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  • Married couples who waited to live together are less likely to split up (see Fig. A).
  • Married couples are happier than cohabiting couples (see Fig. C and D).
  • Religiously active married couples report more frequent and more satisfying sexual activity (see Fig. J and K).
Q

Does having sex before marriage make people happier?

No. The happiest and most sexually fulfilled couples are those who wait until marriage.

Ok, but what does that actually mean?

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After the previous page’s look into whether sexual activity outside of marriage can be loving, you might be thinking, “well all that heady philosophy sounds nice in the abstract, but in the real world, people are happier when they’re able to have sex whenever they want, not when they’re told to wait until marriage.”

So let’s take a different approach and dig into some data. What are people reporting about their own relationships?

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First, let’s look at cohabitation.1 After all, don’t people need to test out living together before they know if they want to spend a life together? Objection #1: Without a test run, wouldn’t couples have a greater risk of being miserable after the wedding? For married couples who cohabit before getting engaged, 34% eventually split up (Figure A). For married couples who at least wait until engagement to live together (though we would certainly recommend waiting all the way until marriage), only 23% split up. So, the data would suggest that cohabitation is not necessary, and maybe even counterproductive, for marital happiness.

Take away from love the fullness of self-surrender, the completeness of personal commitment, and what remains will be a total denial and negation of it.

Karol Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul II)

Love and Responsibility pp.128-129

Figure A

Figure A, Institute for Family Studies

Objection #2: But maybe couples who don’t believe in divorce are less likely to approve of cohabitation. If that’s the case, then they would be more likely to tough it out in “loveless” marriages than the people who accepted premarital cohabitation and divorce. After all, wouldn’t the cohabiting-then-marrying group only stay married if they were happy?

Well, polls don’t support that hypothesis either (see Fig. B).

If the hypothesis were true, we might expect divorcees to report higher levels of happiness than married couples, or at least higher than never-married people. But polls have consistently shown otherwise. Divorcees report basically the same levels of happiness as those who never married, well below married couples.

Figure B

Fig. B, Gallup

We can also look at the quality of the relationships, not just the duration. Those findings also indicate that the non-divorcing spouses aren’t just staying in “loveless” marriages. Married couples who wait to cohabit are happier than married couples who cohabit earlier.2 Married people are also more likely to report being in a loving and supportive relationship, along with less fighting, than cohabiting couples (see Fig. C).
Figure C

Fig. C, Gallup

Other findings concur, showing that married couples are more likely to report the highest level of relationship satisfaction, stability, and commitment (see Fig. D).
Figure D

Fig. D, Institute for Family Studies

Objection #3: But maybe these numbers are skewed because marriage favors one sex over the other. Are married men less satisfied in their relationships than their cohabiting counterparts? Or maybe cohabiting women are more satisfied than wives who are trapped in the “patriarchal institution” of marriage?

No on both counts (see Fig. E). Both husbands and wives are more satisfied in their marriages than cohabiting men and women.

Figure E

Fig. E, Institute for Family Studies

Objection #4: But maybe it’s just that the non-cohabitors tend to have other lifestyle factors, such as shared religious practice, that contribute to a good relationship.

Even then, looking at only church-going couples, the difference persists (see Fig. F).

Figure F

Fig. F, Communio

This isn’t the case of men and women having different preferences, either. The same study shows that cohabiting women struggle more than married women, and cohabiting men struggle more than married men (see Fig. G).
Figure G

Fig. G, percentage of respondents only somewhat satisfied or worse in their relationship, Communio

Though, to be sure, a more vibrant religious life does tend to support happier marriages (more on that later). But what about sexual activity specifically? Well, sexual history, apart from living arrangements, also impacts marital happiness (see Fig. H). Someone who has had only one sexual partner (his or her spouse) is more likely to be happily married than anyone else.
Figure H

Fig. H, Institute for Family Studies

There is no justification to give men a free pass to be promiscuous before marriage, while deeming promiscuous women “unacceptable”. That double standard has many problems. For one thing, anyone can heal from a promiscuous past and go on to live a happy and chaste marriage. For another, this matters for both men and women.

Objection #5: According to some online influencers who defend the double standard, there are different kinds of relationships, with some being happier in general, but less sexually satisfying, and others being more sexually satisfying but not as happy overall.

The research doesn’t support the influencers on either count (see Fig. I).

We see sexual history impacting the satisfaction of both men and women in the same way, with the least promiscuous reporting the highest satisfaction. Moreover, this is specifically in regard to sexual satisfaction, not just a more general satisfaction with life or relationships. Even there, the way to have more satisfying sex is to wait until marriage.

Figure I

Fig. I, Wheatley Institute

It isn’t about happiness at the expense of sexual satisfaction. The two aren’t isolated from one another. This is a case where religion comes back into play. Far from being stereotypically strict, religiously active married couples report more frequent and more satisfying sexual activity (see Fig. J and K). The research indicates that secular couples actually tend to have sex less frequently.
Figure J

Fig. J, Institute for Family Studies via First Things

If the secular goal is for both men and women to have more sexual fulfillment, it seems like the best way to achieve that goal is by A) waiting until marriage to have sex, B) having sex in the context of a stable, committed marriage, and C) including regular worship of God in the relationship. This is not the story told by either mainstream pop culture or influencers; this is reality.
Figure K

Fig. K, Institute for Family Studies via First Things

Of course, the ultimate goal shouldn’t just be more satisfying sexual activity. The only way to achieve that goal is not to seek it directly, but to incorporate it into the pursuit of higher goals: the good of the spouse both within the bedroom and outside it, and maybe even the love of God who is the source of all goodness. Then spouses can have satisfying sex, not as an end in itself, but as a secondary feature that’s part of a larger whole.

At this point, you might still be thinking that sex is still alright outside of marriage. After so much research showing that couples are subjectively happier when they wait until marriage, and all the philosophical explanation showing that, as an objective fact, sex can only be loving within marriage, it still might not be enough to convince you.

Have you asked yourself why that is? Why do so many of us in contemporary society seek pleasure instead of the other’s good, only to wind up experiencing less pleasure and more miserable relationships? If sex outside marriage doesn’t make us happier, why are we clinging to it?

1) While it’s not always true that unmarried couples that live together are sexually active, we are assuming this to be the common understanding for the vast majority of cohabiting couples. It’s also not true that unmarried couples who live separately are being chaste, but it’s definitely more likely when they’re not sharing a bed. Sexual activity independent of living situations will be discussed later in this article.

2) Rhoades, G. K., Stanley, S. M., & Markman, H. J. (2009). The pre-engagement cohabitation effect: A replication and extension of previous findings. Journal of Family Psychology, 23(1), 107–111. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014358

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