Sex is so special it deserves a special home. It’s most meaningful, most fulfilling, when it’s part of something bigger—a continuing, loving relationship between two human beings. When you’re married, your sexual intimacy expresses your total commitment to each other. You’re saying with your body, “I give myself to you, completely.” Not being totally committed changes the meaning of the sex act. Even if you’re engaged, you can always get disengaged. Half of the couples who are engaged have been engaged before.

From this perspective, you join your bodies when you join your lives. The ultimate intimacy belongs within the ultimate commitment. Of course, saving sex for marriage, by itself, doesn’t guarantee a successful marriage; that requires hard work and sacrificial love from both spouses. But marriage is the best place for sex because it’s the most serious, total, and public commitment between two people that human society has ever been able to devise.