DEAR ABBY: I just finished reading the letter from "Alone in Ann Arbor, Mich.," who wants to save sex until after marriage, but was being pressured by men who wouldn't see her anymore unless she had sex with them. They wanted to take a "test drive" before they made a bigger commitment.
Well, I am a 27-year-old male virgin and I don't understand why more people can't grasp the logic that sex before marriage is not a good idea, not just because of AIDS or questions of morality, but because of wanting to have a relationship that will last in the long run.
No lasting relationship can be based on how good the sex is, because one day the sex is going to slow down or even run out. What you're left with after that had better be pretty solid, or you may as well start shopping for a divorce lawyer while you're shopping for the ring. I know that if I can say I want to marry someone and, in effect, spend the rest of my life with her without ever having had sex with her, the sex is only going to make that relationship better.
Has no one else seen the correlation between the increase in premarital sex and the increase of divorce in the past 20 years? I'd bet my life that there's a direct relationship between the two. It seems to me that the problem is that people think love should be based on sex, when it's actually the other way around.
I congratulate "Alone in Ann Arbor" and every other person who, for whatever reason, has the determination and wisdom to abstain from sex until they're married. -- NO NAME, GREENVILLE, S.C.
DEAR NO NAME: And I congratulate you on your clear-headed thinking.