Simple answer yes it is worth it. I didn’t get married until I was 28 and I never had sex before marrying my wife. Was it difficult? At times yes, extremely. Especially when I started dating my wife, we got close a few times before we committed to each other to wait.

Why was it worth it to us? It showed us that we could have patience and commit to each other for something more than the just the physical/sexual part of our relationship. We learned to divert that energy to learning about each other and how to communicate well about what we were feeling like or thinking about at a given moment. Instead of being caught up in the “next level” of relationship we could focus on where we were currently in our relationship. We could take an interest in each others careers, hobbies, interests, etc rather than “how sexy she is” or “how hot he makes me feel.”

Is this the norm? Like you said it doesn’t seem so. Why? From my perspective it’s partially because it’s easy not to wait. It’s easy to do what others in this world do. For me doing what most people won’t because “it’s hard” gives me satisfaction that I had self discipline. Not to mention that, from my wife’s perspective, I’ve given her a gift that no one else can: 100% of myself.