For a few days, I’ve been concerned with the question of whether sex is okay before marriage, and then, if it is, when and in what situations? People like my roommate, who grew up in the Philippines and has been surrounded by the influence of the Catholic church’s ideologies, never even thought of sex before marriage. It just wasn’t a thing that happened, or at least a thing that she never heard of. She calls herself naïve now, but I wonder if there’s something important in trusting that sex doesn’t happen before marriage.
Perhaps the extreme moral side of the argument – that you should never have sex before marriage – states that sex is a sacred act that should only occur between two (heterosexual) people who are committed to one another and – maybe to push a strictly traditional concept forward – be solely for reproduction (rather than just for pleasure). This was at least partially my roommate’s upbringing. I think there’s something valuable in this view, though I’m not sure I agree totally with it.
Bringing in personal experience, my youth group pastor in high school had this great message about sex and why it should only be shared by people in a committed relationship. He used a metaphor of tape on paper. When a couple has sex for the first time, the tape is placed on the paper. They stick well together. But then, every time they find new partners and have sex with them, they’re ripping the tape off of the first paper and putting it on the new one. That tape gets a little less sticky – and the paper a little less stick-able – each time, because the tape takes some of the paper with it and leaves some of its own stickiness behind. Sex is a meaningful action and it does have an emotional effect. In a way it is sacred. The more times you have sex, the less meaningful the act itself becomes, but it also means that you become less likely to attach and commit to a new person. If you don’t have a connection in addition to commitment to someone, it becomes difficult to have a truly deep and meaningful kind of relationship, which is important for different kinds of support as well as fun (we can talk about what a meaningful kind of relationship is another time, or you can comment about it below because that topic is meaningful and confusing to me too).
Don’t get me wrong, sex is important in a committed romantic relationship also. It’s pleasurable beyond its evolutionary benefits. It’s not just done to reproduce but to enjoy an intimate moment with your significant other. I choose the following two options based off of my point that sex has a significant emotional impact on its participants and therefore commitment is needed. I’m wondering if you should wait to have sex until after you make the public declaration of commitment (a.k.a. marriage) or if you should wait until you have mutually committed to one another?
Because… I’m wondering… shouldn’t marriage simply be the celebration of a commitment already made? If you commit the moment you say “I do”, rather than contemplating whether you want to remain with that person for the rest of your life beforehand, I feel like it takes a lot more adaptation and can even be difficult to handle at first. By that I mean when you know you love each other and commit, you’re already adjusting your behaviors and thoughts naturally. You aren’t (or at least shouldn’t be) thinking about other potential mates or do things that you know upset your significant other. You have a different center. You go from being self-oriented to being [insert partner’s name here]-oriented. You have a new role, and it is easier to fit into this new role before you decide to publicly (and legally) commit. You can still get out of marriage with divorce, but here I’m assuming the position that marriage is a binding contract rather than a temporarily acceptable arrangement and agreement.
Commitment is a tough thing to have sometimes. A lot of guys on T.V. (yes, I know it isn’t all guys) are afraid of commitment. They want the sex and pleasure but not the commitment and hard work that comes with a meaningful relationship. If they decide to get married, they have bachelor parties before the ceremony. This is mostly because of tradition, but also partially to mourn (in an exciting way) the life of being a free man who isn’t tied down by an nagging, needy wife. Everything changes when you get married. But many men accept the terms and conditions of marriage and commit full-heartedly. As do women.
So then what about the sex part? Where does that come in? What if you’re already fully committed to each other before you get the rings and say “I do”? What if your relationship progresses beyond the statuses of “complicated” or “open”? Does that mean that you can have sex? Because marriage is a public commitment, but many people also commit privately, far before they marry. Would it be okay, based on my assumptions, for a committed, but unmarried couple to have sex? Or not? Is there something more to marriage that allows for sex? Please help me figure this out (and also bring forward any insights you have about sex in “committed” and a noncommitted relationships, since I didn’t touch on and have no experience whatsoever with them).