With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

A fascinating comment to my blog post about the importance of premarital celibacy deserves its own entire blog post in reply.

I'll put two words in bold, to discuss below.

i was actually enjoying this series of posts until i got to this reason, yet again everything is the fault of a woman and women ALONE OF COURSE need to keep their bodies as temples to the Lord and their husbands.its reasons like these that started the absurd rage of the feminist of this age. men should take total responsibility for their cockups and stop passing blame. we women want to know that our husbands think their bodies are Holy temples for us as well.

The word alone.

I did write "I cannot find any data about husband abstinence.  Are we unimportant?"  The commenter not only ignored that, but went to capitalization in her own assumption that only women's premarital abstinence affected divorce rates.

I also concluded with "My wife and I are overly fond of each other because our brains have been rewired by our body chemistries--what a great deal!  And we have no other competing pair-bonds to distract us from being fond (and staying fond) of each other."  Lacking any statistical data about husband abstinence, I did word my essay to emphasize that in the specific case of my own marriage it seems the same dynamic affects both husband and wife.

I never encouraged a different standard for men and women.  I merely described statistical results of people's choices.  That leads to...

The word fault.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume the commenter's uninformed guess is correct and a man's premarital history is statistically insignificant.  Allow me to paraphrase what that assumption actually implies:

If a woman wants to some day marry, and have a lasting marriage, the most statistically significant factor by far is her premarital celibacy.  She (not her husband) can make the choices that, in general, have the most impact on creating a lasting and presumably happier marriage.

That is power!  She has the ability to make something happen!  (As much as it can be predetermined.)

It is not fault or blame.

I think most men would be thrilled to find any way that their choices before marriage could cause a 35% to 60% decreased risk of divorce.

As I grew up I did make many choices to help my future marriage.  As just one example, I purposefully chose a career (teaching) that would allow me to work anywhere, so my spouse's career could determine where we lived.  This one choice turned out to be crucial--my wife knew her future graduate work and employment would ask her to move to certain cities, and she would not have dated me if my future plans threatened to compete with hers.

The commenter is quite mixed-up about responsibility if she confuses power and blame.  Planning ahead is part of living wisely.