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Don't take this personally but I think this is exactly the sort of modern nonsense that got us into this mess.
People should stay together because they are bound by contract and oath; attraction is the unimportant vaguery of adolescents who don't yet realize all flowers wither.
Sensate pleasures are a child's idea of marriage, which is of course really about children, business and the general rubric of legacy.
Yet of course moderns insist on remaining children their whole lives and attempting to manifest a love story's erotic ideal into a world that can only contenance reality.
Divorce should require more than whim, and adultery should have harsh consequences. Anything less is essentially a return to barbaric norms of sex relations, along with their barbaric consequences.
No amount of social gamesmanship alone can maintain society. People respond to incentives.
Based comment of the week. I can only yeschad.jpeg so hard to this.
I remember having a conversation once at a party where I voiced my interest in what it would be like to date someone and intentionally remain celibate until marriage. The other party, a Thoroughly Modern Woman, immediately voiced the objection "But what if they're bad at sex?!"
I respond by telling her to think it through. In my hypothetical, the dating is the same as it is now, just no sex. We find each other attractive, we share important experiences, we trust one another, we integrate into each other's family life etc. If we assume all of that exists (which we have to, because, in this hypothetical, we're getting married) ... then how in the hell could the sex be bad?
"Here's this person who I find physically attractive, deeply care fore, have spent x months or years with, and have thought about as a long term partner for much of that time .... oh, fuck, she doesn't immediately know how to swivel her hips. Cancel it, cancel the whole damn thing."
It's such a laughable thought to genuinely worry that, on a wedding night, one or both partners is confronted with the horror - the absolute horror - that the other party isn't particularly gifted and one of life's most insanely pleasurable activities.
But that's what modernism has brought us. "He/she has gotta fuck good" is on the same checklist as "trustworthy" and "reliable"
Because the incentive/evopsych structures still dictate that sex is a job for women and a perk for men, and marrying someone where (for you) that isn't true but (for them) it is creates some interesting consequences. It's also not necessarily apparent, since the art of picking up women is delayed gratification, shelving the naked self-interest until after the contract is signed, and in dating (as a woman) you're evaluating whether or not the terms of the contract are acceptable.
One could, in my view reasonably, make the argument that there's only one way to find that out; especially when you notice that the entire traditionalist courting/dating/marriage structure is built around "job for women, perk for men". If you want to find someone who's a little more evolved than that, well...
Provided you care enough to be of that mindset. Many do not, and while being eager to have sex early might not necessarily be the best proxy to evaluate that, nobody's really come up with a better answer.
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