Posted on 09/10/2014 8:33:58 AM PDT by rhema
Despite the lack of cultural support for positive practices that help couples toward healthy marriage relationships, the good news is that individuals have control over their relationship choices.
Most young people want a happy marriage and family life. As a new report from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia shows, the choices people make in their relationships prior to marriage matter. Unfortunately, the laissez-faire sexual practices embraced and promoted in our culture today don’t build a strong foundation for marriage.
According to the report, authored by Galena K. Rhoades and Scott M. Stanley of the University of Denver, individuals with more sexual partners and cohabitation experience tend to report poorer marital quality, as do couples with children from prior relationships. And yet, today the average person reports five sexual partners prior to marriage. Less than one quarter (23 percent) have only had sex with the person they marry. Cohabitation is also common, with the majority of people cohabiting prior to marriage. And more than 40 percent of all children are born outside of marriage.
The pathway to marriage is a precarious one today. Sexual freedom and experimentation pervade our culture. Yet they jeopardize the outcomes that most people say they desire. An anything-goes ideology marginalizes intentional decision-making in these most important areas of marriage and sexual activity.
Sliding vs. Deciding
(Excerpt) Read more at thepublicdiscourse.com ...
Anything-goes ideology is a dead end street enjoy because the cost is very high.
Where as dating, you'd be much more less likely to ignore warning signs and end more likely to move on.
free milk
MOOOOooo....
His problem will be (if it isn't already) that by the time he gets serious about a family the "girls" his age that interest him won't have much time left to have a baby. My wife worked in an infertility clinic at Stanford for about seven years. The place was crawling with couples resembling your friend.
One thing that doesn’t get talked about is all the quasi-divorces that happen. And the financial and emotional toll that takes.
There are many more splits from shack ups than marriage. These people quasi marry, sometimes for the duration of college or whatever, for one to 15 years, then there is a split. There are many many walking wounded out there
He’s likely done, at least informally, the cost-benefit analysis.
In the current culture, most guys who get married get played for suckers. It is simply too much of a risk.
Simplest plan ? Store some sperm samples on ice, get a vasectomy (and document a test later that shows zero sperm count), and then go out and enjoy the free milk. . .
Not great from a moral standpoint, but on target from a legal one. . .
Not a bad article and worthy of recommending to every young person who is just at that age when they are starting to think about forming a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. However, it’s interesting how the article has come up with some many conclusions about what reduces (or obliterates) the chances of marital success when in fact all those conclusions look they are lifted right out of the Bible….but unless I missed, there is no reference to the Bible in the article.
I’m happily married to the love of my life. We’ll be celebrating our 31st wedding anniversary in November.
This thread is depressing.
my 25 yo daughter married the love of her life this past Saturday. they waited until marriage, did not live together prior, and intend to use NFP. all is not lost : ) Congratulations to you and your husband! my husband and I will celebrate 30 yrs next june.
My son met a girl in college. He went into the Marines and they had a big, fancy military wedding (at her behest). He went to TBS, then stationed in Pendleton and deployed to Afghanistan. The bitch Dear John’ed him while over there on his first tour. Appears the poor little wench was not cut out for military life and I have no doubt was a WestPac widow. She was also a spoiled little princess by her parents.
Sad thing is my son loved her and wanted a family. He still wants one, but is not in a hurry to get burned again.
It’s not “conventional wisdom” any more. Secular facts and studies are out there showing that couples who shack up before marriage stand a greater risk of separating and divorcing than do couples who don’t live together first.
Thanks, xsmommy. Congratulations to you, your husband, your daughter and her husband! It’s so nice to hear good news once in a while!
thank you! it was a wonderful and joyous occasion at our Italian-Catholic church in DC.
Just for a point of debate (but I think that this is a historically and Biblically supported position), a marriage starts the day that a couple has sex for the first time. On this basis, no wonder we live in such a confused society. Nobody knows exactly what marriage is, there is no clear understanding of what their roles, responsibilities and commitments to marriage are (or should be)……but at the same time, we have all these people who by virtue of having endless sexual partners (before they ended up with the one that they signed a piece of paper with) are already married.
Was my previous post even in English? I need to start reading/proofing before posting. Thanks to anyone who could decipher. (:
The young women of today are not marriageable. They have been so brainwashed that what they want is a guy suitable to satisfy their maternal needs. Then they take the product of that relationship and park it with a third party to raise while they go about doing what they think is expected of them by the NOW Group. I don’t fault any guy for playing the field with these women.
And, in all fairness, I’m at a stage in my life where I’m not going to buy the whole pig just to get a little sausage, LOL!
*SMIRK*
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