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By Darryl Budge
A new study on a 12,000-person dataset by the Institute for Family Studies has found that the happiest married people are faithful to one partner.
This is the first study to examine whether sexual history impacted the quality of marriages. Other studies have found that those who marry as virgins have the lowest divorce rates.
The study found that 71% of men and 64% of women with one lifetime sexual partner were “very happy” in their marriages. This slid below 65% of men and 60% of women who had 2 or more lifetime sexual partners.
The results of the IFStudies.org study show a dramatic decline in marital happiness for those with two or more lifetime sexual partners.
Why should we be surprised by this? Detaching sex from marriage, and committed lifelong love from sex, has been hurting people for thousands of years. Eventually we must confront reality – something which no study or philosophy can reverse.
Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt (who is not a Christian) has observed in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, “True love exists, I believe, but it is not—cannot be—passion that lasts forever. True love, the love that undergirds strong marriages, is simply strong companionate love, with some added passion, between two people who are firmly committed to each other.”
This graph of the U.S. General Social Study dataset shows the number of people with one sexual partner has declined dramatically over the last 100 years.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13 that "love is not self-seeking... it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
God's Word also warns in Proverbs 6:32 that immorality is self-destructive: "He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself."
"Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body," says 1 Corinthians 6:18.
There is no running from reality.