The American Boxed Chocolate Manufacturers recently reported that 29 percent of all guys believe giving a woman a box of chocolates will make her more willing to have sex. But if candy-makers thought this finding was apt to spur huge chocolate sales this Valentine’s Day, they were in for a big surprise.

That’s because there are growing signs that many young single people are deliberately avoiding early sexual activity. A recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) found that between 1990 and 1997 the number of high school guys who are "sexually experienced" dropped from 61 percent to 49 percent. And the number of high school guys who are "currently sexually active" fell from 43 percent to 33 percent.

These numbers, combined with NCHS data showing a similar–but less pronounced– decline in sexual activity among high school girls suggest we could be in the early stages of a major counterrevolution in youth sexual behavior.

Indeed, a UCLA research team reports that the number of college freshmen who say casual sex is OK has dropped more than 10 percentage points in the last decade–and is now lower than at any point in the last quarter-century.

Curiously, a number of recent Hollywood films have depicted young single men seriously questioning whether commitment-free sex promotes lasting happiness.

For example, the 1997 movie, "The Mirror Has Two Faces," features an attractive single guy who has found that the promiscuous life is hollow and void of meaning. Believing sex to be a hindrance to true intimacy, he goes looking for a female companion who will be his platonic soul mate, only to discover that the ultimate expression of human intimacy is found in full-fledged married life.

Similarly, in the 1997 film, "Good Will Hunting," Matt Damon plays a cocky young street-fighter who refuses to listen to anyone’s advice until one day he is told by a court-appointed psychologist that he doesn’t have "the faintest idea" about the difference between marital love-making and casual sex. It is a poignant and sobering moment for Mr. Damon’s character, who for the first time realizes he has learned everything there is to know about sex except the most important thing of all—which is that sex is supposed to be a celebration between two people who share a marital commitment to "be there forever, through anything" (as Will Hunting’s mentor puts it).
Moreover, in the 1998 Adam Sandler film, "The Wedding Singer," the protagonist is a young guy who falls in love with a girl he wants to marry and "grow old with"; the antagonist is a promiscuous "real man" who brags about his sexual conquests; and in the film’s pivotal scene, Mr. Sandler’s character is told by an older friend that years of having a "different chick every night" have left him "miserable."

To be sure, these themes are not the dominant messages one finds on MTV or on most teen-oriented television sitcoms. But they do appear to be in ascendancy.

Cinema expert Gregory Elmer says we should not be surprised to find young people more often drawn to messages offering moral and spiritual grandeur than those that appeal to baser instincts. Mr. Elmer says this is part of the reason Marines ("We’re looking for a few good men") tend to have more masculine appeal than the Army ("Be all that you can be").

It may also explain why so many young people today have been uninspired by the "safe sex" message. As Boston University graduate student Michael Foley recently observed, "We have witnessed a concerted effort to sterilize our erotic attachments, to sap them of their danger but also of their vigor. The flat, unerotic words we now use confirm this. Instead of ‘lover’ and ‘beloved,’ we now have ‘significant other’ and ‘partner’ (a term which lends to the affairs of the heart all the excitement of filling out a tax form)."

The quest for grandeur may also help explain the recent rise of youth-initiated campaigns to save sex for marriage such as "True Love Waits"(TLW). In the last six years, hundreds of thousands of young people have signed TLW commitment cards. And while the vast majority of these pledge-makers are churchgoing youth (a population group the National Institute for Health-Care Research says has been growing in the 1990s), there is evidence that premarital abstinence increasingly appeals to many non-religious young people as well.

Now, no one knows how this growing interest in true love will affect boxed chocolate sales. But Americans should take heart that many young people today appear to be longing for a grandeur in male-female relationships that has been sorely missing since the advent of the sexual revolution.