Wait for sex and enjoy a happy married life......

If you managed to control your desire to have sex with your partner before tying the knot, have heart as the wait was worth it!

According to an interesting study, couples who waited longer to have sex while in a relationship were more likely to see higher levels of marital quality.

"Forty-two percent of those who said their relationship did not begin as a 'hook-up' were most satisfied on marital quality," said psychologists Galena K. Rhoades and Scott M. Stanley associated with the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

The participants who said their relationship began as a "hook-up" were less likely to have a higher quality marriage.

Of those who said their relationship began with a "hook up", a mere 36 percent ranked in the top 40 percent of overall respondents for marriage quality, the website KMBZ.com reported.

The authors analysed data from the US relationship development study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The study recruited over 1,000 Americans between 2007 and 2008 who were unmarried but in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex and between the ages of 18 and 34.

The authors also found that the majority of them had sex before marriage with multiple partners.

"But those few individuals who abstained reported a better quality of marriage than people who had multiple sexual partners," the authors concluded.