Is sexual compatibility overrated?

sign on the dotted line and promise to never change your mind.

ps, good luck

larrybalzari wrote:

If a couple chooses to abstain from sex until marriage, how risky is this? It seems like endurance is the one unknown that could be most problematic, maybe psychological/fetishes as well.

If a couple has seen each other naked, they're physically/emotionally attracted to one another, sizing is on point, they're honest about how often they want to have sex, is this not enough?

I have had zero chemistry with a gorgeous woman and the sex was lame. Likewise, I've been with someone less 'hot,' but still very pretty and it was lights out from the first time. You can build and improve with time, but you can't fake it 100%

zooool wrote:

sign on the dotted line and promise to never change your mind.

ps, good luck

I don't want to discuss the merits of marriage but don't you think that attraction is the most important factor for a good romp?

No, it is not overrated. Sex itself may fade in importance, but compatibility is unchanging.

sexual compatibility does not matter. marriage is a financial contract enforced by the government. you dont need to marry for that nor would you marry a hooker because the sex is so good.

llort_vbo wrote:

larrybalzari wrote:

If a couple chooses to abstain from sex until marriage, how risky is this? It seems like endurance is the one unknown that could be most problematic, maybe psychological/fetishes as well.

If a couple has seen each other naked, they're physically/emotionally attracted to one another, sizing is on point, they're honest about how often they want to have sex, is this not enough?

I have had zero chemistry with a gorgeous woman and the sex was lame. Likewise, I've been with someone less 'hot,' but still very pretty and it was lights out from the first time. You can build and improve with time, but you can't fake it 100%

Can you explain this chemistry to me? srs

Old and slow wrote:

No, it is not overrated. Sex itself may fade in importance, but compatibility is unchanging.

But can a couple abstaining until marriage possibly know if they're compatible?

larrybalzari wrote:

Can you explain this chemistry to me? srs

Think of a dance partner. If you are constantly tripping over feet and running into each other, it is no fun. Likewise if you move together gracefully and are in sync, it's effortless and smooth. That's not to say that you can't learn to be a better partner, but there's no substitute for compatibility.

That being said, sex isn't everything and my best relationships in the sack were more volatile. That's not always fun.

larrybalzari wrote:

If a couple chooses to abstain from sex until marriage, how risky is this?

It really just depends what the individuals want. You do not need good sex to have a long-lasting, healthy marriage. Relationships run the gamut. You can be asexual and not have any sex; you can be polyamorous and mainly have sex with other people. It really depends what you 2 are looking for.

Good sex is based on attraction and on technique; just like with any 'team sports,' the more you practice, the better you get at it. If you 2 are intending to be sexually active and monogamous with each other, I say go in with the expectation that your sex may suck at first but will improve over time.

It's definitely better to try it out before marriage, but if you're hung up on not, just make sure you talk about it first. You don't want to feel like 2 friends who all of a sudden have to have sex with each other.

Hey Balzari, someone with your last name and the alias “putting your foot down” started a thread complaining about being offended by his daughter being called Ballz by her school friends.

larrybalzari wrote:

If a couple chooses to abstain from sex until marriage, how risky is this? It seems like endurance is the one unknown that could be most problematic, maybe psychological/fetishes as well.

If a couple has seen each other naked, they're physically/emotionally attracted to one another, sizing is on point, they're honest about how often they want to have sex, is this not enough?

If the couple waits until marriage and both are virgins, I don’t think sexual compatibility is an issue because neither party has experience.

If a couple wait until marriage and both parties have had active sex lives, the biggest thing is understanding what people like. Even people who vow to always please their partner eventually get tired of doing things they are uninterested in. For example, if the guy likes to receive oral and she doesn’t like to do it, that’s bad. If one person likes to have adventurous sex (in a car, public place, etc) and the other doesn’t, that’s bad. If one person wants to have sex 5x per week and the other wants to have sex 5x a month or a year, that’s bad. All of these thing can be huge issues.

larrybalzari wrote:

If a couple chooses to abstain from sex until marriage, how risky is this? It seems like endurance is the one unknown that could be most problematic, maybe psychological/fetishes as well.

If a couple has seen each other naked, they're physically/emotionally attracted to one another, sizing is on point, they're honest about how often they want to have sex, is this not enough?

Arranged marriages work pretty well with a very low divorce rate in India and other parts of the world. Most arranged married couples have not had sex but they’ve seen each other and selected each other from a set of spouse candidates their parents exposed them to. They usually haven’t seen each other naked, but seen each other enough and talked to each other in private. Divorce rate is 1%. They have as many children or more than anyone else. Five years after marriage, they probably have as much sexual compatibility as any other couple. Couples or Cosmopolitan type magazines there don’t seem to complain about sex any more or less than anyone else in the world.

Please don’t get started about how couples in arranged marriages are forced to stay with each other coz this thread really isn’t about arranged marriages. FWIW, they do have free will, but all marriage is compromise. You can either compromise or split. America chooses to split the majority of the time. India chooses to stick it out like 99% of the time. Most couples in both countries look about as happy or as miserable to me, so it’s a tradeoff.

You need to compromise if you want longevity. Longevity — or the process of building a lifetime of memories together and providing a stable home to kids and to your older self — is the value for which you are paying with compromise.

larrybalzari wrote:

Old and slow wrote:

No, it is not overrated. Sex itself may fade in importance, but compatibility is unchanging.

But can a couple abstaining until marriage possibly know if they're compatible?

No, but compatibility itself is dynamic, not unchanging. Even most compatible partners don’t have fabulous sex from day one. Just that some are much better much earlier than others. Once you’ve had sex with a few partners, you start noticing that good satisfying sex comes more naturally with some partners than others, but it almost always gets better with every partner over time (unless there is a physiological medical problem).

If your wife is the first person you are having sex with, you won’t have any baseline calibration for how good things could’ve been, so it may not matter in practice.

I doubt most couples have any reliable way of predicting how many times a week they will be having sex 5-10 years after marriage no matter how sexually compatible they feel before marriage. Sex just starts to matter less with age for everyone, but the dynamicity

sexual compatibility, at least as reflected by its frequency, is pretty mediocre for most couples after a few years of cohabitation.

The big problem with abstaining is that people rush off to get married so they can smash. Some of the worst outcomes for married couples as far as divorce, cheating, etc. come from people who married early. And a lot of those young couples are very religious and abstained until marriage.

Conversely, if you play the field too much before getting married, sex can become more about the quick thrill of getting someone new in bed than about making it part of a long term relationship.

For most people, sex is sex and there are no big compatibility issues. Instead, everyone has the same problems. Men want sex all the time, women do not. Men struggle with endurance, women do not have that issue. If you are in a committed long term relationship, these issues are just one of many in relationships that people always are working on. The real problem is when people play the field too much and these issue become a pretext for avoiding commitment and real intimacy.

larrybalzari wrote:

zooool wrote:

sign on the dotted line and promise to never change your mind.

ps, good luck

I don't want to discuss the merits of marriage but don't you think that attraction is the most important factor for a good romp?

yes. attraction is what matters. but. a lot of the attraction is based on fantasy and mis-perception. over time the persons character becomes much better known. so we end up in the situation, that it would be nice to be able to predict compatibility, really much more than compatability, for duration in advance. but every test i can dream up to predict this fails. ..... I can come up with a bunch of theories and evidences, but i think it's vague-er. the line- "the soul selects it's own society." taken from a poem i mainly don't like. spells out some of the crux of the riddle. it would be convenient to promise everything in advance and have it come true and have tests in place to predict things and get on with happily ever after. but the soul itself will decide. and its deeper than convenient logic. and it can change it's mind about people. and what is at one time the perfect fit turns into yuck. and i do not know the right answer. because when my dream woman turned into yuck, that was a deep mess. bad enough i can't trust her, but i can't trust the me that said she's the one. so i guess i vote now for- don't rush into it. and be careful you arent being an idiot when you believe her to be what you believe her to be. end up walking around like a zombie singing some talking heads song about, what the heck happened. castles made of sand fall in the sea eventually.

No. I cannot explain. You must make your own decisions and mistakes. If you love her, then don't worry about it. It is very simple. But not easy.

larrybalzari wrote:

Old and slow wrote:

No, it is not overrated. Sex itself may fade in importance, but compatibility is unchanging.

But can a couple abstaining until marriage possibly know if they're compatible?

I don't know the answer but students attending BYU sign an honor code and along with that a whole host of do not do this and do not do that. One of those is pledging not to have sex with anyone until married. If married, not to have sex with anyone except your spouse. Mormons tend to have a much lower divorce rate than the national average. Don't know if that's why or not.

It is impossible to predict what sexual compatibility is going to be like several years into the relationship let alone after decades. It is one of the least important and over emphasized things simply because of this. It could be really great at first but 5-10 years later after having kids etc... it could be terrible or could be great, who knows. Like I said no way to predict it. It could also start out not so great and evolve to become amazing. Also, if you abstain you really dont have much frame of reference. Honestly, there arent many downsides to waiting.

I'd actually say it's vastly underrated, and it's one of the traps of waiting until marriage. It will eat at the relationship if you both aren't compatible and both of you aren't getting what you want (or feeling emotionally forced to get what you don't want).