Richmond, VA (CSTV U-WIRE) -- Apparently Michael Webb thinks the old saying "caveat emptor" (buyer beware) applies to marriage. His theory is simple, if you haven't had sex, how can you know if you are sexually compatible with your betrothed? You want to test drive a car before you buy -- isn't marriage an even greater commitment? If that logic were true, then you'd think that the sexual revolution and the growing levels of pre-marital sex would correlate to lower rates of divorce since now everyone knows what they are getting into. Strangely, we find just the opposite.

If "try before you buy" applies to sex, then certainly you'd do even better to really take the relationship out for a spin and cohabit before you get married. Yet the divorce rate among couples who do cohabit and then get married is 40 to 85 percent higher than the divorce rate for those who abstain from sex before marriage. Women who cohabit are 3.3 times more likely to have a secondary sexual partner later on when they're married than women who abstained before marriage (I assume the rates go up for guys, too, but I couldn't find the numbers). And just in case you think that is because virgins don't know where else to turn when the marriage doesn't turn out to be everything they hoped for - sexual satisfaction is also higher among married couples who abstain before marriage than it is among married couples that cohabit first.

So why is it that test drives are great ways to pick a car but not such a great strategy for choosing a spouse? Well, it's because deciding who to marry is a fundamentally different kind of question than deciding which car to buy.

The entire car-owner relationship is pretty well defined by one action: driving. The marriage relationship on the other hand is a bit more complex. The other elements of marriage -- everything from sharing a bathroom to sharing a dream -- tend to outweigh the importance of sex in a couple's everyday life. If there's no sex involved while you're dating, you have an opportunity to learn about a person without the rose-glasses of mutual gratification. In my opinion, sexual compatibility is the very least of your concerns. The human species did not survive this far without being biologically programmed to like sex, and furthermore I think that true sexual satisfaction stems more from love then from some nebulous "compatibility" concept. Face it: you've got millions of years of evolution on your side when it comes to sexual compatibility, but only a couple hundred years of social history when it comes to picking drapes or deciding which career paths to follow.

If you have to agree with your car about where to go on your next road trip, you need a new car. Successful marriage, on the other hand, is always a real partnership. That means that you see your partner's needs as equally important to your own. Living a life of abstinence before marriage develops the essential ability to control and channel -- not repress -- your own desires. This ability to put what you want on hold for a greater good is an invaluable benefit in living for decades with the one you love.

The self-control aspect is important to fidelity as well. If you and the person you marry mutually agree not to have sex until marriage, it's going to take work. In a college relationship having sex is a lot easier than not having sex. Abstinence takes commitment -- and if you and your loved one practice that self-control together, then there is a bond of mutual trust that carries over into the marriage. Not only will you be fully in control of your own sexual expression, but your spouse will know that you are.

If we want sex to enrich our lives and our relationships with our spouses (when that time comes), it helps to have a shared confidence that self-mastery is something we bring to the union. If we never learn to say "no" when our sex drive says "go", then in reality we are the ones being taken for a ride by our sexuality and not the other way around. And if we make the decision not to make a gift of our virginity to our spouse, then let us at least be aware that, collegian editorials notwithstanding, the statistics are against, not for us, when it comes to marital success.

(C) 2005 The Collegian via CSTV U-WIRE