Science Discovers Strange Link Between Promiscuity And Divorce

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Why Is This Important?

Because we need to rethink the expectations we have for the women in our lives.

Long Story Short

Research from the University of Utah finds that there's a relationship between a woman's number of sexual partners and her likelihood of divorce — but not the one you'd think. Women with only one partner prior to their husbands were most likely to divorce, and only in recent years is higher premarital promiscuity linked with higher divorce rates.

Long Story

Perhaps it's the vestiges of our puritanical beginnings, but to this day in America men still tend to consider a woman's sexual past when evaluating her fitness for marriage. Virginity is still highly valued (by some more so than others), but given the relative ubiquity of nonmarital sex, most men are comfortable settling with "as few partners as possible." But according to new research, not only is that not a reliable indicator of a lasting marriage, in some cases it correlates with a higher likelihood of divorce.

Nicholas Wolfinger, a professor in the University of Utah Department of Family and Consumer Studies, looked at the five-year divorce rate for over 10,000 women, and tracked them against their (self-reported) number of sexual partners prior to the marriage. He then broke them into cohorts based on the decade in which the marriage occurred, where trends started to emerge. Namely, virgin brides are more committed than ever, but the worst possible scenario is if she only had one single sexual partner before you. To explain this, we need two charts: the breakdown of women's sexual partners, and then their divorce rate by cohort.

Institute for Family Studies

Institute for Family Studies

“Overall, American women are far more likely to have had multiple premarital sex partners in recent years,” Wolfinger said. “As premarital sex became more acceptable, it’s reasonable to anticipate that its negative effects on marital stability waned. In general, Americans became more accepting of nonmarital sex. Certainly fewer men entered marriage with the expectation of a virgin bride. All of the fanfare associated with hooking up is evidence that some young people have become comfortable with the idea of sex outside of serious relationships.”

Breaking it down into chunks, the first interesting bit of data is that women who marry as virgins now are even less likely to divorce now as they were in the 70s. Wolfinger doesn't say why, but my guess is that given the acceptance of nonmarital sex, there are fewer virgin brides now than ever. It would follow, then, that the ones who hold out until their wedding night are doing so for reasons far more powerful than simple social norms.

What about the other end of the spectrum, the growing likelihood of divorce among women with 10+ partners? On the surface, it doesn't make sense — if nonmarital sex is more accepted, why the rise of divorce among women with more partners as time goes by? Well, one thing to keep in mind that divorce in general is also much more common than it used to be — and if divorce is easier for everyone, it stands to reason that someone with 10+ partners may have had a little too much lust for life to marry when they did. Women in the past with that many partners may have wanted to divorce, but it was less of an option. Also noteworthy: given the small sample size of the 2010s cohort, the 33% divorce rate for women with 10+ partners is not statistically significant compared to the 30% rate for women with two partners.

But what about the strange outlier, the fact that divorce rates for women with two total partners (counting her husband) remains high across all decades? Wolfinger seems to think it has to do with comparisons (unfavorable ones, presumably).

“In short: if you're going to have comparisons to your [future] husband, it's best to have more than one,” he said.

I'm not sure if it's as simple as that, but there isn't a better explanation, either. Having two partners going into a marriage isn't the most common arrangement, which you would expect to have the highest divorce rates. To be honest, the way the data is cut is a little spurious itself. Wolfinger declares (with no citation, as far as I know) that "in most cases, a woman’s two premarital sex partners include her future husband and one other man." Why is that the case, and what drives that assumption? But if it's true, it seems like double-dipping to me to count the husband as a "premarital" partner for these purposes.

The research was funded by the Institute for Family Studies, a nonprofit whose self-proclaimed mission is "strengthening marriage and family life." Despite the claim that having more sex partners increases the chance of divorce, even they're forced to admit:

"That said, this research brief paints a fairly complicated picture of the association between sex and marital stability that ultimately raises more questions than it answers."

Huh, it's almost as if it really doesn't matter at all.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Would having one other partner really cause women to compare them to their husbands that much?

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