An Analysis of the Impact of Premarital Sexual Relations on Marriage Orientation (Case Study: Students of University of Isfahan)

Relationships with the opposite sex before marriage lead to greater family vulnerability and persistence of marriage and family collapse and other social harms. It creates serious challenges to the social system and especially to girls, and raises many questions about the continued health of the Iranian family. Expansion of this phenomenon can threaten the standards of marriage and the values and norms of the family and the family of Iranians. The present paper seeks to examine the impact of premarital sexual relations before marriage on attitude, the rate of students' tendency towards marriage, and the degree of mutual trust between boys and girls, and answers the question that: what is the effect of marriage on the type of attitudes and relationships of couples and their degree of trust and the degree of students' tendency towards marriage and family planning?  In this article, the relationship with the opposite sex includes any relationship between a girl and a boy at all levels of emotion and sexuality with the intention of marriage or without the intention of marriage, and includes relationships in the cyberspace. Sex also means any contact and physical or sexual relationship with a friend of the opposite sex who has committed any kind of bondage and marriage
In this paper, in theoretical understanding of premarital sexuality or a fusion of ideas, there is great reliance on Inglehart's theory and fluid love and Giddens modernism. The subject of Inglehart's cultural transformation theory is capable of explaining some of the variables that are effective, and both Giddens and William Goud's theory of modernization, as well as Bowman's fluid love theory, can explain other aspects of this phenomenon. Hence, in the theoretical framework of this issue, we use Inglehart's Value Transformation Theory, Bowman Fluid Love Theory and Anthony Giddens Sexuality Theory.
The method of this research is survey. The statistical population of this research is all male and female students of the University of Isfahan in the academic year of 2016-17 at all educational levels. Sample size, 430 individuals, was selected using Cochran's formula. The required data were collected using a questionnaire, a randomized sampling method, and simple random sampling. Also, for analyzing the data, both descriptive and inferential statistics, and for measuring the validity and reliability of the Cronbach's coefficients, formal credentials and the Bartlett test were utilized.  According to the results of this paper, 84% of the respondents stated that they were not willing to marry a person who had sex before marriage and 88% of the sample also stated that having a premarital sex destroys a real love between couples. Moreover, 87% believed that those who had sex before marriage are not reliable, and 82% said that those who had sex before marriage would not be loyal to marriage. The results showed that 12% of boys and 5% of girls stated that they had sex before marriage.
According to research data, the close and progressive sexual intercourse with the opposite sex before marriage does not reduce the tendency of single girls and boys to marry. Premarital sexual relations, which are either intended to be married or less likely to respond to the emotional and sexual needs of individuals, are more related to the decline in marriage. Therefore, the main hypothesis of the research on the effect of premarital sexual relationships on the reduction of the tendency towards marriage was rejected by using Pearson correlation test at a significant level of 99%. Other factors, other than trust, have a positive effect on marriage tendency. Premarital sexual intercourse has only a negative impact on the level of trust in the opposite sex.
The findings indicate that premarital sex relations reduces the desire to marry female students, and creates a negative attitude towards marriage and family formation and mistrust of gender. The result of this study shows that the decline in the desire to marry is to raise the groundwork for increasing the average age of marriage as well as celibacy, the outcome of such a long term is a threat to the natural population growth. On the other hand, the structural transformation of relations between the sexes will develop in both genders, and this is not the view of the cultural transcendence of Iranian-Islamic society. Hence, studying this social issue with regard to the youth of the Iranian population is functional.
According to the study community, it is recommended that the university takes more serious policies and planning about young people's marriage. The research has two suggestions for the university: first, by informing young people about marital training, they should be aware of the harm and the issues without knowing it, through the organization of workshops on the training of life and sexual skills and the training of joys and pleasures. On the one hand, the teaching of communication skills with the opposite sex is felt to young people and students who want to form a family. It can be admitted that attitudinal and value changes in relation to marriage and friendship of a girl and a boy are one of the signs of the vast cultural change that is taking place in our transitional society. The phenomenon of relationship between a boy and a girl is a social reality that indicates a cultural change in the macro-social system of Iran. Although, this issue has been studied and researched as a social phenomenon, it is possible to expect that in other theoretical, social, political and economic spheres. Theoretically speaking, and due to the interaction among different social variables, we are also facing some kind of modernization, especially value-added modernization, and sometimes behavioral modernization.