Shapiro At ‘Newsweek’: Sex Before Marriage Won’t Make You Happier

This week, the Institute for Family Studies released a new study. Its key finding: married people are happiest if their spouses are the only people with whom they have ever had sex. While it has been reported before that those who marry as virgins have the lowest divorce rates, no study had observed whether marital quality was affected by prior sexual history.

This study found that women who reported one sexual partner over the course of their lifetimes were the most likely to be “very happy” in their marriages (64 percent); the least likely to be very happy were women who had six to ten lifetime sexual partners (52 percent). For men, the same held true—71 percent of men who reported one lifetime sexual partner reported being “very happy” in their marriages; just 60 percent of men with five lifetime sexual partners reported such happiness. Overall, the biggest dip for both men and women occurred beyond one lifetime sexual partner.