My apologies for butting into this discussion as a non-believer, but I thought perhaps that my perspective could be useful or at least interesting:
I don’t see where getting sexually involved with someone, especially early in dating (let alone before marriage) would put you in a position of being able to get married.
Well, see, here’s the thing. Sex is indeed not the most important part of a serious, committed relationship, but it’s also pretty far from the least important part, too (especially when the couple is young and doesn’t yet have kids). While it’s certainly true that a couple has to be able to get along in their day to day lives, it’s also true that a couple that has an unsatisfying sex life from the beginning is usually going to have problems.
Now, if you value not having sex before marriage, then fine, but let’s not pretend that it’s unreasonable for people to want to make sure that they’re compatible with their partners in all sorts of different ways before tying the knot. And let’s also not pretend that a strict policy of abstinence will not make it much, much harder to date.
Of course, if not having sex before marriage is that important to you – that is, the most important quality you look for in a spouse – then yes, a strict policy of abstinence will make it
far easier to find a spouse with that one trait. You will, though, likely have to “settle” in regard to most of the rest of the traits that you value in a partner.
What I’m saying is that insisting on this one particular point (abstinence before marriage) will severely limit the pool of potential candidates. Naturally, if this is the one particular point that is your “deal breaker,” then sure, you want the pool restricted so severely – but let’s not pretend like that restriction isn’t going to make it somewhere in the ballpark of a thousand times harder for you to find someone you’ll get along with in all other areas. As in all areas of choosing, having a bigger pool of candidates is always going to make it easier.
As someone else was saying, the more expectations you have of a partner, the harder it’s going to be to find one. The best way to go about the process is not to approach it with a checklist of traits, but rather to rid your mind of ideals and to react appropriately to each date on its own terms. You can’t expect your potential partners to conform to some dream ideal you have of “the perfect partner” – if you do, then you
will be single forever, or you will make yourself utterly miserable because reality will always fall short of the dream world you cook up in your head.
The best advice that anyone can give you is to learn how the dream world in your head falls short of reality.
This advice includes, incidentally, giving up the ideal of “a partner who waits for marriage,” but that’s a discussion for another time.
