Zent, I appreciate your honesty, but I also feel you have fallen into the lie the media has been stuffing down our throats at least since the 60's, the lie that "sexual compatibility" should be explored before marriage.
Sex without marriage is dangerous physically, emotionally and above all spiritually. Physically it exposes you to the danger of STDs and unplanned pregnancy. Emotionally it attaches you to a person who may be wrong for you, not what the Lord has planned at all.
Even more dangerous, sex without marriage opens the door for Satan's hosts to attack you and take you away from the one relationship that means more than everything else--your relationship with God.
Sex without marriage is sin. Psalm 66:18 says, "If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear." In other words, if you are in continual ongoing sin then your prayer life is ineffective. Worse, you've left the protective covering God puts over His people, the hedge of protection around us, Job 1:10.
Moreover, the Bible says, "Be not dismayed, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sows that will he also reap." What do you think sin reaps? Doesn't it reap the very things Satan wants to happen to you, so that he can steal from you, kill you and destroy you, John 10:10?
Jesus said that He came so that we might have life and have it abundantly, John 10:10. I am a witness to this: If you walk in the Lord's ways, you will be blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. But what blessing can there be if you are not even under God's covering and protection? You have become an open target for every plan of the enemy.
Consider your ways, the book of Proverbs counsels, be wise. There is a way which seem right to a man but the end of that way is death, Prov. 14:12. Don't go the way of death. Even if Satan doesn't attack you for a while when you enter into sin (sin profits for a season, remember?), in the end that way of life brings destruction.
Surely as a child of God, God means for you to have something much better than this. He wants you to have life, and for your life to count for something. He wants you to have great rewards in eternity. Not everyone who goes to heaven receives the same reward.
Be blessed.