“90 percent of world’s population will have sex before they are married…People will always want to have sex, it's human nature!”

Unfortunately, she failed to include the scripture verse where she gleaned that wisdom—Oh but wait, there isn’t one. While I would agree with her that it is human nature to want to have sex, I’m not sure I follow her logic when she comes to the conclusion that because 90% of the world’s population will have sex before they are married, it therefore, must be okay.

The majority of Americans are also in debt and overweight, so I guess that’s okay too? And I wonder if 90 percent of the population jumped off a bridge if this reader would join them? Perhaps God created us with a “human nature” to want to have sex in order that it might be enjoyed in marriage and serve as a means to procreate the world. And perhaps 90% of the population has failed to follow His game plan for sex, opting instead to write their own rules for the game.

In addition to ignoring the fallout from having sex outside of marriage, the media also fails to address the benefits of saving sex for marriage. Think about it. When was the last time you heard a media report announcing that those who abstain from sex outside of marriage have the best sex once they are married? The Family Research Council surveyed 1,100 people about their sexual satisfaction and found 72 percent of all married “traditionalists” (those who ‘strongly believe out of wedlock sex is wrong’) reported a higher sexual satisfaction. ‘Traditionalists’ scored “roughly 31 percentage points higher than the level registered by unmarried ‘non-traditionalists’ (those who have no or only some objection to sex outside of marriage) and 13 percentage points higher than that registered by married non-traditionalists.

And the perks don’t stop there. Several researchers with the Heritage Foundation analyzed data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth and found that for women 30 or older, those who were monogamous (only one sexual partner in a lifetime) were by far most likely to be still in a stable relationship (80 percent). Sleeping with just one extra partner dropped that probability to 54 percent. Two extra partners brought it down to 44 percent.

Clearly, there is a link between self-restraint practiced before marriage and a lasting and fruitful marriage. Most of our girls would admit to wanting a healthy and happy marriage as a long-term goal. I wonder how many might alter their behavior and choose to abstain if they knew that, in doing so, they would greatly increase their likelihood of remaining in a lasting, monogamous marriage.

Let me put this into perspective. Here is the exact conversation I had with my own daughter to illustrate this powerful finding: