Lily Dunn
Posted on 06/14/2014 10:06:08 AM PDT by Gamecock
I've heard people say that growing up as an evangelical meant they never talked about sex. This wasn’t my experience. I grew up in the thick of evangelical purity culture and we talked about sex A LOT. We just spent all of that time talking about how and why NOT to have it.
As someone who waited until I was married to have sex, I was assured that I would be guaranteed an easy and rewarding sex life. When reality turned out to be different, I was disappointed and disillusioned. Only through gradual conversations with other married friends did I realize I wasn’t alone.
I started to wonder if maybe the expectations themselves were wrong. Maybe what I’d been told or inferred about post-marital sex simply wasn’t true.
Here are four of the biggest lies about sex I believed before marriage
1. Any and all physical contact is like a gateway drug to sex.
Once in high school I attended a big Christian youth conference. One night, one of the chaperones addressed the girls: “Girls, we have noticed some very inappropriate touching going on...”
The inappropriate touching she meant turned out to be two high school couples in the youth group holding hands. This woman was deadly serious. “I know it may not seem like a big deal to you,” she said. “But hand-holding leads to OTHER THINGS!”
I heard similar things from parents, teachers, church leaders and books. In my church it was not unusual for people to pledge not only to save sex until marriage, but even to save their first kiss for their wedding day. “Don’t start the engine if you aren’t ready to drive the car,” and other similar metaphors warned me that any physical contact was a slippery slope straight into the jaws of fornication.
On this side of things, I can honestly say that there are SO many conscious decisions you have to make between kissing and having sex. Despite what Hollywood says, clothes do not take themselves off and bodies do not magically and effortlessly fit together.
If you are committed to waiting until you’re married to have sex, there are many valid reasons to set boundaries on your physical relationship, but the fear of accidentally having sex shouldn’t be one of them.
2. If you wait until you are married to have sex, God will reward you with mind-blowing sex and a magical wedding night.
Before my wedding night, I had been told that honeymoon sex isn’t usually the best sex. I had heard that good sex takes work. I knew that it would probably be uncomfortable at first. But what nobody ever, EVER told me was that it was possible that it just might not work at all at first. On my wedding night, my mind and heart were there, but my body was locked up tighter than Maid Marian’s chastity belt.
I entered marriage with the firm conviction that God rewards those who wait, only to find myself confounded by the mechanics. I felt like an utter failure, both as a wife and a woman. And while we did (eventually) get things working, this was hard, frustrating, embarrassing and a huge blow to our confidences.
Saving sex for marriage is not a guarantee that you will have great sex or that sex will be easy. All it guarantees is that the person you fumble through it with will be someone who has already committed to love you forever.
3. Girls don’t care about sex.
As a teenager and young adult I cannot count the times I heard something to this effect: “Boys are very visual and sexual, so even though you aren’t thinking about sex, you need to be careful because you are responsible for not making them stumble.”
Let’s disregard for now how degrading this is toward men and focus on the underlying assumption that boys are sexual and girls aren’t. For years I was told that “girls don’t care about sex.” Well, as it turns out, I do. This has been a deep source of shame for me. For a long time I felt like a freak, until I started to realize that I wasn’t the only one, not by a longshot. But I never knew it because no one would admit it.
Many girls (yes, even Christian girls) think about sex. Many girls (yes, even Christian girls) like sex. This doesn’t make you a freak. It doesn’t make you unfeminine or unnatural. God created us, both men AND women, as sexual beings. Enjoying sex makes you a human being created by God, in the image of God, with the capacity and desire to love—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and sexually.
4. When you get married, you will immediately be able to fully express yourself sexually without guilt or shame.
Many Christians have spent years—from the day they hit puberty until their wedding day—focusing their energy on keeping their sex drives in check. Then, in the space of a few hours, they are expected to stop feeling like their sexuality is something they must carefully control and instead be able to express it freely. And not only that—but express it freely with another person.
Many of us have programmed guilt into ourselves—this is how we keep ourselves in check throughout our dating relationships. And that “red light” feeling we train ourselves to obey doesn’t always go away just because we’ve spoken some vows and signed some papers.
It took me several months to stop having that sick-to-my-stomach guilty feeling every time I was together with my husband. Not everyone experiences this, but for the many people who do, it’s terribly isolating. Once again we’re experiencing something our churches and communities never acknowledged as a possibility. We feel alone and broken and filled with a profound sense that this isn’t the way it’s meant to be.
I don’t regret waiting until I was married to have sex, and I’m not advocating that churches stop teaching that sex is designed for marriage. But I do think there is something seriously wrong with the way we’ve handled the conversation.
If our reason for saving sex until marriage is because we believe it will make sex better or easier for us, we’re not only setting ourselves up for disappointment, but we’re missing the point entirely. Those of us who choose to wait do so because we hold certain beliefs about the sacredness of marriage and about God's intentions and wishes for humanity, and we honor these regardless of whether they feel easier or harder. In the meantime, we in the evangelical church has a lot of work to do correcting the distorted ways we talk about sex and sexuality, especially to our youth.
gusopo13 - talk about simple common sense boiled down to a single sentence.
Yep.
I keep remembering that they are God's COMMANDMENTS, not "suggestions."
Ignorance about one's body isn't as bad as being ignorant about God and His commandments. There are priorities.
There are possibly males who are equally ignorant.
I agree with the other poster, you summed it up so simply.
Problem is, one cannot prove a negative. Thus, all the immorals who think nothing of any kind of sex (yes, showing your nipple counts) will not think much of your pronouncement. They’ll dismiss it with “I never had any trouble!” But how much less would there have been?
“In the meantime, we in the evangelical church has a lot of work to do correcting the distorted ways we talk about sex and sexuality, especially to our youth.”
I guess that would depend on the church. Based on some churches I visited before settling into one, I’d say there are a lot more problems with evangelicals compromising on sexuality than with evangelicals promoting abstinence.
And since the surrounding society is telling girls to have sex at around 13, and to be experts by 16, there needs to be a counter message that says sex is NOT the focus of a man or woman’s life.
This sentence boggled my mind: “2. If you wait until you are married to have sex, God will reward you with mind-blowing sex and a magical wedding night.” That is NOT something I’ve ever heard preached or taught. We do not abstain from premarital sex so God will give us “mind-blowing sex and a magical wedding night”! That ranks up there with the folks teaching that we tithe so God will give us more and we’ll become rich!
We do it because it is God’s plan for a husband and wife to learn together and because we’re to make loving each other under God our objective, not “mind-blowing sex”. It makes one wonder how many other errors she has been taught about God, justification and sanctification.
1. Sex is MEANT to be enjoyed. (Which is precisely WHY it is made to be so enjoyable in the first place. It's supposed to be enjoyable.)
2. Sex is meant to be the reward at the CULMINATION OF A RELATIONSHIP. Not at the start of one, where, once experienced, everything is likely to be downhill from there. We are first supposed to enjoy each other's company, get to know the person first. Hold hands. Learn to enjoy that. Then hugging, other stuff, frolicking in the fields, etc. If you begin with the culmination, the hand-holding and frolicking can't be as interesting, because they don't lead to the, eh, uh...culmination part. ;)
Exactly - this makes the focus of the teaching “you”, not God or others. The teaching is supposed to make one think less about oneself, not reward oneself.
But many, many churches of all kinds fail in teaching just about everything. It’s only human, unfortunately.
Showing your nipple is sex...?
The only legitimate basis of her complaint that I see, is the build-up and over-promising of immediate sexual fulfillment upon marriage after remaining correctly chaste up until that point. It is correct to say that men are very easily stimulated via visual means, whereas women are much less so, to the point that saying they’re not is reasonably accurate. Avoidance of leading men into temptation, since men can be more easily led astray due to their very physiology, is a reasonable and honorable objective.
Regarding sex once married, and to be perhaps a little too blunt, many women have to learn how to reach orgasm and it’s not necessarily an easy thing to achieve. It’s not hard-wired into women’s physical response the way that men are. In a culture that has become so completely saturated with sex, I suppose it’s tempting to overstate the reward for not participating until married in order to hopefully head off the possibility of straying. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of women will need to learn, the first experience will involve some amount of pain, and it may take a while with a considerate and patient husband for the act itself to become enjoyable.
I have run into the legalistic thing on #1.
I had driven a friend to church for Sunday morning service, then went to a local restaurant for Sunday brunch. During the evening service, I was taken aside by one of the deacons. What I had done was apparently just the same as jumping into bed with her. Needless to say I had shortly left that church.
My car was also an issue as well, a 280ZX. Pagan car!
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Lily Dunn
“The earthly reward for adhering to God’s commandments is that it saves you a whole lot of trouble.”
I don’t see any of the four items mentioned in those commandments.
They lied? You mean that is NOT the reason I need glasses?
Totally agree. It is such a distortion, purposeful or otherwise of a healthy Biblical-based view of Sex. God created it to bond a man and wife together, for procreation as well as committment and intimacy.
It’s why Hebrews states “The Bed in Marriage is undefiled” - i.e., between a man and wife - with love and respect driving it, have at it.
It’s why Paul writes about husbands and wives not owning their own bodies but they own (read share) the others’ - and NOT to use Sex as a weapon or punishment. Why he further states to NOT deny each other “Except for fasting and prayer, lest you become tempted”. So God knows full well how He made us - happy full sex life in marriage is great to prevent adultery.
And finally, Anyone ever sit down and read Song of Solomon?? A very passionate and erotic (in moral way) book. It’s explicit in the Godly way - between man and wife. God put that in there for us to know full well how to feel about our mate.
I remember several years back where a survey was done and they found that highly religious people - married Christian couples, had the highest percentage of a satisfied sexual life in their marriage - confounded the pollsters - (and probably Madonna - typical idiot who thinks we hate Sex)
Couple caught having sex behind frosted glass windows in Italian court building, forcing the suspension of a trial
A great book on the subject.
The Act of Marriage by Tim LaHaye.
It is immoral to show things associated directly with sex. So in those terms, yes showing female nipple is.
An article like this puts to be the lie that is being spread around that Catholics leave Catholicism because of moral issues.
I am a Christian church goer now, but didnt really grow up faith-based, but here goes:
As far as the zero tolerance for any physical contact, yes, that’s what some of them believe. I think it’s a slippery slope argument, but on the other hand, some slopes truly are slippery.
The physical problems that she mentions on the wedding night sound like a little-discussed medical problem that some women have. My heart goes out to her on this one. I hope anybody with this has a patient partner and knowledgable doctor.
She’s indeed right that its unrealistic for people (esp. women) who have been warned away from kissing to turn things on full blast like a faucet on the wedding night.
It sounds to me as if a lot of well meaning stage one thinkers are using trucks and scare tactics on the kids to get them to wait until marriage. Since the culture basically discounts and ridicules virginity, I can sympathize with what they’re up against.
But instead they should give the kids some credit for smarts and be more real with them. Tell them since the fall, sex has been fraught with problems but the problems are generally worse when you’re not in a loving marriage. Don’t be afraid to talk about happiness, a worthwhile goal, and delayed gratification, not just in sex, but in other things, like finances. Delayed gratification is often a big part of happiness in the long run. Unless they are in a bubble with other kids of their background, they probably have friends who are sexually active and having problems because of it. There are certainly plenty of examples with public figures, too.
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