This week’s post by staff writer Stephany Salinas discusses the subject of saving sex for marriage. Do you agree? Disagree?
No sex before marriage.
Raise your hand if you are waiting until marriage to have sex.
I’m assuming not many of you did.
This is a concept I’ve never been able to understand. Granted, I’m not a very religious girl, so maybe that’s why, but I do know of people who have waited simply because they wanted to, not because some religion directed it. Personally, this sounds absolutely dangerous to me. I mean, I’m not exactly one to go around and sleep with randoms, but sleeping with one person, ever? And that’s not even what blows my mind the most. It’s more the fact that someone is waiting until marriage, the biggest commitment of them all, in order to do it. Literally.
Regardless of what anyone says, sex is important. Have you ever had sex and just weren’t really into it? Yeah, me too. I don’t get how anyone can risk finding something like that out AFTER you’ve already committed your life to this person. Now, I know, if you “love” someone, the sex should come naturally and you SHOULD bond and have that connection. I don’t know about all that.
I dated a guy a while ago that I thought I was in love with. And I was, at the time. When we had sex, it was awful! I hated it. And ultimately, I think that had a lot to do with why I fell out of love. There was no physical connection there, and the lack of it totally turned me off from the relationship (among other things, but it was a huge part of it!).
Then, there was a guy I dated a while back that I wasn’t in love with. I liked him, and I cared about him, but ultimately I just didn’t love him. Our personalities were so different, and quite frankly, he was weird. I’m almost positive I dated him strictly because I was physically attracted to him. The sex was great.
So, while sex and love are “supposed” to be linked together, I don’t think they always are. And I think it’s when you find that one person that you’re absolutely crazy about in and out of the bedroom that you realize, hey, this works. I like this.
And I’ve heard people say, “It’s not about the sex, it’s about love”. Okay, well, if sex wasn’t such an important part of love, why would you wait until marriage in the first place?
Yeah. Exactly.
And sorry to say it sister, but if you’re saying it’s not about sex, there’s a very good chance you’re a virgin. Or a freak. And not the kinky kind. Imagine saving yourself until marriage, and finally getting to do it, and you don’t click. Then what? Are you supposed to spend the rest of your life having mediocre sex with someone because you already married them? Do you go on with your life thinking that’s it? Does your temptation/curiosity get the best of you…eventually leading to cheating?
All of it just seems so..sad.
I’m not saying it’s wrong. Some people want to save themselves for marriage. By all means, do your thing, do you boo boo. I guess I just don’t grasp the concept of being kept in the dark about something until after it’s too late to back out. Granted, there is such thing as divorce, but..would you want to get a divorce and have the reason be “the sex sucked!”?
Probably not.
I would love to know what other people think about this. Are you saving yourself? Do you know someone who is/has? Is this important to you? Am I nuts for thinking sex is a big part of love and marriage, and something that should be explored BEFORE marriage?
My perspective…
Some wait for sex… Why? There’s a saying that goes, “The best plan is to profit by the folly of others…” That’s what this is about. I want to share with you a few things I’ve learned — the hard way — concerning girls & relationships. Specifically, I’ve jotted down reasons why I might not jump to early into the sack with a girl I intend ummm “longtime potential” …
1) I now know that sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…
During my sexpades in high school & in campus, I remember having an experience that I referred to as a “love hangover.” After being with a girl, the next morning I always felt an emptiness. I was so empty & had an anti-climax feeling. Media told me sex was the in thing & that i would get fulfillment. WHAT A BUNCH OF LIARS!!! That’s something you won’t see on TV or in the movies, but it happens a lot. There was emptiness, even regret, afterwards(well maybe not a lot of that if you ask me).
The “love hangover” was a strange occurrence for me. Mainly because sex was my “god.” As a male, it’s what I thought about morning, noon & night. So you would imagine that having sex would have been completely fulfilling — the crowning achievement in the worship of my “god.” And yet, there was always a lack of fulfillment afterwards.
Has that been your experience, too? Have you ever had a “love hangover”? If you have, you should stop and consider, “Why is that? Why is it that sex (especially too early in the relationship), if it’s so important to me, leaves me with an empty feeling?”
I remember being confused by this emptiness. I then concluded: “I just need more, that’s all.” (We often think this way about stuff we hope will fulfill us, then doesn’t, e.g. we get the car we’ve always wanted but then it’s just “okay” after awhile. Instead of realizing that a car can’t really satisfy us, we usually make the error of thinking, “Well, I guess that wasn’t the right car. A different one will give me lasting fulfillment.”)
But the emptiness continued. So, finally, I came to the conclusion that sex wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It gets too much hype. It’s not what the movies make it out to be. If it were, it would be completely fulfilling. There wouldn’t be any “emptiness.”
2) I now want to be more respectful towards women…
I’ve found that girls often don’t fully understand what’s going on when it comes to sex, i.e. their perspective on the whole thing is very different from a guy’s. Often a girl will justify sex by saying, “But I love him,” even if she doesn’t really want to go through with it. Why does that happen? It’s been said that, “Girls use sex to get love, guys use love to get sex.”
This is how it works: the girl is picturing marrying the guy some day; the guy is picturing everything he wants to do with the girl before he goes back to tell his buddies about it & while something inside her is telling her it’s the right thing to do, something inside the guy is telling him just the opposite, yet he proceeds. Why? For the physical pleasure no doubt, but also, I think, for another reason: it makes him feel like a man. But there is a great irony in that, for what is manly about deceiving a woman?
Something I’ve discovered is that, when you honor a woman, you are honoring yourself. Why? Because someday you will have regret & the regret will last much longer than the pleasure. In the movie Rob Roy, the main character says, “Honor is a gift a man gives himself.” When you honor a woman by doing what you know to be right in your heart (i.e. what’s in her best interest), you honor yourself & insure that you will have no long-lasting regrets to live with.
3) That’s somebody else’s wife…
Here’s what I mean: most of the girls I’ve been with are now married to other men. When I put myself in the shoes of those men, I wish that I hadn’t done what I’ve done. In fact, I might even like to punch myself in the nose for it.
And so it goes without saying that when I get married, I’m not going to like the idea that someone else has had his way with my wife. What about you? Do you like the idea of someone else being with your wife? If you have a girlfriend now & feel that way, think of how much stronger that feeling will be with your wife someday.
You can even take it a step further. That girl is someone’s daughter. What if she were my daughter? Or what if she were my sister? Would I want some guy like me taking advantage of her? I now see girls from a different perspective. They’re someone else’s future wife, someone else’s daughter, sister, etc.
4) Sex has killed my best relationships…
For example, I had the eye for this girl in grad school, eventually we started dating, I really liked her.She’s practically a “10″ for me. There was never a dull moment. We totally “clicked.” We basically fell into each other’s arms from the get-go.
Sex soon became the focus of our relationship. I stopped wanting to get to know her on any other level. So, instead of growing closer together, we actually started drifting apart.
That’s what I mean by “sex killed my best relationships.” People can relate on many different levels — emotionally, mentally, physically & spiritually. But when my girlfriend and I started relating mostly physically, it short-circuited the other parts of our relationship. As a result, the relationship as a whole started to go south. We might still be together today if we had waited.
I’ve seen this happen with countless relationships, not just others of my own, but those of many other people. And I think there’s a reason for this, which I’ll explain next.
5) Sex ruins the other parts of the relationship…
For me, two things happened once I had sex with a girl too quick. As I look back on it, I can say that they happened literally every time, although I was unaware of these dynamics at the time.
The two things were this:
1) I lost respect for the girl (even though I didn’t want to).
2) She began to mistrust me (even though she didn’t want to).
I don’t know why this happened, I just know that it did. Maybe it’s just built into “the system.” But one thing’s for sure: I’m not alone. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. I know many people having marital problems because they engaged in premarital sex. They go into the marriage with lack of respect & lack of trust, two absolute necessities for the health of any marriage.
I know a newlywed couple who have sex less than once a month because of this — he doesn’t respect her, she knows it & she doesn’t trust him, so she doesn’t want to give herself to him. It’s very sad & more common than you might think but nobody talks about this kind of thing in public. The movie & TV portrayals of couples having too-early sex before marriage never present it either. It’s like no one wants to acknowledge that it’s happening, even though it is.
6) Waiting to have sex will mean better sex …
Why? Because we’ll go into the relationship with me having more respect for her & her having more trust in me. One thing I’ve learned: if a girl doesn’t trust a guy, she doesn’t want to give herself wholly to him. Deep down, she doesn’t really enjoy being with him.
This is how it works. Since “girls use sex to get love, and guys use love to get sex,” a couple will have sex early. The girl does this to hold on to the relationship. The guy does it because he wants it even more than the relationship itself. Then,after the woman has what she wants: a commitment from the man. So she doesn’t need to use sex to get him anymore.
I’m not making this stuff up. The antidote: waiting to have sex will give the man a greater respect for his woman & the woman a greater respect for her man & consequently, they’ll have better & more frequent sex because they respect each other more & love each other more deeply.
7) Not having sex with other women will mean better sex …
Sex is a mysterious thing that causes a deep bond between people, even if we call it “casual.” The problem is this: the more I bond with other girls, the less I’ll be able to bond with my future wife. It’s like a piece of scotch tape — the more you use it on different surfaces, the less it sticks to things. After awhile, it won’t stick to anything.
If I bond with other girls before I get married, I won’t be able to bond as well with my wife someday. I won’t cherish her as much as I could have, and consequently I won’t love her as much as I could have. Each day that passes that I’ve remained faithful to my future wife means that my relationship with her will be better.
It’s a funny thing: our culture decries adultery, yet it freely condones premarital sex, even with multiple partners. That’s ironic. Because, if you take the element of time out of the equation, premarital sex is adultery. We can imagine how adultery would greatly injure a marriage relationship, maybe premarital sex actually has nearly the same result. It injures the potential bond between a man and a woman.
8) I don’t have to sleep with a woman to know if we’re “sexually compatible.”
Sex is meant to compliment a relationship, not be the most important aspect of it. That’s what I’ve found out. It’s supposed to be the icing on the cake when all the other aspects of your relationship are working well.
I’ve come to understand that the sex will be good if the rest of the relationship is good. That’s why I know I don’t have to sleep with my future wife to find out if we’re sexually compatible. If we get along in every other area, the sex will be fine.
Something else needs to said here. Another thing I think I’ve “discovered” is this: when you place sex as the determining factor of the relationship, it will probably result in poor sex. Think about it. If you put your sexual relationship under a microscope, always judging it and judging the relationship by it, it’s doomed to fail. It’s like being in prison. You’re locked in to something that is supposed to be freeing, not incapacitating.
But, when you focus on the other parts of the relationship & the sex isn’t the focus, then you’re freed up to have a more enjoyable sex life, with no pressure of having to make it always spectacular (because it won’t be.) And yet, I don’t think that as a college-age adult I was capable of not focusing on sex, that is, unless it wasn’t present at all. That’s why I think it’s best to wait altogether.