above, that one must believe in God in order to follow moral guidelines.

On another note, I have always wondered, when these conversations invariably come up, how many people on this Board were virgins before they got married, and how many intend to remain abstinent after their divorce until they remarry.

I'm sure in my past I would have viewed it as too soon, but Dr. Harley turned my thinking around.

All in all, I would like to think the good doc has helped me become a much less judgmental person. I'm sure I still have a ways to go.

Me - No to both

Nice edit comment, Markos. lol

I think there is a subset of people in the world who view both of those as perfectly normal, and a subset of people who think those are nearly impossible and irrational expectations.

I view them as normal.

The trick (for both sides) in talking about the issue is to figure out how to talk about it respectfully without coming across as judgmental or cocky to those of the other point of view. For example, if I state I was a virgin on my wedding night, people can read all kinds of things into that. They may think it reflects negatively on my desirability as a man. They may think I'm bragging. They make think I'm being judgmental. When in reality, I would be saying none of that: simply expressing a fact.

That's a good answer Markos, but what I had in mind by a couple "not ready to get married" is situations where getting married right away isn't feasible.

For example, one person is in school and until they graduate, they won't be able to devote the time and attention they'd want to in marriage. There's bound to be lots of examples similar to that where there's a reason to not get married right away

Hi Markos, I dated a women for 2+ years after divorce, and sex with her was far better than it was with my exW. The reason: I had a much better emotional connection with her than I did in marriage.

Amen to that!!!

You mean like Dr. Harley when he married Joyce?


In this hypothetical scenario, how were they able to establish a romantic love relationship without adequate time?

I wasn't a virgin when I got married, but this discussion is making me re-think whether I should consider remaining abstinent (or at least trying to) until second marriage.

Right, and that's part of why sex alone won't do it for me. I need sex + emotional connection + permanent formal commitment (so that I know both of the above are going to continue).

Dr. Harley was always a severe workaholic, both in graduate school and in his career. His position was that for men, men need to have a recreational escape in life. When he was in school, he worked HARD every day, and he rewarded himself by planning an escape almost every night, if I understand correctly. That escape was a date. He would date Joyce if she was available. On those occasions when Joyce broke up with him, he would find someone else to date.

After they got married, they continued that. Dr. Harley worked through graduate school, but they always made time for each other. According to Dr. H, a man would need that much escape in his schedule anyway, whether married or not. As a result of continuing this schedule, Dr. Harley and Joyce never fell out of love, even though he was working insane 90 hour weeks, or something like that.

After graduate school (Joyce was unwilling to POJA Dr. H going on for an MD! ) Dr. Harley continued his workaholic schedule and applied it to his career, but he continued to have his escape every night with Joyce. When kids came, he continued the schedule, including his escape every night with Joyce.

I think I tend to agree that a man is going to fill some hours of every day/week with recreation of some sort, if at all possible. Those hours might as well be with a female companion, and if they are, I believe it will positively impact his quality of life. And if he is going to have those hours anyway, then he has enough hours to devote to a romantic relationship in marriage.

My point wasn't to discuss the details of a particular example, but to ask about the general scenario where a couple feels that they want to marry, and all the conditions you described are in place (POJA, logical to those around them, etc), but there happens to exist some condition which they both agree makes them want to wait.

In the example I cited, consider this scenario. The couple is in grad school. They're taking classes, but have enough UA time for each other. After a year of school, they're in love with each other and marriage makes sense. But next year, they will have to do internships, or research projects, or something that will take an extraordinary amount of time. So they decide to wait until they finish school to get married.

If that is the case, then they should plan for their love to fade during the next year, right? If they are not going to have adequate time for each other, then the love is going to fade.

This could even become a nightmare scenario: they begin a sexual relationship, which is very fulfilling for both of them because they are in love. Then the next year arrives, and one falls out of love before the other does, but the other still wants to continue their relationship, including sex. Which may be very traumatic to the person who is now out of love. Or, the sex stops, which is going to be pretty unfulfilling for the person who wants it to keep going.

I would say in such a situation it's even more important to keep the relationship less serious, i.e., no sex, because it's not going to last.

That's a really interesting discussion. I know there are places where lots of folks expect to be abstinent until marriage, but I suspect where most of us live, it would make the dating pool very very small, and not necessarily the subset that would be a fit for me and my family otherwise. Kind of like being a single-issue voter.

But isn't that the point? To cull out the ones who don't meet the bill? It is the same with so called single issue voters; for many character is that single issue and that is not a bad thing but a demonstration of civic responsibility.

I think most places in America there are people who are abstinent, albeit a minority. It's not hard to cull out the ones who do sleep around just like one would cull out smokers or democrats. Harley made a good point in his radio clip that if a date will sleep with you, he likely sleeps with others.

It is for me, at least.

It's worth noting that the people who are in good marriages are a minority, about 20%. Dr. Harley talks often on the radio about there basically being two cultures in America (apologies to those of you who are not in the U.S.; I assume this extends to most of the Western world, if not the whole world), one of which tends to have good marriages and one of tends to have bad marriages or avoid marriage entirely. In some areas one culture predominates, and often people in one of those cultures simply do not understand people from the other culture (or even believe they exist -- how many people here in troubled marriages are wondering if good marriages even exist?).

I think Dr. Harley talks more about this in Defending Traditional Marriage, but I have to confess I have yet to finish this book.

I might speculate that avoiding premarital sex is one of the aspects of the culture that tends to have good marriages, just as avoiding living together is definitely one aspect of that culture.