A common refrain among today's fallen youth: "I have turned my back on His grace and fallen into temptation by cleaving the flesh of so many hotties. Shall I ever be wed?" Take heart, young heathens—despite your history of harlotry, you too can find an unhappy marriage.

A new study on American marriage from the National Marriage Project has a couple of findings that you, the common [man]whore, may find illuminating—more illuminating than the flickering candlelight that throws only momentary glimmers upon your tear-stained cheeks as you wail over yet another "molly"-induced "hookup" gone awry... another in an uncountable procession of all-too-common "sexcapades" from which few souls escape undamaged, we are sorry to say. "Girls Gone Wild?" Indeed—wild like the beasts over which mankind is supposed to have dominion, not to emulate by "rutting" like so many unfettered zebras on the cloudless plain, gripped by hormones and totally ignorant of His will for us.

What we were saying about the study is, they found that even gutter-dwelling nymphomaniacs such as your "friends" may be able to find refuge in blessed union, one day. From USA Today:

Now, a study out Tuesday answers one of those lingering questions – can a hookup lead to the altar? For almost one-third (32%) of those in a nationally representative sample, their relationship with their eventual spouse began as a hookup – however the respondents defined it for themselves.

Before you get so excited that you begin spontaneously masturbating upon a "Jet Ski" as a song about "thug love" thumps stupidly in the background, we should tell you that all the news is not so sunny. Yes, you can still get married to a person even though you will forever be forced to answer the question "How did you meet?" with the reply "fucking on a couch." But do not expect that marriage to be perfect. The study found that these "hookup"-based marriages were generally less happy than marriages between two skittish youths who had spent time together prior to their wedding nights only under the supervision of a licentious clergyman, as He intended. Furthermore, the study found that the more.... friendly a wayward coquette had been in her pre-marriage life, the more miserable she could expect to be later, as she suffered for her sins:

In our sample, only 23 percent of the individuals who got married over the course of the study had had sex solely with the person they married. That minority of men and women reported higher marital quality than those who had had sex with other partners prior to marriage. We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be. This association was not statistically significant for men.

Young women, pay heed: the more readily you allow your dates at the soda fountain to descend into wanton fuckfests, the less likely you are to find a stable and happy marriage. And young men... the correlation is not statistically significant, so, I guess, do whatever you want (just be sure not to marry the person you fuck.)

What ever happened to a good old-fashioned dance around the Maypole?

[The full report. Photo of OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST gazing upon you with disapproval: Flickr]