Pugsley’s story shows the folly of the celibate boyfriend:

When I met my then boyfriend-now husband, I told him right away that I was saving myself for marriage and he was fine with that because it was my body, my choice and he loved me. We were together for six years before we got married.

Not surprisingly, her celibate boyfriend went on to become her celibate husband. Part of this has to come from the selection process. When a young woman sets out to find a celibate boyfriend instead of a husband, her selection criteria are going to be totally different. A young woman looking for a husband will look for the best man she can attract, a man who fits the role of a husband and whom she can fall head over heels in love with. A celibate boyfriend on the other hand is a totally different animal. She needs to find someone without better options than to sign on as her official beta orbiter. She also needs to find someone whom she isn’t too attracted to, or she might slip up herself. Then after a suitable number of years of proving that she wasn’t in any hurry to marry (and most likely attaining her feminist merit badge), the celibate boyfriend is very often converted into a husband.

Again, this isn’t the biblical model. The biblical model says marry if you burn with passion, then do it like rabbits. The churchian model says to prove you really are in love by waiting to marry, most often several years, in a celibate romantic relationship. The modern (unbiblical) view is that romantic love is purer than sex, and is what makes sex and marriage moral. This overlooks the fact that like sex, romantic love is for marriage, and marriage is what makes sex and romantic love moral.