Young teens cannot be trusted to control their hormonal urges, so they were rarely ever given the opportunity. Even in large towns, those who have reached a marrying age, have their choices limited to those they grew up with, which may be as few as a dozen of the other gender, and despairing for anyone seeking their one true live. Those in education tend to have more choice, but they also need to wait longer. Work starts at 14 and workers may marry. But the earliest that students can wed is 18, and for the gifted it is often much older – we cannot have baby making interfering with their studies.
You can kiss someone at a younger age, and it is encouraged, albeit in chaperoned or tightly controlled events. So at least when you do get married – the only way for a young person to get laid – they have some idea of what their other is like physically.
You stay married until your kids are married, with exceptions made for infertility and children who make an oath to never marry. But once your obligation is up, once your kids have left the nest, you must separate from your spouse, and have no intimacy for one whole year, while you consider who will join you in the next marriage. Which is bloody annoying if you choose the same person again. And they choose you again.
Extramarital affairs are rampant. Put it this way, nobody ever says “you have your fathers eyes”.
A visitor from a far off land (not completely unheard of) might describe the Emergery as a place where everything is prohibited and therefore anything goes.
