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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3126 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 21, 2025

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I have been doing some more thinking, and I think the "no sex before marriage" thing was predicated on a lot of things: that people got married really early on, that parents could much more closely watch their kids to ensure nothing bad happened, and that they could not easily get divorced. I think evangelical Christianity misses some of the nuances, and unfortunately, male evolutionary psychology also doesn't appreciate that people tend to have more sexual relationships now, on average.

There are people who don't give a shit about any of this and enjoy sex but experience no real FOMO or distress when they don't have it for long periods of time.

Yeah, that probably describes me. Thanks for writing this, helps me feel more normal. I've been thinking about sex a lot more lately now that getting married seems possible for me, but I do still want it to only happen with someone I'm fairly serious with. I just don't know how long I should wait once the relationship starts, or how long the particular woman will tolerate.

At the end of the day, getting married is a leap of trust. Some people figure out they are aligned in values and take the plunge early, trusting in mutual commitment to make it work. Others move as slowly as my fiancee and I did, and the official commitment is just recognition of a trust and commitment that already exists. At the end of the day, all you need to figure out is when you reach the point that you believe the two of you are on the same page about what a life together should look like, and how much you are willing to work and compromise in order to bring that dream into reality. The appropriate timeline for you will be greatly dependent on the potential spouse you are considering. Don't think about when you need to leap into bed as an answer you need to have worked out, but as a chance to build or test that level of trust and communication you need to develop to make a marriage work. If you wait too long and she dips because of it without giving you a chance to fix the issue, well, marriage wouldn't have worked out anyway.

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