Hello World!!!
After a blog writing hiatus (I needed it), I am back baby! So to get this party started right, I thought I would write about a subject sure to get a few comments…That’s right, I’m talking about sex…I’ve been hesitant to discuss this topic because of its very personal nature, and trust I won’t be revealing much about myself here…but inevitably, I knew I had to bring it up…so here goes…
If you’ve attended church for at least a month, you are pleasantly surprised to know that you can contact the God who rules this universe by simply praying. It’s a definite perk of being a Christian. And if you’ve been introduced to a few scriptures particularly those in Psalm, you know that God promises to take care of those who take the time to honor Him and seek His guidance – undeniably a benefit of being a Christian. And if you are at the right church, you discover that you can meet some really good people who can be “God with skin on” when you really need to hear from God through human voices…There are countless benefits to being a Christian!
But there a few edicts that come with being a Christian that frankly aren’t that appealing…one of those is premarital sex…Apparently, if you are married, you have a license to “get ur freak on,” but if you are single, you must “flee fornication. ” (I Corinthians 6:18 if you are interested…) I started hearing about all of the many verses in the Bible that discourage premarital sex when I was a teenager…At that point, it’s all good…You are still a little scared of boys anyway…Well, let me speak for me…As a teenager, I was not ready for sex…I knew I had all sorts of strange feelings when I looked at boys I considered fine, but the idea of having sex with them was certainly farther than I wanted to go…
Where these Biblical principles get tricky is when you are fully grown and you know what to do about it…Y’all know what I mean, right? It just ain’t cute anymore when you hit 30 years old, but it clearly states in God’s word, if you love Him, you will keep his commandments…(John 14:15)…So what are single Christian women and men of a certain age supposed to do when we are no longer “never scared” when it comes to sex…Being the bibliophile that I am, you know I’ve read numerous books about the topic…the most recent book I’ve read is “Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity” by Lauren F. Winner. She makes a lot of good points about why it’s wise to wait…
I may bring up some points from her book as I write this post, but let me bring up a few reasons I think that premarital sex may not be the way to go with or without the Bible verses…By most studies, women and men are getting married later in life as time progresses…Chances are most people have dated quite a few people by the time they finally do get married…so the potential to have had several sexual partners in a lifetime is quite possible…I just have to think that eventually could be draining mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually over time…Maybe for men that would not be as much of a factor, but from the women I know, every time you get involved with a man fully and it’s not your husband, a little piece of you dies…And it’s hard to be optimistic about dating over the long haul when you invest so much only to get back so little… ( I don’t care what the women in Sex and the City say…)
And while I believe in women’s liberation and all, we know that there are double standards in what is appropriate sexual behavior when it comes to women and men that cannot be denied…when you have sex with a man who is not emotionally invested in you, no matter what comes out of his mouth, he is not feelin’ you the same way you could be feelin’ him…A man recently told me that if he has sex with a woman he is not into, her whole house can go up in flames with her in it the moment he is done having sex with her, and he frankly wouldn’t care…That’s straight harsh, but it’s something to think about…And we all know that it takes a while for a man to get emotionally attached to a woman – typically much much longer than it takes a woman…And because men are hunters, we gotta respect the natural order of things…men respect what they have to wait for…if you just give him “hot sex on a platter” if takes away from the hunt…
Since I’m a black woman, I have to speak from that perspective…I think much of our issues in the black community can be traced back to our loosening values when it comes to premarital sex…In a conversation I had last night with a fine man (yes, I’m talking about you 🙂 ), I told him that if all single black women in the A decided to stop having sex unless they are married, there would be some real and quantifiable results. Let’s say that today, Sunday, October 18, 2009, women declared on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse that there would be no sex without a ring…A year from today, I guarantee the marriage rate – whatever it is – would double…Women may be able to go without sex for a long, long while, but most men cannot go without sex for the same length of time…And the people who got married would be more likely to have long-lasting marriages as women and men would make choices that wouldn’t be as dependant on sexual attraction…As it stands now, when you tell a man that you are a celibate, he may stick around if really wants to be there, but he has many, many options if he suddenly decides he can’t take it anymore…
There would be no children born outside of wedlock…Yes, it’s possible to raise a healthy child as a single parent…I’ve seen it many times, but I think most single parents would rather raise their children as a two-parent household…Goodness gracious, I cannot even fathom all the changes that could come as a result of children being raised by two parents rather than one…We’ve all heard of some of the issues that children deal with when they are missing their mothers or fathers…More men would know how to be or even want to be real men because they would have seen it growing up…More women would make better choices about men because they were raised with their fathers…Poverty would decline as many single parents are poor…The jails would be less full because people would be more likely to learn responsible behavior because both parents were in their lives and were able to devote full attention to them…I know I’m skipping over a few things, but just consider what the ramifications could possibly be…
Who knows where sexually transmitted diseases come from, but I guarantee there would be less of them if people refused to engage in premarital sex…I don’t know all of the stats, but I think I’ve heard there are hundreds of STDs although only a few of them are well known – obviously HIV, HPV, herpes, etc.
Any thoughts?
P.S. Yes, I know that one of the effects of this edict would be that the premium would go up on prostitutes…that’s another topic for another day…
P.P.S. And maybe the music about sex would get better too…Although everyone seems to be having sex nowadays – married or not – no one can really sing about sex like the old school singers…I remember the first time I saw the video for Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” I think I was six years old…I didn’t know what sexual healing was, but I was sure it was good…
As a person who did it, I highly recommend abstinence till marriage. (My husband and I weren’t virgins, but we did not have sex w/each other until our wedding night) My husband started talking about marriage 3 months after our dating when it was clear we would not be having sex outside of marriage. Trust, I’ve had both and married sex is waaaaaay better.
@Damola, bless you for commenting 🙂 It’s been such a long while since anyone has cared to comment…How r u? And thanks for the inside scoop:)
Hey, Jackie, I’m fine. I also wanted to say I think the key to abstinence is both parties are committed to it, but the guy in particular.
@Damola, glad you are doing well and I hope you are writing!!! And I agree that both parties have to be committed to it…
Good piece (excuse the pun). Again your writing is on point. That bibliophile work must be paying off. Like Damola my wife and I decided on abstinence (almost 3 yrs.). I can attest to the fact that a man can go as long as a woman without sex. It’s all about conviction. The issue is, in the culture men don’t have to try because someone is always willing to accommodate our needs. Also I want to say that I deal with enough men to know that we too have emotional issues from multiple pre-marital partners. It just manifests itself differently, usually in performance issues or misplaced fantasies. That bible has got something right about it, but society seems to have the greater appeal…and so we remain screwed up (excuse the pun again).
@cbb, your puns are funny :)…Yes, folks (You and Damola) say it can be done or NOT done in this case…we’ll see, we’ll see… 🙂 faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen…
I told my husband that if I’d been a Christian when we met, I would not have gone to bed with him before we got married. His reply: “Glad we met when we did!!” (He was a Christian at the time, but he was not walking with the Lord at the time.) The consequences of my promiscuous behavior before marriage are low libido and issues with fantasizing. It’s been painful to walk through. A great book on the topic is “The Invisible Bond: How to Break Free From Your Sexual Past” by Barbara Wilson. In it I learned that while God forgives me, he wants to heal me too. It’s been a slow process. When my daughter becomes a teenager and 20-something, I can warn her of the dangers of NOT following God’s plan. But Lord let there be women she can talk to who have trusted You enough to wait!
@Katy, I bet your husband is glad, haha! Thanks for sharing such candid information…