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*Originally posted by gigi *
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You can choose not to have sex; but masturbation? fantasizing? I dunno. I think Jesus would have included that under “All men cannot recive this saying, save to whom it is given…there be enuchs which have made themselve enuchs for the knigdom of heavens sake. He that is able to receive it let him recieve it.”
At least two posters remarked that it’s not that hard to wait for marriage, as it’s possilbe for a couple to reach sexual release without going all the way. But many funamentalists would forbid these acts as well; would even forbid masterbation. And they often oppose contraception. The message seems to be that no one should ever experience sexual pleasure unless it’s (a) within marriage, and (b) while trying to procreate.
Just what kind of life would I have if I tried to live by these rules? One possibility: My boyfrend and I, not wanting to wait any longer for sex, abandon any thought of higher education and get married right out of high school. Or perhaps we drop out of high school to marry. We find that sex is enjoyable; we do it frequently – and have 15 children. (Well, contraception is sinful! The Bible says so!) Alternative possibility: I put all thoughts of boys and sex out of my mind, stay in school, attend college, and marry in my mid-twenties. My husband and I decide we want three children. During the 50 or so years until death do us part, we have sex for three brief periods, while trying to get pregnant. Aside from those three brief periods, we are celibate. Unless we slip up, in which case we wind up with more kids then we’d planned on.
Does anyone really think that either of these life plans are good ones? Should anyone really try to live either of these plans?
Hazel: Does anyone really think that either of these life plans are good ones? Should anyone really try to live either of these plans?
Absolutely, if they feel it’s the right thing to do. I’m not any more comfortable with sexually liberated people condemning celibate (or super-procreative) lifestyles as “obviously unhealthy, unnatural, and wrong” than I am with religious conservatives condemning homosexual promiscuity, say, as “obviously unhealthy, unnatural, and wrong.” I may personally believe that some sort of happy medium between celibacy and hedonism will be best for most people; but that doesn’t mean that I get to say that the people at the extremes of the spectrum are wrong.
For my money, waiting until you marry someone before you Do the Horizontal Lambada with him/her is a bad idea. For a number of reasons:[ul][li]You won’t know if you’re sexually compatible together until you have sex together, and if it turns out you’re not right for each other then it’s a lot harder to back out if you have a marriage contract looming over your head.[/li][li]Even if you feel that young people are “unprepared” to have sex together, the desire to have sex with someone can make you rush into a marriage that you’re even less prepared for.[/li]http://www.theonion.com/onion3510/awkward_sex_encounter.html[/ul]
Coupla things to point out here:
Sex with someone you love is the greatest fun imaginable - you’ll find out someday. Sex with someone you DON’T love is as satisfying as masturbation, and generally has a lot of unpleasant emotional side effects (such as the knowledge that you let yourself be used for something that was no better than masturbation for the other person). Note that I didn’t say “marriage”, I said “love”. See Point 2.
If you do wait for marriage, and so does your partner, you’ll always be wondering in the back of your mind about what you may be missing. The urge to go find out can become irresistible to one of you. I think it’s much easier to make a marriage work if you both have enough experience, and maturity, to be sure you’re over that and ready to commit to each other in every way.
ElvisL1ves wrote:
I gotta disagree with this assertion. Sex with someone I don’t love is still much more satisfying than masturbation. (It’s a lot more work than masturbation, though.)
While I’m all in favor of responsible pre-marital sex, and I think tracer has some good points, I have to confess that this whole “you need to find out your sexual compatibility” thing has never made any more sense to me than the “you need to save your virginity as a gift for your husband” thing. I mean, how often do people who know each other well enough to get married, and love each other well enough to create a good marriage, really turn out to be “sexually incompatible”? What are we even talking about, anyway? The parts don’t fit? Tab A doesn’t go into Slot B? Hell, there are people of all different shapes and sizes and degrees of functionality who wind up in happy marriages with satisfying sex lives. Human beings are very sexually adaptable for the most part, and I’m dubious about the notion that well-balanced adults who genuinely love and desire each other (who are IMHO the only sort of people who should be getting married!) are really running a big risk of failure if they don’t give sexual intercourse a trial run first.
I suppose there are always cases like the famous Dear Abby letter from the undertaker’s bride, who was taken aback by the fact that on their wedding night her husband requested her to soak in a cold tub for half an hour and then lie absolutely still during copulation :), but surely most new spouses aren’t going to be springing little surprises of that sort on each other. Personally, I’ve never encountered unexpected “incompatibility” (or unexpected compatibility, for that matter) in a sex partner: the quality of the sex always strongly correlates with the quality of the emotional relationship. Sure, all guys (and all women, I’m sure) have their different good points and less-good points in terms of what best pleases your individual preferences, but as I said, human beings are very adaptable and usually manage to find ways to make the most of the experience.
So here’s one vote claiming that the assertion “unforeseen sexual incompatibility is a real marital risk for virgin spouses, so premarital abstinence is unwise” is no more generally valid than the assertion “damaged sexual purity is a real marital risk for non-virgin spouses, so premarital sex is unwise.” Anybody got evidence or testimony to challenge that?
Something else this old married person should have gotten into … I understand the “True Love Waits” program teaches that, for each person, there’s exactly one person in the world who’s your ideal partner, and all you have to do is wait for him/her to find you. You shouldn’t settle for just anyone else. Is that right, or am I misquoting?
If so, then sorry, that’s a fairy tale, and if you believe it, you’re going to grow old either lonely, or deluded about your partner and your marriage. There’s no Mr./Ms. Perfect out there knocking on doors looking for you. If they did, do you really think you’d be Ms./Mr. Perfect to them?
Real marriages are partnerships of 2 people who are committed to working with each other, communicating, sharing, but allowing each other their own space as well, and understanding of the fact that everyone including each other constantly changes as they grow. Even if Mr./Ms. Perfect DID suddenly show up, all ready to be your mate right out of the box, they wouldn’t stay a perfect match for long. Trying to keep any relationship unchanged while your lives change around you is futile - you have to keep communicating and committing, recognizing that your relationship will change with you both over time.
Or maybe you understand that already.
I think you forgot to include “IMHO” at the end.
I’m a believer in not bothering with sex unless its with someone you’re more than a little fond of. If you’re just passingly-interested, sure, it’s still fun, but enh, I can personally live just fine without it. Not worth the bother, really, and I’m not selfish enough to say, “That was fun, but go away and leave me alone now” like I would want to afterwards.
On the other hand, I don’t see how marriage has anything to do with love, and I’m not jealous enough to try to pretend that the people I care about shouldn’t be boffing anyone else in their spare time. So while I can understand “don’t bother with casual sex”, I don’t comprehend “don’t have sex until marriage”.
Of course, the subject is moot for me anyway, since there are a lot of people in this country who are quite set on keeping me from ever being able to marry even if I -did- want to, so maybe I’m coming from a biased perspective 
I don’t know Any female who hasn’t regretted having had sex outside of marriage.
Its simply using the other person for pleasure, then throwing them away when someone better comes along, or the warrantee runs out.
I am sorry for the few times I DID have sex outside of marriage and didn’t enjoy it at all.
Maybe its just me.
I can’t see how anyone can have sex with someone, then break up with them, ad infinitum and call themselves moral.
IMHO.
[Woody Allen]Don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love.[/Woody Allen]
I can see many advantages to the second plan. You never have to worry about an STD or whether your pregnant or just late. You never have to think if your partner is just using you for sex. IF you tell people you are planning to wait you eliminate alot of jerks from the dating pool. You never have to think of excuses why you have to get up early the next morning. You never have to worry if your mate is comparing your performance to previous dates. You don’t have decisions like abortion/adoption/single parent. Plus if you are protestant you can have all these things and all the sex you want too.
I know quite a few women who haven’t regretted it, and of course any number of men with no such regrets. I guess it depends on who you hang out with.
It may be that way for you. But I’d have to ask, why is that any more true of having sex than, say, swapping spit? BTW, I’d contend that, regardless of beliefs or the level of sexual involvement, most romantic breakups occur not because “someone better comes along,” but because things just don’t work out between two people.
gigi - one can believe in abstaining from sex outside of marriage, and still believe there are allowable levels of intimacy. (The Bible is silent on the subject, so there’s a lot of room to reach your own conclusions, no matter what one believes about the Bible.) If I were a single person, and were masturbating while thinking about such allowable intimacies that my GF and I had been engaging in, what would be wrong with that? If doing X is OK, then how can fantasizing about doing X be immoral?
Getting back to something you said earlier:
I’d have to take strong exception to this. As I see it, God gave us this world, and created us with certain desires, because it was good, as the Genesis 1 phrase goes. Christianity isn’t Buddhism or neo-Platonism; Christians don’t believe the world is a place God put us in, in order to test our ability to transcend it, but rather because this was a good world where we could learn to live in harmonious relationship with Him and with each other. (We’re doing a pretty lousy job of it, so far, but that’s another story. ;))
IMO, sexual desires are part of that package. They’re good, just like the ability to hammer a nail is good; however, it’s possible to misuse both. I’m not transcending anything when I resist the temptation to hammer a nail through some idjit’s skull; rather, I’m exercising self-control in conjunction with an awareness of right and wrong. Same thing when I don’t try to boink my neighbor’s wife.
Puddleglum, the second scenario was a couple who believed contraception was immoral, against god’s law, or whatever, and who therefore had sex only when they wanted a child. This would mean that they would spend most of their married life abstaining. Having three kids would mean that there would only be three brief periods in their married life when they were sexually active.
Kimstu, the point to my post was that these couples were following a set of rules that, IMHO, pretty much preclude a happy life; that lead to a life no one would choose freely. I doubt very much that many people follow these rules. Any who start out in life trying to probably change their minds sooner or later.
In the first scenario, the couple cut their educations short (what kind of jobs can they get?) and have baby after closely spaced baby. I can see wanting a large family, but who wants 15, one right after another? In the 2nd scenario, why whould any couple want to abstain from sex for most of their married life? I don’t think anyone wants to live like that. Except perhaps people who genuinely dislike having sex. Their best bets would be either to not marry at all, or to find a mate who feels the same way. (Unless they belong to a religion that says you are not allowed to marry unless you can procreate and intend to do so.)
IMO,these are not rules any normal person would or should follow. I doubt very many even try. Any who do, the word that comes to mind is “brainwashed”. They’ve been brainwashed, as children, into beliving this is what god wants of them. Since the rules are almost impossible to really live by, this is a recipe for failure and unhappyness.
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I’ve had tons of sex outside of marriage and I don’t regret any of it. It was all a lot of fun and was a great learning experience for me. Without my past, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.
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I have morals… it’s just that my morals are different than your morals… and there’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone’s ideas of right and wrong are different.
I have a friend who met her husbandwhen she was 19 (and still a virgin) and she had sex with him and about 6 months later they got married. They’re still married - 8 years later - but she’s told me, on more than one occassion, that she wishes she would have slept around a little more because she doesn’t enjoy sex with her husband but has nothing to compare it to so she thinks that that is how it’s supposed to be. Her husband wasn’t a virgin when they met but he knew that she was… maybe he’s just doing it to get himself off and not worrying about satisfying her and she just needs to speak up, I don’t know. I just think it’s sad that she’s never going to have great sex… all because she married the first man she slept with. She’s either going to wonder what it would be like to be with someone else or she’s going to go out and actually find someone else.
Hazel: *Kimstu, the point to my post was that these couples were following a set of rules that, IMHO, pretty much preclude a happy life; that lead to a life no one would choose freely. I doubt very much that many people follow these rules. Any who start out in life trying to probably change their minds sooner or later. […]
IMO,these are not rules any normal person would or should follow. I doubt very many even try. Any who do, the word that comes to mind is “brainwashed”. They’ve been brainwashed, as children, into beliving this is what god wants of them. Since the rules are almost impossible to really live by, this is a recipe for failure and unhappyness. *
Hazel, while I don’t consider these rules any more personally appealing than you do, my point is that by making such blanket (n.p.i. :)) statements you are being just as judgemental as any religious conservative who declares that homosexual sex, for example, is obviously against God’s and nature’s plan and is “a recipe for failure and unhappiness.”
Like it or not, the fact is that there have indeed been many married couples who had fifteen or twenty children, a lifetime of hard work, and little formal schooling, and were very happy with their lives. There have also been individuals, and even married couples, who spent most of their lives in celibacy voluntarily dedicated to the service of God, and were very happy with their lives.
Yes, these are difficult lives to lead, and are probably not the best choice for most people. But there’s little room to doubt that some have genuinely found such lives to be right for them. I think that by dismissing such choices are intrinsically “brainwashed” or “unhealthy” or “abnormal” or “almost impossible to live by”, you’re adopting the same intolerant principle that many conservatives use: namely, that we have the right to condemn the consensual sexual behavior of other adults even if they appear to be happy, responsible, and functional.
My point is that coercive pressure is no better when it’s trying to encourage sexual activity than when it’s trying to restrict it. Sexual morality is a matter of personal conviction and principle, and nobody IMHO should be trying to tell other people what they should choose to do with their bodies, whether they’re nuns, polymorphous perverts, or anything in between.
(I think this also applies to the case of Rachelle’s friend who isn’t happy with her married sex life. IMHO (though of course you know her and I don’t), her problem isn’t that she has no other sexual experience to compare it to, it’s that her husband is not concerned about her sexual dissatisfaction, or maybe that she’s not letting him know about her sexual dissatisfaction. I know married women who were virgins before marriage who are happy as larks: sure, they don’t know what sex is like with somebody other than their husbands, but if the sex with your husband is great, who the hell cares?! I’ve also known a couple married women who weren’t virgins before marriage and were not happy with their married sex lives and didn’t really know how to fix it. In short: premarital sex is not the answer, premarital abstinence is not the answer, there is no universal rule for a fulfilling sex life. You have to do what seems right to you.)
Why, Kimstu, that is the universal rule!
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