It might be a mere coincidence (although I seriously doubt it), but I have yet to counsel a couple who waited until marriage to have sex with each other. Not one. (Tweet This!)
Now, that’s not to say that I haven’t had conversations with couples who waited. They’ve experienced challenges within their union, of course, but based on what I’ve heard from them, what they go through tends to sound a lot less… well, “dramatic” is the word that comes to mind.
On the other hand, couples who have had sex with one another before marriage, more than anything, seem to have some serious communication and trust issues. And you know what else? Also not as much sex as they used to.
It kind of makes sense that it would play out that way, actually.
Hey, I’ve never been married, but I did have quite a bit of sex in my day, and my running go-to phrase about fornication is, “There are some men I had great sex with that I wouldn’t even want to sit next to me on a bus now.” I didn’t like them. I liked the sex I was having with them. As I’ve said before: “Sex can make you love people you don’t even like.” (Tweet This!)
There are a lot of folks (A LOT OF FOLKS) who unfortunately have mistaken the way someone physically makes them feel as if it’s a true connection—or not. And so, when you “love the sex,” sometimes that can cloud your judgment when it comes to whether you truly love the person—or not. Then you look up, a few months or even a couple of years into your marriage, and realize you don’t know this person at all.
And then there’s something else about having sex before marriage that tends to be overlooked. If you and your spouse both come to the Lord after marriage, this point won’t apply quite as much. However, if both of you did grow up with an understanding (or at least the teaching) that sex is for married couples only, oftentimes there is a part of you who, deep down, feels like your spouse does not fully have your back.
Okay, so what about the “You’ve got to test drive the car before you buy it” theory? Uh-huh.
First of all, people are not cars, but I’ll try my best to share my views on that as well. James 1:17 tells us that every good and perfect gift comes from God. Psalm 84:11 says that God will withhold no good thing from those who walk uprightly. Psalm 145:16 says that God opens up his hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing. Nowhere in those verses does it say “Except when it comes to sex.”
Whenever I think of the “test drive” argument, it takes me back to the Woman at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden and the serpent telling her that God’s boundaries are keeping something from her. The reality is that the boundaries were protecting her. From pain, from loss, from problems within her union.
Genesis 3:6 says that she saw the fruit to be good and ate of it. As a result her eyes were opened. And a lot of it was to things that God never ever wanted her or her husband to see.
She saw the fruit to be good. The fruit had some destructive elements to it though. In spite of what she saw.
When you’re dating someone and you hear in your head “You need to know if s/he is going to able to please you before you commit to them,” that is not God talking. How could it be being that Hebrews 13:5 says that he will judge adultery and fornication? That is Satan trying to infiltrate your relationship by making it be about sex more than spirituality so that after marriage, sex and spirituality both become really difficult to master.
And no, I’m not saying that if you are a married couple who had sex before marriage that you can’t survive it and come out with a real testimony. I know several who have. However, something that all of them have told me is that they wish they had waited and that they can definitely feel the “side effects” of putting the icing before the cake, so-to-speak.
So, I guess you can see what side of the sex-before-marriage pendulum I swing on.
Sex before marriage does not “help.” One way or another, it’s gonna hurt. (Tweet This!) Oftentimes a lot more than however good the sex before marriage ever felt.
Hey, they don’t call it “forbidden fruit” for nothin’.
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