We are just talking about that in religious instructions…
We saw a film about people who think it is one of their greatest achievments not to have sex with their boy/girl friend.
They say it is hard to keep from doing it, cause they d like to. But they know god wouldnt aprove of it (and/or they are afraid of sexually transmitted desease).
Uhmkay. So they believe in it. That s fine. But the reasons are quite strange.
My teacher saied Jesus never says not to have premarital sex anywhere in the bible (he only talks about not to cheat on your partner).
and as for the second reason: C O N D O M S
Does anybody who has waited (or tried to wait) have any real reasons?
Plus: Does anybody here get the “give your virginity as a gift to your love” babble?
Cause I really dont get it.
Having sex is an emotionally intensive act for most of us. So it seems reasonable to wait untl you’ve found someone you love before you create the beast with two backs. I don’t think waiting for marriage is necessary though.
I don’t think it is babble. I think you should only have sex with those you love. Maybe I’m just corny.
When I was sixteen years old, my high school sweetheart and I vowed not to have sex. In fact, the very first day we met, we ended up discussing our opinions on abstinence. Our strong concordance on the issue was one of the reasons why we hit it off right away. I think both of us were swayed by the negative stereotype associated with premarital sex as well as the religious arguments against it (she was a devout Southern Baptist, and I had yet to discover atheism). We had bright futures ahead of us that we did not want to throw away, and we were both scared of our parents.
Our resolve lasted approximately one month. You’ve heard the saying “one thing led to another,” right? We were completely unprepared. Fortunately — and I still thank my lucky stars — she did not get pregnant. To this day I shudder to think about what could have happened.
Sex is he most difficult thing in the world to resist, especially when you’re a teenager with out-of-control hormones. While I commend those who are able to refrain from sex for whatever reason, I don’t think abstinence is a realistic goal to impose on everybody. A lot of kids may genuinely want to avoid premarital sex, and some may actually be successful, but I have a feeling that most will eventually end up down the same path that I followed.
The best thing we can do is provide kids with the necessary tools and knowledge to protect themselves. Don’t expect them to perform superhuman feats of willpower – you’re just setting them up for dangerous situations that they aren’t prepared to handle.
I don’t get it either. It’s a nice ideal, but like most ideals it falls apart in the real world. People have sex all the time for reasons other than love. Why else would prostitution remain so popular, despite efforts to stamp it out? Sex has always been a recreational pastime as well as an act of love.
I also think that since sex involves emotional intimacy it should be reserved for committed relationships. I think that letting your levels of physical and emotional intimacy get ahead of your commitment level is a recipe for hurt feelings and heartbreaks. To me since creating the beast with two backs creates a bond it makes since that if you only did it with one person your bond with them would be stronger than if they were just the latest.
Many Christians, especially conservative Christians, believe in heeding the Biblical injunctions against sex with people you aren’t married to. (That’s ‘adultery’ if one or both parties are married to someone else, and ‘fornication’ if neither person’s married, e.g. Mark 7:20-23.)
I can personally attest that that belief isn’t limited to fundies. My wife and I were romantically involved for two and a half years before we got married, but didn’t go ‘all the way’, so to speak, until our honeymoon. It’s not all that difficult; there are, after all, means of sexual release short of intercourse.
The key thing is whether or not you believe you’re called to obey those injunctions. If you’re not a Christian, they obviously don’t matter to you. Or if you’re a Christian, but believe those injunctions only made sense in an era before birth control methods became reliable, then it won’t be easy to abide by those rules because they make no sense to you. We felt called to save sex for marriage; to go against that would have been to go against an essential part of ourselves. That was an essential part of why it wasn’t that difficult for us.
With respect to reasons, I’m not sure I can provide any. All the answers I’ve heard anyone else give for why God would want people to abstain until marriage have seemed a bit too cut-and-dried to me, and divorced from the inner reality of it that I personally experience. I have reasons whose shape and texture I can sense, but I’ve long given up trying to put them into words. If you have some sort of living relationship with God, either these reasons are part of it, or they’re not, I expect. I would not urge anyone to follow this route simply because the Bible says so.
I am not a Christian, and I have never had sex (in any form). Waiting has been partially my choice, and partially circumstance. My reasons are many and varied, but basically boil down to the fact that I consider that first intimate contact something special, and am not interested in rushing in to anything; particularly not with someone I barely know. However, that’s not to say I’m waiting for marriage - as I’ve expressed in other threads, I don’t have a lot of patience for the institution of marriage, nor for the idea that as a woman I have to wait. Frankly, I don’t expect and wouldn’t want to have sex with someone who had waited “for me” - I think having one person in the act clumsy and confused is bad enough!
Still, there is something to be said for waiting, I guess. At least I don’t know what I’m missing…
I think that too - but the people in the film had been a couple for a long time before they got married - and they loved each other.
That s not what I meant though…
I dont think it is strange to wait with sex until you really love somebody, but to have the feeling that you have to keep your hymen for the one and only true love in your life.
I have heared people say that they regretted having had sex with a former boyfriend of them and not being able to “give their virginity” to their corrent s.o.
I think it’s a personal choice to save yourself for the one you marry and if someone has that self-control, more power to them. I’m not sure about being in a committed relationship before you have sex with someone. Maybe when you lose your virginity it should be with someone that you care about but after that I don’t think you have to be in a committed relationship to have sex.
But does that mean there is only one person in the world meant for you?
I always thought you could really love somebody - and sooner or later things might change - you break up - after a while you might love again.
So - according to the “true love waits” movement you have to marry the first person you really love?
RTFirefly what you saied sounds like it was the right thing for you. That s cool.
dogsbody … two firsttimers can have a nice time too… tried it.
It really seems to be alot about your upbringing.
My parents always stressed that before they met they lived “a la carte”. They both had had sex with more than one person before. They werent really going 60s style (if the one I love isnt there I ll love the one who is) but they got a fair deal of “experience”.
dodgy
Oops! My bad, there was supposed to be an IMHO after that statement. I’m perfectly sure that two first timers can enjoy themselves - I just know how clumsy and uncertain I am about trying anything new (and physical!).
I dunno, Dodgy, my parents were each others first, last and only, but my beliefs (and those of my sister) are quite different on the subject. Mom is definitely of the “wait until you’re married” school - Dad is a little more relaxed about it (strangely - he’s awfully overprotective of his little girls otherwise ;)) but believes you should at least wait until you’re with someone you genuinely care about who cares about you in return.
My parents are Christians either, but they waited, and they’re glad they did. As a single person, I’ve been waiting myself, and I don’t feel regret at doing so.
Sure, it’s a challenge. As you said though, it’s not that difficult. It’s not as unrealistic as most people seem to think.
While I completely support the decisions of people who believe it’s right for them to wait until marriage to have sex—and I completely concur with RTFirefly that premarital relationships can be just fine without it (I personally had a wonderful five-year relationship with a Catholic guy who chose to remain, at least technically, a virgin before marriage)—I also commend BornDodgy’s skepticism about the motives of those who try to push their “save-your-hymen-for-your-husband” views on everybody else.
To me, that has a bad smell of trying to impose rigid social controls on sexuality rather than helping everybody make the thoughtful and prudent choices that are right for them personally. Trying to make girls (in particular, though it’s not nice to do it to boys either) feel ashamed that they’ve somehow “spoiled” their “purity” by having sex before they marry really reeks of the days of chattel marriage when control of female sexuality was largely a commodity exchanged between men. Anybody who can’t love you just as much without your virginity doesn’t love you, period—and that goes for Jesus too.
The last thing our society needs to add to its twisted tangle of worries about sex is a renewal of the hymen fetish that the cult of mandatory virginity tends to encourage. Anybody who’s read Fanny Hill or other works of eighteenth- or nineteenth-century pornography probably recalls being kind of startled at the obsession of many of the male characters with “taking maidenheads” (and the more blood and pain the better: yuck!). There are even descriptions of a thriving subspecialty of the prostitution industry that dealt in fake maidenheads, with young whores trained to look and act frightened and inexperienced while simulating the anatomical details with sponges full of red dye. How many guys today would consider “taking a maidenhead” the chief sexual thrill that life has to offer? I think most people would regard that attitude as a little bit sick.
So while I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with waiting till marriage if that’s what you want, I think you’re right to be suspicious of the “virginity is a precious gift” propaganda that some people would like to foist on everybody else. Trying to shame people away from having sex by glamorizing virginity and telling non-virgins that they’re “spoiled” or “second-best” is IMHO precisely as bad as trying to shame people into having sex by glamorizing sexual experience and telling virgins that they’re “losers” or “failures”. Do what you think is right and don’t try to pressure anyone else.
Yes, Jesus will love us no matter what we do. He is also just and expects us to follow His will, which in this case is for women and men to remain chaste until marriage. It’s not about being punished and forced to not have sex, it’s about transcending the desires of the flesh for the sake of the kingdom. That means everything in moderation, and sex in a marriage blessed by God, where pleasure and the potential for babies is present. It means no sex, no masturbation, no fantasizing about sex; outside of marriage. A minister said it well, “I don’t have to tell you to be celibate, your love for Christ should impel you to.” I say all this to explain the Christian position, not to foist a belief on anyone else, but it shouldn’t be implied that Jesus would stop loving us for any reason.
gigi:Yes, Jesus will love us no matter what we do. He is also just and expects us to follow His will, which in this case is for women and men to remain chaste until marriage.
If that’s your interpretation of the divine will, fine by me.
It’s not about being punished and forced to not have sex, it’s about transcending the desires of the flesh for the sake of the kingdom. That means everything in moderation, and sex in a marriage blessed by God, where pleasure and the potential for babies is present.
Does that mean that (in your view) God does not want infertile or post-fertile married couples to have sex? I’m not familiar with that restriction as part of standard Christian views on sexual morality.
*It means no sex, no masturbation, no fantasizing about sex; outside of marriage. […] I say all this to explain the Christian position, not to foist a belief on anyone else […] *
Well, what you call “the Christian position” on these matters sounds to me quite different in some respects from what many Christians on this board consider to be true Christian morality. Which just reinforces the point that we all have different views about sexual ethics and we need to be extra careful not to assume that our personal ethical beliefs automatically apply to others.
*but it shouldn’t be implied that Jesus would stop loving us for any reason. *
That, I think, is something hardly any Christian would disagree with.
What I was trying to say that it is not that you have to marry the first person you love but that you should love the person you marry. Marriage is difficult under most circumstances and having that extra bond could help. However you still have to work at it, but if you are going to do it I think you should give it the best chance you can.
I’m not sure I really understand the concept either, BornDodgy.
I suppose for religious people who have been brought up on the doctrine that sex before marriage is sinful, sex before marriage would make them unhappy and feel as if they had done something wrong.
I can understand waiting until you’re really in love with someone, and you’re ready, to have sex for the first time. I’m not so sure about the standards being set lower for the second time, though.
