Living Together Before Marriage

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Need to know

UK Brothel Revenue
In the UK brothel owners can make up to £1 million per annum, with women being sold for around £8,000 - over 42 times the average salary in the UK. What's your salary?...
While you were working for a living...
The vast amounts made in the global prostitution industry goes directly into the hands of pimps, traffickers and brothel owners....
The UK Sex Industry
In 2005, the UK sex industry was worth an estimated £1 billion. Since then the growth has been exponential....
Prostitutes on Crack
British Home Office research found that over 90% of street prostitutes take heroin or crack cocaine....
Global Pornography Revenue
In 2006, worldwide pornography revenue was $97.06 billion. Of that, approximately $13 billion was in the United States....
Not $1. Not $10. But $3,075. Every second.
Every second, $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography, and every 39 minutes, a new pornographic video is made in the United States....
Internet Pornography
There are 4.2 million pornographic websites, 420 million pornographic web pages, and 68 million daily pornographic search engine requests....
A World Fit For Children?
According to the Internet Filter Review (2006), the file-sharing network Gnutella has 116,000 daily "child pornography" requests....
Child Porn: A Booming Business
Child pornography is one of the fastest growing businesses online. Between 2004 and 2006 the number of child abuse domains increased 200%....
Child Porn & Child Abuse
In a study of arrested child pornography possessors, 40% had both sexually victimized children and were in possession of child pornography....
Global Child Porn Revenue
By 2005, child pornography had become a $3 billion annual global industry. Since then its growth has continued to be exponential....
Mobile Porn Revenue
In 2005, worldwide revenue from mobile phone pornography rose to $1 billion and was expected to increase by at least three times that number within a few years. Where are we now?
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1 Million Children Per Year
UNICEF reports that across the world, there are over one million children entering the sex trade every year, and some 30 million children have lost their childhood through sexual exploitation over the past 30 years.
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How Prostitutes Die
In a US study of almost 2,000 prostitutes followed over a 30-year period, by far the most common causes of death were homicide, suicide, drug and alcohol related problems, HIV infection and accidents - in that order.
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Child Prostitutes
According to the US Department of Justice, studies indicate that child prostitutes 'serve' between two and thirty 'clients' per week. That's 100 to 1500 'clients' per year, per child.
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Human Trafficking
Every year, upwards of $19 billion is generated on the street from illegal human trafficking. Who gets this money and what do they do with it?
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'Adult'-Film Industry
The 'adult'-film industry is bigger than ever. In 2003 it was making around 6,000 movies a year and grossing more than $4 billion - roughly as much as the US National Football League....

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Living Together Before Marriage - Leaflet

Living Together Before Marriage “We want to get married but we’re going to live together first just to make sure we’re right for each other.” Sounds good. If I’m buying a new car, I expect to be able to test drive it first. And marriage is far more important and life-defining than new wheels. So surely it’s common sense to “trial run” it first? Most couples who live together actually never end up getting married...

Read the full text!

“We want to get married but we’re going to live together first just to make sure we’re right for each other.” Sounds good. If I’m buying a new car, I expect to be able to test drive it first. And marriage is far more important and life-defining than new wheels. So surely it’s common sense to “trial run” it first?

Most couples who live together actually never end up getting married. Couples who cohabit before marriage have a divorce rate of about 80% and the longer they cohabit prior to marriage the greater the chances of divorce. In other words, choosing to live together in a sexual relationship before marriage can be a very effective way to move a relationship towards break-up.

The weakness of cohabitation outside of marriage is that I’m acting married without really being married. It doesn’t tell me anything important about the person I love – or myself – that I couldn’t find out in other ways. Cohabitation can never tell me what marriage would be like simply because it isn’t marriage. An essential aspect of married love is full-on commitment – “I love you so much I will always be here for you” – and cohabitation deliberately leaves the backdoor open. It’s not built on a friendship that strong or intimate because the friendship isn’t that strong or intimate (yet). Add an emotionally intense sexual relationship into the picture and my chances of working out whether I really want to wake up next to this person every morning for the rest of my life can fade pretty fast. (And if turns out I don’t, then that painful realisation is going to come only after the initial thrill of full sexual intimacy has worn off.)

The answer? Don’t cohabit. Work on building a friendship that is strong enough for marriage and save full sexual intimacy for the one context where you can immerse yourself in it with complete certainty and freedom.

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