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 ...
Are you KIDDING?!?!?! This guy would be a good catch??? You are kidding me?!?!?! A good catch my arse!!! He is carrying the sexually transmitted "bugs" of every one of those "lovely interesting girls".
Why would anyone in their right minds think he would be a good catch? Maybe you mean "he would be a good "friend with benefits".....
Or maybe I'm just too damn old-fashioned....
“As this article points out, heterosexual people just don’t value marriage anymore.”
This is technically true, but it’s also just as much nonsense as if I said “people just aren’t scared of dragons anymore”.
Marriage doesn’t exist in this country and hasn’t for quite a while, so heterosexual people are rightfully incapable of valuing it.
Sad for him but he’s better off. With her being that spoiled, he never would have made her happy. This way, he can find the right one.
Lol....
Are you here all week? Should I try the meatloaf? ;-)
Reply to Rhema’s comment “Wouldn’t that result in a lot of men that don’t really want to be married, getting married just to have sex? Is that acceptable?”
I dunno how to answer you. Sex is not the main reason to get married. But in the old days when you burned with passion, you had no outlet. I think we would do better to compare the prior way with the new way and see which is better and which is worse.
And Rhema, I think most men would equate the act of sex with expressing love for his wife. Just my two cents on that too.
The recipe for 62 years of marriage. Marry when you both finish college, no previous shacking/hooking up, get married in Church, keep going to Church, have children right away, lived on one income, able to live paycheck to paycheck, rent at first, buy used cars, [first new car was a 1959 VW bus which I needed for our then 4 children with one on the way.]
Now have 20 grandchildren and 3 great grand children, we live together in an assisted living community. We thank God for the health we have. We appreciate life and I enjoy the many interesting people and topics on Free Republic. God Bless you all, don’t wait to get married, life is too short.
When I got married, I was 20 and my wife was 18. We were married 55 years and she passed away from leukemia in May of last year. The pain of losing her is almost more than I can stand.
I’m so sorry, Sam.
In some ways, your friend does sound like a good catch, but his inability to bond with a woman is a big red flag to me.
My sons are both married in their 20’s, my dauther broke up with her 6 month boyfriend today, after spending 8 years with another boyfriend, hoping, waiting to get married and have children. Neither of them wanted that, she trys to ask a man before she starts dating them if they want to get married and have children, but she is worried about being too forward, plus when she asked, they both said yes and later said they thought they could force themselves to want that, but realized they don’t want marriage and family.
All of her friends want to get married and have a family and very few of the boys they meet want that. I agree time to stop with the milk for free, girls!
With the record number of divorces, it seems that time, energy etc, isn’t that big of a deal when it comes to breaking up.
Eventually they fell in love and moved into the same bedroom and got married one year ago, after living together from day one, for 4 years. Funny way to meet huh?
” He probably has heard one too many divorce horror stories. As he is now, he has multiple girls competing for his attention. I can see why a 35-yo would like the status quo.”
I was one of those TOTALLY BORING guys. Good education, good career, and wanted a family. Needless to say, virtually no American woman had any interest in me. Fortunately a woman from halfway around the world saw something...and that was decades ago and still going great!
My Ex wife started jogging 5 miles a day after our divorce.
After a year I have no clue where the witch is.
I’m seeing a wonderful woman now and I might put a ring on it soon, like within the next few years. There will be a pre-nup.
After 33 years of marriage I still introduce her as “my first wife” just to keep her on her toes.
I have been happily married for 30 years, but I have to say I find today’s American women singularly unattractive. Obnoxious, slutty, loud, foul-mouthed, self-centered, prone to getting drunk and hooking up, undependable, and full of feminist brainwashing that they are princesses and are entitled to everything.
The net result of the "sexual revolution" is that we have a high percentage of women chasing after a relatively small percentage of "exciting, desirable" men (called "alpha" males) in their 20's and early 30's. Then, around their mi-30's, they panic that their "biological clock is ringing" and look for a stable provider-type (beta male) to "settle" for. Many are then shocked to discover that there are a limited number of beta males who have any interest in their high-mileage tails.
Solution: marry a younger woman. If he has lots of women chasing him, he should be able to attract a younger woman when the time comes.
LOL!
I think in the old days, a lot of the time the burning passion resulted in pregnancies, then marriage immediately after.
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