>>23324515It's not just a matter of how "deep" and "real" the relationship is. It's an issue of what sex does to you psychologically, and what kind of relationship is most healthy for it to be happening in
If you can be together and be completely aware of it, thinking "yes, we totally could be having sex right now, we both would want it and we both would find plenty of excuses for why it's good, but we're still not going to do it anyways" and still be genuinely happy together, you have forged something that's must stronger than you realize
Doing it early in the relationship is damaging long term, it takes the stages where you should be building your essential bonds and interrupts it with high emotional intensity and hormonal desire, instantly changing the relationship and making it so everything else is built up with that as part of the context it exists in, and the moment things stop feeling exciting everything else starts to crumble as well
You seem to understand that you should be having sex only with someone you deeply love. That's good. But you need to recognize that love is not the emotions. Love is behavioral, it's the way you choose to respond to and act upon those emotions, it's what you choose to value, the promises you make, and so on.
This is why sex should never be done outside of marriage, not because it's what's demanded of you culturally, but because of what marriage is. It's the ultimate act of love, a promise where you invest your whole heart and life into it, dedicated wholly to it. That's why it's such a problem that people are having sex outside of marriage, it's because they're committing an act of ultimate vulnerability and openness with someone. Sex and marriage should be nearly synonyms, not disconnected ideas.
