Waiting until marriage is a deal-breaker for me. It's illogical. I'll wait until we're ready, be it weeks, months, or years, but I'm not going to "wait until marriage."
For some people, the argument of "sexual compatibility" is used against waiting for marriage. This is the belief that two people could find themselves sexually incompatible and wind up getting divorced over that. I find this to be utter nonsense and inapplicable to the situation at hand. People that pose this argument clearly do not consider sex to be an expression of love. The argument degrades sex to the level of bodily function and degrades the other person to nothing more than a sexual object, which in turn means that marriage is not done for love but for ownership, financial reasons, or nearly guaranteed paternity.
From this view on sex comes the idea that sex outside of marriage is a Bad Thing™, and this has the unfortunate side-effect of placing a stigma on sex in general. Ironically, this also means that people get married when they aren't socially compatible--as opposed to the common argument of sexual compatibility. Because of this stigma, people who are having sex wind up feeling bad about it and wind up being pressured to get married when they really shouldn't be getting married.
People who are waiting for marriage to have sex are not exempt from this pressure--it just comes from a different angle. Instead of the shame of sex outside of marriage, they deal with the pressure of getting married so they can have sex. The human mind is wonderful at rationalizing in order to get the results it desires. Personally, before having sex with a woman, I twice convinced myself that I did actually want to marry her (and followed through with it both times).
I completely respect the desire not to be one who sleeps around--I have the same desire--but I must respectfully disagree with the Christian concept of waiting for marriage, and I especially despise the shame that comes with it--both on a logical and personal level. Sex is not a bad thing--it's a wonderful, beautiful thing, and for me, it's a way of showing a woman just how special she is to me. It's a way of showing that I do care about her and value her more than anyone else, but anyone would be a fool to believe that the act of sex is limited to this.
