No secretive cult here, only a guy reading his Bible!
Not interested in what the mainstream
"thinks" only it what the Bible says. Looking for the narrow gate.
Okay... when most of us look up topics, they tend to do a word search and consider it over.
Divorce, fornication, marry... done.
But there was a Jewish custom of testing every bride for her virginity after marriage, and if a groom found out his bride (public declaration by ceremony) was not a virgin, he could dissolve the marriage.
Deut 22
"If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then turns against her, and charges her with shameful deeds and publicly defames her, and says, `I took this woman, but when I came near her, I did not find her a virgin,' then the girl's father and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of the girl's virginity to the elders of the city at the gate.
The girl's father shall say to the elders, `I gave my daughter to this man for a wife, but he turned against her; and behold, he has charged her with shameful deeds, saying, "I did not find your daughter a virgin." But this is the evidence of my daughter's virginity.' And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city.
So the elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him, and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give it to the girl's father, because he publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. And she shall remain his wife; he cannot divorce her all his days. But if this charge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin, then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house; thus you shall purge the evil from among you.
In light of this, physical union would not be a sign of marriage, but of fornication.
See also
Ex 22:16 If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged, and lies with her, he must pay a dowry for her to be his wife. (Implying the formalities are necessary for marriage)