In response to your first paragraph, that’s a fair interpretation of commitment, and it may work for some people, but not for someone like this girl. In her mind, marriage has a deeper meaning. The act of taking vows will afford her much more emotional security, and any attempt to circumvent that will bring doubts. If a man loves her and is committed to her, why would he not be willing to sacrifice his position here and just make formal vows? In her mind, it’s because he’s not committed to keeping them. That is a deep communication problem that I can’t possibly hope to resolve on an internet forum with two hypothetical parties. All I could do would be to make some observations about the nature of sacrifice in healthy relationships, the importance of communication, etc..

I’ll make a generalization here and say that people who say they want to wait until marriage are the kind of people to whom marriage is synonymous with a committed relationship. Whether any given individual has the capacity to actually make their marriage work is a different discussion that doesn’t lend itself to generalizations.

As for your second point, you’re right: two people can’t be fully intimate without sex. But do you need to know a person completely before you can commit to them? What about before you can love them? I would say no, because complete understanding of another human being is a lifelong endeavor. All two people can do is make a calculated wager that they can make a relationship work, and this can be done without knowing the other fully — all that is really required is the combined wills of two people. A basic understanding of the other’s character and values is highly useful as well, but if, for example, you look at cultures where arranged marriage is the norm, that isn’t even the couple’s job, it’s the families’.

In western culture the romantic ideal makes us believe that love is necessary. It definitely helps. But two people can love each other before sex. Sex will strengthen that love, but sex will not create love (though it may create the illusion of love).

Relationships are complex. People are complex. If you’ve already had multiple partners, sleeping with someone before marriage probably is a necessity for you; I won’t argue with that. What I am arguing is that for someone who has consciously made the decision to wait (and therefore has no previous experience to compare to), sex before marriage is not necessary, and therefore someone who makes such a decision isn’t missing anything vital (to them) and is not foolhardy to place other concerns over something as meaningless (to them) as “sexual compatibility.”