As the 2024 Love Island cast reminded us, many of today’s brave young women proudly embrace and explore their sexuality. But research shows a not-so-teensy tiny problem: The likelihood of your happily-ever-after marital bliss decreases as your number of sexual partners increases.
Body count and marital bliss
Few Americans are virgins when they get married. By age 18, 65 percent of people in the United States have had sex with at least one partner. Yet people who engage in premarital sex are two to three times as likely to divorce than those who don’t.
Shortly before they celebrate their fifth anniversary, approximately 8 to 10 percent of the virgin couples will be divorced. Of those with the average number of partners (one to eight, according to this study), 17 percent will be divorced by their fifth year of marriage. Those on the higher end of the premarital sex equation will report a divorce rate of 22 to 24 percent.
But does this show us who is happily married and who is not?
Nope.
It only tells us who is still married at or around the five-year mark.
In a different study, the Institute for Family Studies found that sex before marriage decreased the quality of the marriage for women but not for men. Is it possible that women are still holding themselves to the “happily-ever-after” standard while men don’t suffer that burden?
And if so, why are we still viewing the merits of virginity through the eye of the male beholder?
How many is too many?
Somewhere along the road to sexism, it was decided that having multiple sexual partners before marriage made it less likely that a man would be bothered to settle down and more likely that a woman would be perceived as less desirable. Data from a 2023 study shows that women with more sexual partners were less likely to get married at the time of the survey.
But—this relationship is temporary.
Having recent sexual partners predicts the likelihood of marriage in that moment.
When you grow up and become more conservative or get older and become more comfortable with sharing your body with another person, your likelihood of marriage changes accordingly.
Virginity and the quality of your sex life
In a 2010 article titled “Virginity Lost, Satisfaction Gained?”, researchers surveyed 2,000 students from four different universities and inquired about both physical and emotional satisfaction following the first time they had sexual intercourse.
How much sex before marriage is too much?
Source: Valeyria/Pexels
For women, psychological satisfaction was increased by the lowered level of guilt that came in part from losing their virginity to someone they were emotionally involved with.
But what about sexual satisfaction?
Humorously, married men and women have a different idea of how good a woman’s orgasm was.
In a 2018 study, 43 percent of husbands overestimated how often their wives achieved orgasm.
Why?
The husband’s perception of the wife’s orgasm was directly correlated to the man’s degree of sexual pleasure, not the woman’s experience of sexual pleasure.
Women who were inexperienced when they married may be less likely to understand—or more likely to understate—what feels good in the bedroom, making climax difficult to achieve.
Points to the slightly more experienced women, perhaps?
When is sex before marriage too much sex before marriage?
A 2016 study sought to answer the awkward question, “Er, um, how much sex before marriage is too much?”
The answers of 200 internet participants between the ages of 18 and 22 were clear: Both men and women found it less attractive when a potential partner had previously had sex with more than 10 partners. Two or three previous sexual partners were highly preferred.
Individuals of both genders were more receptive to higher body counts if they had a higher body count of their own. However, those with high numbers of previous sexual encounters were less tolerant of partners whose number was too small.
Virginity as a social construct
The fascination with virginity and how these innocent creatures impact society is nothing more than a social construct.
The key word here is social.
The worth of having or not having sex had sex is dependent on the values that our society places on it—in other words, the value that we, as a society, allow to be placed on virginity. All of society, not just cisgender, heterosexual, gender assigned at birth men and women.
A study released by Dr. Tony Silva in December 2023 extended the scope of sexual partner research by including cisgender heterosexual and LGBQ men and women. The over 2,000 participants included 972 cisgender heterosexual men, 979 cisgender heterosexual women, 99 men who identified as gay and bisexual/pansexual, and 67 lesbian and bisexual/pansexual women.
Heterosexual women who rated themselves low in femininity and high in masculinity had higher numbers of sexual partners than those who did not rate themselves high in masculinity.
There were no significant findings found among LGBQ women or LGBQ men.
This study hints at the possibility that the number of sexual partners someone has may be related to stereotypical masculine and stereotypical feminine characteristics a person identifies with.
This underscores the idea that virginity as a social construct is entirely dependent on the power we give it.
We can’t will out of existence the shaming of women who choose to be sexually active with whatever number of partners they are comfortable with. But we don’t have to endorse it either.
