POLL: Premarital Sex

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LNT, you make a good point. However I think that what one should wait for, what one should save one's heart in order to be shaped by, is love, not marriage. If one truly falls in love, one will undoubtedly plan to marry that person (unless one doesn't believe in marriage, in which case one would most likely fall into a married lifestyle, minus the ruitual and label). And if one feels deep enough emotions to want to get married, I believe one should be free, and that one is prepared, to be physically intimate. Granted, wanting to commit on the level of marriage does not guarentee marriage (in other words, one could have a change of heart, or certain unforseen circumstances could end the relationship), but then again marriage does not guarantee everlastig commitment, especially thesedays. And like I said in an earlier post, commitment does not come with marriage, marriage only affirms that commitment in front of witnesses (friends, family, priest, state, God, ect.).

 

Moving away from the obvious religious reasoning, why is sex so 'sacred' and should only be shared by a loving couple? You don't have to love somebody to enjoy having sex with them. You don't have to have sex with somebody to show that you love them. So why is it so... 'sacred'?

Being a young male I feel it's not that big a deal. It's great with somebody you do love but it's still good with somebody you don't. I would compare it to going to a sports match. You can still go and have fun if you don't follow the team, you will have more fun if you do follow the team or you can not go at all and still cheer for the team you follow from home. Sure, sex is a bit more complex but when you get down to brass tacks, it's just another way of having fun.

Certainly, there can be a situation where one of the partners veiws the sex as emotional affermation of love or something, but not always. Sometimes two people just want to enjoy each other, lust, like, love. What is so bad if it's not love?

 

@Ab:

That was me, by the way. The same applies to Abomination's latest post. Casual sex has some very heavy and usually bad impacts on a person's psyche.

@Deepfae:
Again we come to the issue of, if you love each other that much, and you believe in marriage, why not marry now? If you aren't ready to start a family, settle down, whatever, are you really ready for sex and all the consequences that can come with it, even protected?

@Divorce in general:
I think there are actually very few things that can ruin a relationship and justify divorce. Just about anything can be recovered from, even most issues of adultry, if both parties are committed and willing to do what's neccessary.

 

I agree with NOG on casual sex. Not only can it lead to objectifying the gender you are sleeping around with, but it can lead to emotional letdown, and a growing, gnawing sense of lonliness as one continually finds one's "fun" accomponied by an emptyness at the lack of meaningful emotion after sex.

@NOG: What if you can't settle down yet? What if you are still in collage, or simply don't have the resources needed to start a family? Or, assuming neither of these situations apply, there is the fact that relationships come in stages. One doesn't fall in love with someone else, then ask them to marry them the next day. Nor does one get engaged, then marry the next week. One can love some one, and want to marry them, but not propose because one feels that one needs ones relationship to grow to the point where one is absolutely sure that one's emotions will last for the rest of one's life. To do otherwise is to throw oneself into a relationship that is not fully developed before it moves on to the stage of marriage, and this leads to an increased chance of unhappiness and divorce. But while waiting for the relationship to grow, but nevertheless being in love, what harm does sex bring?

 

I agree with deepfae. To use myself as an example, I dated my wife for about 7 months before I asked her to marry me. From what I have seen from others, 7 months is a relatively short courtship. Also, it's not like you ask her to marry you and head down to the chapel when she says yes. It takes time to plan a wedding, and so it was another 7 months from the time we got engaged to the time we got married.

It was at the time that we got engaged that we moved in together. Upon formally getting engaged, we started living as if we were married. Not only were we co-habitating, but we were splitting bills, merging some of our financial stuff, bought a house, etc. It is fair to say that at the point we became engaged, we were committed to marrying each other, but because of necessary scheduling delays, we didn't formally get married for another 7 months.

Now, while it took me 7 months to ask my would-be wife to marry me, it's not like it took us 7 months to fall in love with each other. But, as deefae says, you don't fall in love with someone, and ask them to marry you the very next day. And I personally think that sex strengthened our relationship. It's not like it did any long lasting harm either - my wife and I are, if anything, more committed to each other now after three years of marriage than we were when we first got engaged.

 

I completely agree on the stages issue, and the resources. I've dated my gf for more than 4 years. We knew we were going to marry after about 1.5 years, but we're poor college students and we each live with our parents. Once one of us is making real money, we will get married.
The issue however, is the significance and consequences of sex. Aside from our religious reasons, we aren't having sex because we can't support a family, and that's a real risk. To speak about the uncertainty of contraceptives, my gf's parents were on 3 different forms of contraception when they concieved their third child! Three kinds! Nothing is absolute.
And as for the feelings issue, love isn't a feeling, its an action. The feeling follows the action. You can choose to love people you hate and, after awhile, you will feel it, too. You can choose to hate people you lover, though I wouldn't suggest trying it, and the feelings will follow the actions. Regardless of your relationship, there will be times when the feelings aren't there. That is when real love takes over. The action fills in the gaps.
If you aren't sure you're ready for THAT kind of a commitment, are you really ready for sex? As has been said, sex has severe psychological and emotional impacts. It can put a lot of stress on a relationship. This is why the Bible reserves sex for marriage.

 

NOG, I'm not quite sure what you mean by love being an action as opposed to a feeling. When I lie in bed at night, my mind often wanders to my girlfriend, evoking a well of emotions in me. When I think of her, or when I'm with her, I feel in love with her. Please elaborate, because I don't understand where the action comes in, unless you mean acting on the love, in which case I would argue that one needs to feel love before acting on it.

What is the commitment you are reffering to? Do you mean not acting on your anger toward your signficant other because you know that you love her, and remmber that even in times of anger and frustration?

Yes, we have established that sex CAN have severe psychological and emotional impacts. The ones we have discussed are objectifying the gender you sleep with, and feeling emotionally let down after sex that is not backed up with love. However, in a lasting, stable, loving relaionship, these consequences become non-existent. Having only one partner (even if you have had other partners before) does not lead to objectifying his/her gender. The people who objectify others are people who sleep around a lot, not your average person. And if the relationship is loving, then there are emotions that back up the sex: this prevents letdown afterwards. Granted, in the past (such as the cultures the Bible descibes) loving, lasting relationships outside of marriage were rare, if existant at all. Therefore, it is plausible to assume that warnings agaismt premaritial sex in the Bible, if taken to reflect the viewpoints of the poeple at the time, were practical in an age when sex outside of marriage was not in a loving, lasting relationship, and preformed out of lust, not love.
But today things, are different, and I beleive the change to the modern world presents a situation where premarital sex is aceptable.

 

Actually, the suitor, uh, bought the daughter. The dowry was paid to her father......who kept it.

 

Nice quote, LNT, but as a counter, I would offer this one:

"Do not envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool would think it paradise."

Ignorance IS bliss, yes. If that's how someone wants to live, more power to them. However, it's the sort of bliss that only comes from disassociation, and it makes leaving one's metaphorical backyard extremely difficult (assuming the worst happens). I would rather face reality in all its starkness than bury my head in the sand - but hey, that's just me.

I don't refute the points that have been made about the potential for emotional damage from casual sex. Sex is easy. Love typically is not, particularly if someone equates the two as indicative of each other, and it's impossible if someone just sees a relationship as a means to an end (getting laid). As Abomination said, it's really about both people knowing and accepting what they're getting themselves in for. Wherever you draw your own line in the sand is what's right for you.

On marriage - one day, I'd like to. However, I don't feel a burning need to have my feelings validated by a piece of paper. Getting hitched won't fix your problems; neither is it necessary, IMO, except to provide a more stable relationship (particularly for raising children in). However, that's off-topic, except to the extent that it's probably worth considering sex in the same way - it doesn't solve problems in and of itself.

[ March 23, 2006, 01:25: Message edited by: NonSequitur ]

 

Take a look at the abortion thread. Someone's going to say abortion has nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is premarital sex. But I will oppose: abortion has much to do with premarital sex. People first go on and have sex despite not being prepared for it and then call upon their not having been prepared in order to secure themselves the right to remove the consequence of their negligence, even if it means taking a life.

And yes, I do believe many people would take even adult life to solve their problems if they were to get away with it. If it were legal to decide to have your parents euthanised after they finish 85 years or something, people would do it and social reasons would follow health reasons in no time.

Abortion always menaces premarital sex as potential consequence. I'm not talking about people who live in stable years-lasting long-term relationships who already have children perhaps, but in most cases, premarital sex is done by horny or simply curious teenagers and people in early twenties who don't have a house or means of supporting a family. Enter child enter abortion. And they will claim it would be unduly difficult for them to face the consequences of what they did. But they didn't think of that before they had sex and they won't think of it when they have sex again, either.

 

Yet a couple who engage in horny, premarital sex will not always fall pregnant if the right precautions are taken. It is a potential outcome.

There is also a potential outcome for a child to grow up and become a mass murderer if the right precautions are not taken. This doesn't mean we should all stop reproducing.

There is a chance that something bad can happen, yes. Will it always happen? No. I've mentioned it before that there is pretty much ALWAYS a risk of something bad happening if the right precautions are not taken. If you drive a car without a safety belt you will die if you crash head-on going over 50km/s. With a safety belt there is a still a very low chance you will die but it is almost negated.

There is danger in everything we do but the potential for an unsavory outcome is not a good enough reason to state that people should not do something.

 

So do married couples never get abortions?

 

Premarital sex doesn't lead to abortion. Pregnancy does......and pregnancy only leads to abortion if the pregnant person wants an abortion. Considering that more than 50% of the US is pro-life (survey after survey indicates that the "pro-life" stance is actually held in equal proportions among republicans and democrats.....it isn't a partisan issue for most people, but one of ethos or religion) and that most Americans have pre-marital sex, it is obvious that, in at least half the cases of pregnancy outside of wedlock, abortion is not the result.

 

I have to agree with the others here, Chev. Abortion, though a serious topic, is not directly related to pre-marital sex. It is as likely to occur from adultry or even families that don't want another child. There may be an issue that religious pro-lifers are less likely to have pre-marital sex, but that's a corilary relation, not causal.

 

I would rather hear of people having sex (married or not) than going to war with poor countries.

 

Make Love not War?
I agree, though.

 

How about war with a country who's oppresive dictator has turned a wealthy nation into a third-world hell hole?
But this is off topic.

 

Yea, sex is better than that too.

 

Picking up where Abomination left off, do any of the anti-premarital sex people here drive motorized vehicles?

On another note, you people *are* aware that it is possible to use several different birth control methods at the same time, reducing the percentage chance of pregnancy to 0.0something -type of numbers, right?

Right?

 

I have a hard time believing the % chance of birth control working are even close to accurate myself. Some are as low as like 80%. The reason for my doubts are I know of no one who ever got pregnant while using birth control. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it seems to me that "no birth control is perfect" is something thrown out by the religious right because it supports their own morals. Now, I have no doubt that some birth control methods fail some of the time, but it doesn't seem to be overly commonplace. Especially considering that 90% of the time you have sex your partner won't get pregnant even if you are using no birth control.

In fact, of the people I know the only ones that had an unplanned pregnancy were using the NFP method, and it just goes to show how well THAT works.