I wonder if the lack of sex before marriage can be one of the reasons of a sexless marriage afterwards.
It is a touchy subject. Most of the Jordanians are not ready for the idea to have sex experiences outside marriage boundaries because it is unacceptable from cultural and religious point of views.
And I said “Most” while not sure how accurate this can be regarding the rapid changes that has affect our society in the past couple of years.
It is becoming more and more acceptable for women to declare that they have a boy friend these days comparing to what used to happen before 10 years for example, where having a boy friend was percieved as an immoral act, and the girl doing so, as a bad one.
Maybe it is safe to say that these days it is rare to find a 25 years celibate old woman that had never been in a loving relationship before.
Looking into relationships, one can wonder how much a couple can abide from having any kind of sexual contact. Sure complete intercourse outside marriage is still a taboo. Being a virgin is still a requirement to pass the first wedding night for women in our society although you can see some tiny ratio of men (that is getting larger each day) who are ready to get over this complication.
Does getting ‘love relationships’ to be common thing, means that secretive sexual behaviours is common as well? and how long can we keep on denying the changes that are taking place in our society? and is it really a bad thing?
Can sexual contacts before marriage give a couple an indication of what their sexual life can be after marriage? Would it prevent many failed, or sexless marriages if a person knew what does he/she really want, and what is his sexual preference, and whether compaitablity between the couple exist or not?
Or it is like in Oula‘s post, that we like to percieve the origin of the problem as of the load of work and busy life we are getting to face?
I just wish we can be more courageous to address what is really going on in our society without pointing fingers on each other. Things are changing. Why not face it?
Fadi Zaghmout فادي زغموت 
According to your analysis this problem exists only in conservative communities and liberal communities are having happy marriage life full of sex and love.I think you could not prove the correlation of the two subjects and there are many more reasons behind this.P.S. I am not married yet. So I can’t brag on this issue too much.
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Rami, I think it can be a reason, not the cause of all sexless marriages, but having pre-marriage sex would help prevent some failure ones. That doesn’t mean in anyway that liberal communities don’t have sexless marriages. You can watch Oprah and Dr. Phil in order to catch some examples, but in lack of real statistics, some would just guess that we have may have more severe problem than they do.
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“it is rare to find a 25 years celibate old woman that had never been in a loving relationship before.”is this based on swefieh-abdoun demographics?america is the most liberal society with one of, if not the, highest divorce rate. but in reality…we’re saying here that sexless marriages are due to lack of premarital sex…read that back to yourself…does it make sense?
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Nas,is this based on swefieh-abdoun demographics?Have you been to any of the Jordanian universities? Take Jordan University for instance, you can find women coming from everywhere in Jordan, and most do get into love relations. I wish we can have statistics here, and yes I see your point, my sentence do apply more on west amman demographics, but you can see that as well on other places around the kingdom. As of divorce rates, I wish we have statistics as well, not just about divorce rates in Jordan which is high, but about unhappy marriages we have compared to those in the US. We all know how shameful society still looks at divorced women. A lot of women prefer to stay misrable in a marriage that doesnt fulfill them in anyway rather than being labelled as divorced. Read my social pressure short story 🙂And no, I am not saying that sexless marriages are due to lack of premarital sex, but it can be one of the reasons. A lot of failed marriages can be prevented if sexual compaitability can be tested before.
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I did a small internet search. The US indeed has the highest divorce rate. Check the URL: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_div_rat-people-divorce-rateIt seems that there is a strong correlations between good income and divorce rate which makes me wonder if the divorce rate numbers gives an indication of failure marriages, or stronger women status who can stand for themselves and refuse to live in a bad marriage. Jordan isnt listed in that URL, I found it listed here: http://www.divorcereform.org/gul.htmlThe rate in Jordan is 1.22 accoding to this site compared to 4.1 in the US. And here is a post by Natasha about “khulo3” In Jordan: http://www.natashatynes.org/newswire/2005/03/jordan_khuloe_c.htmlI guess that I may need round up all this info in a decent post.
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observer, how do you test for sexual compatibility and keeping in mind that the divorce rate in jordan is indicative that most of them take place in amman. those outside amman are less likely to get divorced.
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How do you test sexual compaitability? I guess by having sex :).As you say Nas, divorce rate in jordan indicate those mostly in amman. That is because women in amman are better financially than other places in the kingdome.
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An interesting post.First I’d like to thank you for opening such discussions which many of us are shy or afraid to talk about>I do believe in the importance of “having love” -as i call it- before marriage. It is really a “testometer” for any couple’s relation. Yes, the community doesn’t accept that .. it just needs time to be more acceptable.About the statistics, are you sure the women in jordan will be that free to say that they have sexual problems with their husbends? I doubt that.Thanx again for the post
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I doubt that women in Jordan are willing to admit they have sexual problems with their husbands as well. Hope things would change with time. In the recent past couple of years, a lot of changes happened to our society that we are still unaware of its complications, and still changes are taking place in a faster pace. Maybe in no time, we will start seeing more women complaining, and more women requesting divorce because they are not satisfied in their love life.Thank you for the comment.
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This was a good post. Live and let live. I could never imagine NOT having sex with my future husband, but that’s just me. I like the freedom to make my own decision. I also think that neither high nor low divorce rates are indicative of happiness. Marriage can be tricky if you stay in it, or if you cut and run.
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