“Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.” Proverbs 3:3
Social science research outlines many benefits of marriage:
• Married mothers report greater love and intimacy and less ambivalence and conflict than do cohabiting or single mothers.
• Marriedcouplesenjoy higher relationship quality and happiness than cohabiters.
• Married men and women, compared to other couples, report the most enjoyable sexual intercourse.
• Those who are married and who did not cohabit before their marriage are more likely to be faithful than cohabiters.
• Couples in always-intact-marriages are considerably less likely to commit adultery than those who have divorced and remarried. Many cultural forces work to undermine marriage. What is one step you can take to strengthen your commitment to life-long fidelity today?
This chart shows that those couples that have always been in an intact marriage are less likely to have ever committed adultery than those in divorced or separated relationships.
*It bears emphasizing that these patterns hold for the groups involved, not for all the individuals who make up each group. There is naturally a wide variation among individuals.
http://marri.us/wp-content/uploads/Marriage-and-Fidelity.pdf