I think it depends on if the situation is chronic or temporary. If a couple is in love and anxiously looking forward to a short time of decreased time together followed by marriage, I think they can sustain their love for each other on a reduced diet of love bank deposits. But if the situation is chronic, say a job that involves lots of travel and time apart, I think eventually the reduced love bank deposits will catch up with them and they will fall out of love.

I'm still interested in advice from someone who's been in this situation:

• You love someone enough and have valid reasons to marry.
• You also have a valid reason to postpone a wedding.
• You both enjoy the love units deposited by physical signs of affection such as hugging, kissing, holding hands, snuggling in front if the TV, etc.
• You both want to avoid pre-marital sex.

How do you handle the inevitable desire to make love with each other that arises both from the emotional love you have for each other and from the physical signs of affection you like to express to each other?

Unless you both possess amazing reserves of discipline, I don't think you can, KL. You either would have to get married, or tone down the rel-ship, likely start dating other people.

This is some pretty hard-wired human behaviour we're talking about.

If being abstinent is that important to you, it's going to get uncomfortable unless you can get married. You probably would be better off to avoid romantic rel-ships.

I would say English culture most certainly thinks not living together first is strange. Not having premarital sex is even stranger. When American celebrities claim they wouldn't have premarital sex, its pretty much widely disbelieved over here and seen as a strange thing to even try.

I've already had friends give a worried look when I talk about not living together first. What man will agree to that, they say?

Doesn't matter to me though. I think if a man loved me he wouldn't expect me to follow a cultural rule over my own beliefs.

I've heard Dr H say you should know the person for two years before marriage.



It sounds as though non-exclusive dating is an integral part of the recipe. That way you won't be close enough or cosy enough to want sex. You will also be subjecting the person to two years of contrast effect so you will be judging them objectively for those two years.

I agree. Just be realistic, KL, about how many women would be willing, over two years, to date you non-exclusively knowing that they are in constant competition with other women.

Honestly, an abstinent approach to sex makes the most sense when you don't have lots of contact with the opposite sex in a romantic way.

Being abstinent is not important to me, at least not yet. I'm intrigued by the idea because of Dr. Harley's response to my question; he's given me some things to think about. I'm looking at this as "if I chose to be abstinent, how will that work in practice?"

I think it's easier for married people to advocate abstinence because they don't have to deal with the suppression of natural desires. If I'm going to be convinced that abstinence is the way to go, I need to understand how I will implement it.

I am in full agreement with Black Raven that "at the end of the day, it is personal choice," which leads me back to a previous statement that for me, it doesn't work because of my beliefs about keeping the marriage bed pure. The biggest argument for abstinence seems to be avoidance of STD's, which is a pretty big argument in its own right!

In the section on Privacy on p. 83 of Effective Marriage Counseling, Dr. Harley defines �intimate emotional needs� as those that can only be met when undivided attention is given: affection, conversation, recreational companionship, and sexual fulfillment. What is it about sexual fulfillment that makes it different from the other three intimate emotional needs in the sense that the other three are acceptable before marriage, but sexual fulfillment is not, at least according to Dr. Harley and those who favor abstinence?

In the radio broadcast that BrainHurts provided the link for (here), Dr. Harley uses a comparison with living together before marriage to imply that pre-marital sex should be avoided. He says that both involve getting to know each other at an intimate level, and both are trial runs without commitment. The implication is that because both pre-marital sex and living together before marriage share these similarities, and because living together before marriage has been statistically shown to increase the likelihood of divorce, pre-marital sex should be avoided.

The same thing can be said for the other intimate emotional needs. Take Intimate Conversation. Opening up emotionally to another person involves getting to know them at an intimate level. Before marriage, there is no commitment, and if the relationship ends while the two people are deeply involved with each other emotionally, they�ll both be hurt. For those in favor of abstinence, why is it ok to open up emotionally to someone before marriage, but it�s not ok to open up sexually before marriage?

I�ve looked up several references to the cohabitation effect and found that in general, living together before marriage does indeed increase the chances of divorce. But I found that some studies have delved into the issue in more detail. It seems that if a couple lives together as a test for compatibility, they increase their chances of divorce by about 50% if they marry. But couples who have already made the commitment to marry and decide to move in together (i.e. they�re engaged and just waiting for the wedding date to arrive), have roughly the same chances of divorce as couples who do not live together before marriage. The difference seems to be whether the couple has already decided to marry vs. the couple is testing for compatibility before deciding to marry.

I wonder if pre-marital sex works the same way. If a couple engages in pre-marital sex as a test for compatibility, maybe these are the ones Dr. Harley says have more problems in the area of sex after marriage. I wonder if couples who engage in pre-marital sex after having made a commitment to each other, have just as few problems with sex after marriage as couples who abstain. In other words, I wonder if commitment to the relationship makes a difference.

If you're going to use it, source it. Do you have links to these studies?

Sorry, I thought it was against the TOS to post links to sources outside the Marriage Builders website. Here are some links:

USA Today
NY Times
Chicago Tribune

Some other interesting links that talk about the cohabitation effect:

CDC Report (long)
Pew Research Center
Psych Your Mind

If you google "cohabitation effect," you'll find plenty to read!

I have often wondered the same thing, as I know a couple (aunt and uncle) who have lived together for 30 years and still going strong. They are buyers, but she has an anxiety condition that makes her avoid stress and socially crowded events. She never wanted a wedding, though my uncle would propose annually at one time!

It was never a trial run to them. Dr H says 'trial runs' are bad because renter habits tend to stay on in the mindset of the couple. So what about people who have a date set, the wedding booked and have long term solution-orientated buyers habits?

The only problem I can foresee with the buyer-type couple intent on getting married but who are just 'waiting on the paperwork' is trust. You'd have to trust that the other person is a buyer and WILL marry you and isn't just humouring you to get a trial period. It happens.

You wouldn't pay for a car without the paperwork.

The pre marriage buyer couples you reference in your studies were the 'lucky' ones who made it to marriage. What about those who did not? Who end up living with several people before marriage and get in constant train wrecks?

Even my aunt and uncle, who have made it work, were lucky rather than smart in their trust. She could have had an undivorced husband somewhere, or he could have been only pretending he wanted marriage while measuring her up against an OW.

Dr H advises against blind trust. I'd say giving your heart in that intimate-type situation is just that.

We've had deceived cohabitees on these boards say they 'felt married' which of course they did. Without any commitment or legal protection.

I don't disagree that some pre-marriage couples are buyers who will make it to the altar no problems, but I think the trust issue, and possibility of fake engagements need to be factored in.

Indiegirl, where'd you get your wisdom from? Seriously, I'm always impressed with your posts; they really make me think. Thanks for contributing!

I finally got around to transcribing Joyce & Dr. Harley's response to my question on pre-marital sex. For those who are interested but haven't been able to listen for some reason, here's what they said. (I made a few edits for clarity, and I underlined words that they emphasized while speaking. If you want to hear the broadcast, the link BrainHurts provided is here.)

Joyce: Here�s what he has to say:
We don�t want any arguing on the forum there. And then he quotes from your book Buyers, Renters & Freeloaders; he says,
And I�m just going to add here, probably so they can put this to rest!

Dr. Harley: It�s a multi-faceted issue. If you have pre-marital sex prior to marriage, you have the same argument that you�d have with living together before marriage. In other words, let�s kind of test out our relationship and see how we get along when we�re actually living together. And there�s a sense in which pre-marital sex has many of the same components as living together. In other words, it�s very intimate, we�re getting to know each other very, very well at a very basic level, but it�s a trial run. We�re not really doing this necessarily with a commitment to each other, we�re just doing it to see how we work out. We already know that living together before marriage is essentially a disaster.

Joyce: Ok, they�re asking for statistics that show correlation, either positive or negative. So are you saying that information that�s come out about living together before marriage, which has been negative, would also be applicable to sex before marriage?

Dr. Harley: I�ve not seen articles about sex before marriage, but I�ve seen lots of them on living together before marriage, and in spite of the fact that we see living together before marriage tends to create a violent relationship, 80% of all domestic violence is related to living together before marriage, and yet the numbers are increasing. So in spite of all this evidence, we�re seeing more and more people living together in spite of the fact that we already know it�s a very dangerous relationship, one that rarely ends up the way people thought it would.

Joyce: And sex now too, it�s not even thought of as a wrong thing, so I�m glad he brought this up because it�s so prevalent.

Dr. Harley: Like I say, there�s a lot in common between living together before marriage and sex before marriage in that it�s a trial run, see how you get along. Now, I recognize that there are a lot of people that have sex with just about everybody they date. One of the clients that I had, when he met his wife for the first time, he wanted to have sex with her, and she didn�t want to have sex with him because of her religious background, and he said �Listen, if you don�t have sex with me tonight, there will not be a second date. Every woman I�ve ever dated has sex with me whenever we date.�

Joyce: Well I hope she said what I would say, �well then there�ll be not a second date!�

Dr. Harley: No, there was a second date, she had sex with him that night, and they ended up getting married, and they have had all kinds of problems ever since.

Joyce: But it didn�t necessarily relate to that decision.

Dr. Harley: It did in a sense because once she had sex with him, he didn�t feel that that meant he couldn�t have sex with somebody else. He did not commit himself to her. So he not only had sex with her, he had sex with somebody else too.

Joyce: While they were dating?

Dr. Harley: Yeah, and that�s been an issue throughout their entire marriage. So the basic feeling that I�ve got is there�s a lot of downside to sex before marriage. Now, there is some upside. In other words, like he says, are we compatible sexually? There are many marriages that I�ve come across where they didn�t have sex before marriage, and then at the time of their honeymoon, it turns out that one of them just wasn�t interested in having sex at all. So, what do you do then? Or, the first time you have sex, it turns out that the wife has vaginismus, and she finds it extremely painful. She�s never had sex before, the first time she makes love it�s terribly painful. It�s one of the examples I use in my book Love Busters.

Joyce: But all of those things could be overcome through education, medication, and getting to the heart of the problem. It doesn�t mean it won�t happen eventually.

Dr. Harley: Exactly, and my argument has always been, I�m an advocate of avoiding sex before marriage because that�s what it says in the Bible to do. The Bible makes it really clear. It�s a moral decision.

Joyce: Outside of moral values, do you have any evidence that it should not take place.

Dr. Harley: From my own experience as a counselor, even though I�m biased, I think that people should wait until they�re married to have sex, and that eliminates a whole host of problems: pregnancy before marriage, it eliminates the problem of venereal disease, and resentment afterward, because if you�re going to have sex before marriage, chances are you did it with somebody else besides, so there�s probably a line-up of people. And so, my basic position is, that of all the people I�ve counseled, the ones that didn�t have sex before marriage have much fewer problems, much fewer problems in the area of sex, than people that had sex before marriage. And as in the case of living together before marriage, you don�t really get to know what the person is like when you live with them before marriage, and you don�t really get to see if you�re sexually compatible if you have sex before marriage. Lot�s of people have sex before marriage, and within a year after marriage they�re not having sex with each other anymore.