Recently there was an episode of a popular medical drama that involved the upcoming marriage of one of the characters, a woman. It comes out that this woman is about to get married, but has never slept with her fiance. Another character spends the rest of the episode railing against this woman for her stupidity, and telling her how she needs to find out if they are sexually compatible before they get married. The show had no characters arguing the other way, and the woman in question had no decent reasons for sticking to her course of no sex until marriage.
This isn't a new idea, obviously. The reasoning is that a couple needs to be sexually compatible in order to have a happy, healthy, long lasting marriage. If either partner is unsatisfied by the sex, the union is doomed to failure, and should never happen.
I have three arguments that I would like you to consider in support of my opinion that the above way of thinking is, in my opinion, incredibly stupid.
1.) Compatibility is not the issue - immediate sexual gratification is.
Pretend that you are a woman, and you happen to have a lot of money, and you have just started dating a man that does not have as much money as you do. He is really wonderful, and the two of you are falling in love, but before anything can progress too far, he says:
"Honey, I think you are wonderful. I'm sure that as I continue to get to know you better, my love for you will continue to grow. But before we invest too much time in this relationship, and before we grow so fond of each other that we would consider a lasting partnership, I need to know if we are financially compatible. After all, finances are an important part of marriage, and we need to know if we can merge our finances and financial habits smoothly. So what we need to do is combine all of our assets and accounts into one joint account, equally owned by both of us. I will add you to my lease agreements and car title, and you will add me to the title of your home and three cars, as well. Then we'll put all of our money into a joint checking account for which we will both have access. Also, you need to add me to all of your lines of credit, and I will put you on my credit card. Add me to your health insurance, as well. Oh, and we should name each other beneficiaries of our life insurance policies."
Would that raise any red flags for you? Would you be thinking, "He must really love me to want to know if we are financially compatible." Or might you think that he is after your money? It may be true that he loves you, but do you really feel like his love for you is the top priority?
How many of us, if we had a friend in a similar situation, would tell her it was a good idea to go ahead and make all of her property joint property with this guy she's dating?I think most of us see it for the stupid idea that it is. Obviously the guy wants the benefits of her financial situation before he is ready for the commitment that is normally and prudently required first. My assertion is that the "sexual compatibility argument" is really just an "I'm horny now" argument. It's a reason that one or both parties uses to get something that would be wiser for their relationship if they waited, but for which they don't have the self discipline to defer fulfilling their desires.
2.) A person's priorities are revealed in their 'deal breakers'
If a person won't marry you because you don't want to have kids, then it means that children are a very high priority. If a person won't marry you because of religious differences, then it means that religion is a very high priority. Couples can have differences and still make long term commitments to each other as long as the difference isn't supremely important to them. I have known couples in which one loved red meat, and the other was a vegan, and they were happily married. Diet was important, but not that important. The same thing goes with music, sports, travel, politics, etc. Sometimes those are deal breakers, sometimes they are differences that deepen a marriage. It depends on how high of a priority each item is to the individuals involved.
Imagine that you are about to get engaged, and your significant other says, I can't marry you if you aren't into music - you need to sing with me, learn an instrument, go to the opera with me, etc. Music is my life, and you need to share music with me if you are going to share my life with me.
Imagine also that music isn't that important to you. You listen to the radio and you enjoy a good song when you hear one, but you don't have a drive to learn an instrument, and you don't know a thing about musical theory. You have a major decision to make. You can agree to go along with it - after all, you think it would be cool to play the guitar, and an opera isn't that big a deal, as long as you are sharing it with the person you love. Such a compromise could get you the love of the person that you long to be with. But would it? What if something happened, and you couldn't share the music? What if you just couldn't learn an instrument, or if your lack of true enthusiasm lessened the value of your effort? Isn't this person telling you that they love you, but they love music more? And if you ever came between them and music, they would dump you?
I'm not saying it is wrong to love music - or anything else - that much. It is important to have passions, and it is important to fully disclose them up front in a relationship. It is equally important that those passions are shared. If one person is more passionate about something than they are passionate about their spouse, the spouse should share that passion. If not, the relationship is in for some rocky times. My religious faith is more important to me than my wife. My wife's religious faith is more important to her than I am. We share a common faith, and our marriage is not hurt by our passion for God. My wife really loves basketball. I dislike basketball. My wife loves me more than basketball, and I love her more than I dislike basketball, so compromises are made, and our marriage is great. If loving basketball was a deal breaker for my wife, we would not be married, because we would not share that passion.
This all sounds like an argument in favor of sexual compatibility, doesn't it? If sex is that important to one of the people, it better be that important to both of the people, right? They need to be sexually compatible, right? Here's the catch. If your significant other suggests that your future relationship depends upon finding out if you are sexually compatible, and you don't feel that way, then you have already discovered that you are not compatible. You didn't have to have sex. If your partner feels that way, and you don't, then you know that sex is a higher on their passion list than you are. If sex is not that high on your priority list, then the two of you are probably not a good match - even if it turns out that the sex would have been awesome.
3.) 100% Compatibility is a Myth
To think that you need to be, or even could be, completely compatible is the myth of fairy tales and overly mushy romantic fiction. Marriage is defined as a union of two different people, not the same person to himself or herself. Different people are just that - different. Not only that, but the world changes, life changes, and people change. Things that you agree on now might become an issue later, and things that are issues now might go away later. And life is probably going to hit you with something you never saw coming. As long as you are compatible in your top priorities - those priorities that are bigger than you are to each other - then the rest is details. Sure they require some working out, but they can be worked out together.
The questions is not 'Are you compatible enough?' The question is, 'Do you love each other enough to make a commitment and stand firm, no matter what?' I observed a lot of happy couples growing up, and they all had challenges that they had to overcome to stay together. They told stories of how it was hard, of how they struggled, but their love and commitment won out, and now they had their happy ending. These were not small struggles. I'm talking about medical conditions that incapacitated a wife early in their marriage, and the husband cared for her as an invalid for many years to come. I'm talking about a couple that had three children with down syndrome. I'm talking about a husband that went to prison for 15 years on false charges, and his loving wife waited for him. I'm talking about soldiers that were deployed, people that suffered depression, couples that went bankrupt. These are things that destroy many marriages, but it didn't destroy these ones because they loved each other and they were committed to each other.
There is no way to know what challenges lay ahead in a relationship. You can only know which ones you have overcome already, and whether or not your commitment is enough to overcome all of them. Having seen these trials in other's lives, I asked myself before I got married, "If she was hit by a car and was paralyzed from the neck down three months after we were married, do I love her enough to stay with her and care for her for the rest of our lives? Does she love me enough to do the same for me?" I think that any couple that can honestly answer yes to that question doesn't need to worry about how they hang the toilet paper, or any other detail that is lower on their priority list than their significant other.
As a personal example, I love being active - hiking, camping, canoeing, soccer, softball, paintball, etc. My wife is also very active, and we loved that about each other. There was no way of knowing that pregnancies were going to be difficult for her, and that from the first bout of morning sickness, to the day of delivery nine months later, she would be incapacitated. Not only would she not be active, but I would spend so much time caring for her that I would not have time to do what I wanted to do, either. But it never even crossed my mind to leave her. I see women that stay active through their whole pregnancy. I wish that my wife were like that. Heck, my wife wishes she was like that. But that doesn't change our love for each other, nor does it lesson my commitment to her.
According to the logic of needing to be totally compatible, I should have gotten her pregnant before we made a long term commitment to each other. That way I could see how she fared, and when it turned out she was sick for nine months, then I would have said, "Sorry, you just don't meet my needs. Have fun with the kid."
That's ludicrous. There is no way of anticipating and testing every possible situation that might come up. So just suck it up, make the commitment to the one you love (if you truly love them that much), and hang on tight to each other so that you never come apart. The trepidation of wanting to try everything out is just a sign that your relationship is already doomed to failure. That's why couples who live together before marriage have significantly higher divorce rates than those who take the plunge before moving in with each other.
Is sex that important?
Having said all that, the question is where does sex fall on your priority list? Do you love it more than you can love another person? If so, sexual compatibility could be an issue. But if you feel that that way about sex, I would make the assertion that your life is shallow, and you need to get some priorities straight. But that sounds like a whole separate blog entry to me.
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