Being honest doesn't mean that you will necessarily fully understand things because it's one thing to hear about something and another thing to experience it. There are some people who find out that the person they love dearly is not someone they can handle living with simply because of certain things they do at home.

There are also some people who find that changing the way they keep things at home to accommodate another person just makes them completely miserable. I know that being with someone is all about compromise but sometimes people find that when they move in with each other those compromises simply leave both parties equally unhappy. ((Sorry about 2 posts, it wouldn't let me post it all as one.))

For most of the time that people have believed you should abstain until marriage, the typical age for getting married has been around the current age of consent. Most people married a childhood friend and died by the time they were 50. They also became sexually mature at an older age than we do now. In a time of mass higher-education, vast cities and modern medicine it's the exception rather than the rule to be with your life partner before you leave school and a "teenage wedding" is nearly unheard of. With a much longer period of sexual maturity and a larger social pool the time and resources are available to consider more possible mates before settle. People have not spent thousands of years abstaining until their 30s. That's just an artifact of technological progress out-pacing social change. You are right - if you are honest and your partner is compatible then when you marry, married life is exactly as it was when you were cohabiting. Mine was. If that's not the case then the person you are married to is not the person you thought they were. However, you neglect the other possibility - if you cohabit and discover you are incompatible then you can walk away. I don't believe that any degree of honesty prepares you for living with someone. So many habits and practices are nothing to one person but essential or abhorrent to another. Marriage is your commitment of your lives to each other. That can be quite exciting enough without needing to add moving into a new home and first sexual experience after two decades of frustration into the bargain. Save yourself for someone you love by all means but once you find someone that 100 years ago you would have married on the spot, it's not necessarily natural to live apart in celibacy while you sort out your degree, career and all the other things you want before you settle down. My daughters will be abstaining until marriage (I wish) but beyond that there is much to be said for cohabitation. Edit - Geepers. Sorry for the rant.