Disclaimer: This article discusses marital intimacy.
In a recent episode of Call Her Daddy, host Alex Cooper and actress Sophia Bush were discussing the benefits of divorce. They suggested that for women who are wondering if divorce is worth it and if they can find a better man, “the answer is always ‘yes.’”
This conversation alone is a window into the very real problem of the “sex recession” that America is facing.
A recent report from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) delved into the causes of and antidotes to the current sex recession. In 1990, 55% of couples reported weekly intimacy, and that number has significantly dropped to just 37% today.
Pop culture has, for decades, drummed into the hearts and minds of young people that the best guarantee of a satisfying sexual life is to be as promiscuous and loose as possible. And people have bought into this lie – men and women alike. After all, when so many women in America are listening to Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper, a “sex-positive” podcast that encourages all forms of degeneracy, we know we have issues.
With headlines like “I thought motherhood had killed my sex drive, but I just needed a divorce,” what are young people supposed to think about marriage?
But what if the data proved differently? What if the data proved that the road to a satisfying intimate life is not hookup culture and constant divorce, but rather monogamous marriage? More than that, it is a monogamous, religious marriage.
Dartmouth economist David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald found in their research that married couples live a more sexually satisfying life than single, divorced, widowed, or separated individuals.
In a September article published by The Atlantic, sociologist Brad Wilcox and his colleague Grant Bailey found that while secular couples have not been immune to the sex recession in America, regularly churchgoing couples have seen little decline.
“In fact, we find that the only Americans who have avoided the country’s ‘sex recession’—in which fewer and fewer men and women are having regular sex—are husbands and wives who attend religious services at least twice a month. In the 1990s, 64 percent of married people aged 20–54, both churchgoing and secular, had sex at least once a week, according to the General Social Survey. Now only 48 percent of secular couples (who never or rarely attend church) have sex weekly compared with 62 percent of their religious peers. In America today, the faithful are having more sex.”
Additionally, data from the General Social Survey indicate a link between regular sexual activity among married couples and political ideology, with liberals seeing a steep decline in sexual intimacy since the 1990s
Time and again, the data reveal the timeless truth that God’s design for marriage promotes lasting fulfillment, including sexual satisfaction.
Contrary to the lies of the culture, marriage is not the pathway to misery. It is, in fact, a pathway to lasting fulfillment.
Young person, don’t listen to the lies of the culture. Young woman, stop listening to Alex Cooper’s demonic advice.
