I want this to be more of an open discussion and not opinions. I am trying to understand,
Since I am older and definitely out of the dating scene I am asking why is it that in today's environment young people feel that is is necessary to have sex with their partner to keep them. This includes moving in with and living with someone without the benefits of marriage?

Edit.
I have been happily married for almost 42 years

I slept with my husband before we were married but it wasn't to keep him. We knew we were going to get married. We didn't move in together until after we were married. I don't know if it's so much that people have sex to keep who they're with or because they want to... I didn't sleep with anyone just to keep them.

The 60's with the advent of the pill, free love and sex changed our attitude. Was there even a DNA test then? Men have been free to sow their wild oats all through history. Women, who had the babies, could not. Then there was the tradition that a pregnant woman married whether she was showing it or not. If she did not marry, she was unwanted and the infant was a bastard.

That is a part of the change. Being a woman, I am now free to have sex, abortions, birth control or babies with (and without) child support. Freedom, to try before you buy. Men didn't always have that option but it didn't matter since they could always have orgasms with any partner.

Now we have STDs that are incurable. Does that make freedom wrong? Maybe one has to be female to fully understand the benefit of having this particular choice. I can choose not to participate in sex outside of marriage. Choices and options for women is what it's about for me.

Then there is the reproductive urge. That hasn't changed. But now we are seldom compelled to control it? Hmmm. My mother believes that sex is only okay inside of marriage, with one man. She complains that there was never enough sex in her marriage, she blames herself, thinks she did something wrong. I shopped around and found someone with whom I was compatible in many ways, including sex.

I have never had sex with a partner in order to keep him, or move in with him. I have sex with a partner to satisfy my own reproductive urge and to have orgasms with someone besides myself. Sex can promote closeness, but real closeness may or may not include intimate relations.

I think that in today's world, with women juggling carreers and households and in the society of instant everything we live in, there has definitely been a shift in the way people 'date'. A lot of the traditional rules of dating don't apply anymore, just look at the new trend of online dating.

In my case, my partner and I were friends for a long time and then one day we had sex and were a couple, as strange as that may sound. We moved in together very quickly and now 8 years later, we're still having sex, we're still not married. I'm just not big on marriage. Maybe one day my views will change but for now, I find marriage to bring nothing to the table other than paperwork, it's a headache to organize and not to mention costly. A lot of people may not agree with me on this and that's pretty much why I never elaborate on it, but I bet there are a lot of 'young' people out there who just don't see marriage in their near futures and maybe even in their distant futures, but still want to experience a relationship in the same context as marriage.

Either that or people are getting married too old and are simply horny in the mean time. I just ruined it didn't I? All right, maybe I'm not the best person to answer this...

Discussion is OPINIONS here unless a person references a study done about human sexuality. Just to clarify.

This has more to do with emotional imaturity of some people when they think that if they sleep with someone they will keep them. Fact is sex is no substitute for friendship in a relationship. Most older people understand this part but its usually but not always the yourger people that haven't who do this.

Now with the older people who date it's a matter of self gratification and sex isn't used to "Keep him". There can be several reasons a couple will sleep together. And its important to be adle to recognise and differentiate between them.

Honesty--it's because there are no serious reprecussions for having sex.

You don't HAVE to marry the person you get pregnant with. You don't have to keep the child, or even have the child, but if you DO raise the child, the state is MORE than willing to help foot the bill so that you and your child don't starve or have to go without your cable TV.

Getting pregnant at the wrong time with the wrong person is no longer a scary, life-changing event.

And frankly, even though I didn't WANT to get pregnant, I knew I wasn't going to starve or be an outcast from society if I DID choose to raise a child. And the CHILD certainly wouldn't have any major reprecussions from the whole thing.

When you add those facts to the idea that sex really feels good---well, as long as you trust your partner to be clean of STDs, then what's the problem?

As far as living together before marriage--there is no way I'd EVER recommend that people do NOT do that. Having a roommate of the opposite sex (and literally just that--we were roommates, shared rent and bills and dinner twice a week, and otherwise hardly saw each other) taught me that men and women see home as very different things most of the time. I had to KNOW, before making the lifelong commitment to someone, that the details of living together wouldn't make us hate each other. I've had roommates that I couldn't WAIT to get rid of, because living with them was so horrible. Great friends before we were roommates, but living together killed any friendship. I didn't want that to happen after the bother and hassle and legal ties of a marriage.

And finally---marriage to me has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with promises to each other made before witnesses that care about you both. So basically, there was no moral/religious reason to NOT live together before marriage.

I think that there are a couple of separate ideas here that are getting mixed together.

The first relates to anyone, in any point in life, who could consider sleeping with someone to "keep" them. There's nothing healthy about that kind of thinking. I think that there are people who get married too early just to "keep" their significant other. Some women try to get pregnant to "keep" their relationship going. If you can't trust your partner, or if you think he's the type to stray, no matter what kind of relationship it is, those kinds of behaviors won't turn the magic key and fix the problems that were there in the first place. It's not a healthy way to think, and those aren't the behaviors a normal, healthy-headed person engages in.

Next, you're talking about people who engage in premarital sex or sex during cohabitation without marriage. I think the rise in premarital sex has a lot to do with the fact that people aren't getting married as young as they used to.

Marriage right out of high school at age 18 doesn't seem to get a whole lot of smiles and applause from the peanut gallery. To the contrary, it seems that people are encouraged to wait, date and search for the right person. Then, when they are mature enough to handle a very serious commitment and a family, they can get married.

So if you know that you're probably not going to get married until you're in your mid-twenties, late twenties or early thirties, keeping your virginity all of that time begins to look very, very different.

Take a look at the divorce statistics out there, and you start to wonder if you want to join those numbers. I don't think anyone gets married with the intention of getting divorced down the road, but it happens all the time. It also happens in a lot of marriages between people who got married too early, and it also happens with people who have been married for many, many years. My parents were married for 37 years before they got divorced. When I get married, I want to be very, very sure that I'm doing the right thing and that my decision is absolutely going to be as permanent as I can make it.

I began dating my partner 7 years ago, and we have been living together for 5. Until I am ready to have children, I don't see the need to get married. I just don't see the point right now. Of course, since I am 29, I'm starting to think a lot more about marriage and children. We live together, we own a business together, we have a dog together... we're almost married, but without the paperwork.

You talked about the benefits of marriage. As far as I can tell, marriage gives you some legal (e.g. financially if there is a divorce, or if there's no will, or if a spouse is in the hospital) and some insurance rights. It can also make it seem harder for a partner to leave. Are there other benefits that I'm missing? If a sloppy marriage is going to end in divorce, I see a whole lot of benefits to not doing it in the first place (e.g. the financial cost and extra emotional turmoil).

So I don't think the subject is all that simple. And, personally, I would hate to be judged negatively because I haven't decided to get married yet.