RE-THINKING SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE & WRONG CHRISTIAN SEX TEACHINGS

Over the past month we've discussed why religion gets sex wrong covering sins that aren't sins, and scriptures misinterpreted and misunderstood.

In review:

• Sex before marriage is not wrong
• Oral sex is OK
• Being Gay or Lesbian is not a sin
• Sex is always ok so long as it is consensual and not prostitution
• Swallowing cum is biblical
• The "purity pledge" is a lie, using a scripture that is manipulated and changed entirely. 
• Modesty is up to you entirely

8 REASONS SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE IS A GOOD THING

8. People who have sex are happier.

Fact! Having sex once a week is the happiness equivalent of an extra $50,000 in the bank. Especially if you're having sex with a rich dude. (Kidding. Rich dudes don't try in bed.)

7. Sex is healthy and natural.

Human beings reproduce sexually, which means that each of us is almost certainly the result of a sexual union — you might even say we're fucklings. It is natural and normal for most mature human animals to want and to pursue sex, and our bodies reward us when we do — we get some exercise, endorphins, orgasms. Imagine what all that would feel like if we didn't also attach unnecessary guilty baggage to it.

6. Premarital sex leads to more stable marriages.

SPIT TAKE MONOCLE POP OUT RECORD SCRATCH SOUND. Sex, as in having it before you get married, is associated with longer, more stable marriages. Why? Because feminism. SOUND OF A PLATE BREAKING BECAUSE SOMEONE DROPPED IT OUT OF SURPRISE.

A society that encourages women to prioritize participation outside of the home leads to more women choosing to go to college, to build a stable career before they focus on partnering up and settling down. Because sexuality is a human need, it stands to reason that during that time they're focused on being things other than wives and mothers, they'd be enjoying several feet (or miles — no judgment!) of cock. Which is fine! Because after they get married, women who got their ya-ya's out earlier in life tend to stay married, tend to raise more successful children, and tend to be happier.

5. Sex feels great and is fun.

One of the most compelling pieces of Filipovic's argument is her emphasis on ethical sexuality — sex that "(takes) precautions to protect the physical and mental health of yourself and your partner [...] that is fully consensual and focused on mutual pleasure." So, you know, using sex as a positive way to interact with someone who is totally into it rather than a self-destructive way to get back at your dad who didn't hug you enough or your ex who cheated on you. This means doing it with a willing partner, this means making sure your partner has a good time, this means protecting yourself using condoms or body sized sandwich bags or whatever is sufficient for the two of you to have the best time possible in the safest way possible. I'd argue that this means pursuing sex only with someone who isn't violating the agreed-upon terms of any existing sexual relationships s/he is having and being honest with your partner, but Filipovic doesn't delve too deeply into issues of monogamy or fidelity.

4. A wedding isn't a magic spell that transforms sex from something that is "bad" to something that can't ever be bad.

Especially if you've lived your life up to your wedding believing that you had a sin-hole between your legs.

Sex is good whether you're married or not, and certainly folks who wait until marriage can have a lot of sex once they tie the knot. But waiting until marriage often means both early marriage and conservative views on marriage and gender – and people who marry early and/or hold traditional views on marriage and gender tend to have higher divorce rates and unhappier marriages.

Antiquated views that lead people to believe that there is such a thing as sexual "purity" can also lead to a messed up post marital relationship with sex.

3. Americans are "pleasure starved."

Focusing too much on the guilt we're supposed to feel about being dirty for wanting things that we naturally want is giving all of us a complex. It is making our lives worse.

2. Not everyone is sexually compatible, so figure that shit out before you walk down the aisle.

Sexual compatibility matters in relationships, and bad sex, for many people, is a dealbreaker. Take the car out for a test drive, and if the stick shift feels awkward to you or the airbags frighten you, move along. Someone else will be happy to drive that car.

(This was a dick and balls joke.)

1. Discouraging people from having premarital sex has never, not once, not at any point in human history, succeeded in getting people to actually stop having sex.

95% of Americans have sex before they get married. Even in previous generations, the vast majority of Americans got busy before they tied the knot. So pretending that abstinence is a viable option for any meaningful segment of the population is at best obtuse and at worst really, really, really fucking dumb. Filipovic mentions that the federal government has spent a dizzying amount of money on programs designed to discourage people from having sex before they're married, which demonstrably doesn't work. Instead, our resources would be better spent on things that aren't the educational equivalent of digging a big hole in the ground and dumping piles of cash into it. Things like proper use of birth control, self-respect, and respect for others. The Puritans are dead. It's about time we stopped letting them dictate our attitudes toward sex.

5 MORE REASONS TO FUCK THE PERSON YOU LOVE BEFORE MARRIAGE

Sexual identity. 

I know too many couples where one partner was able to cover up his or her true sexual persuasion because he or she simply didn’t have sex with anyone. Not having sex with the opposite sex can also mean you ignore those longings you might have for the same sex, and therefore don’t acknowledge them.

Sex itself. .

Not everyone is great in bed, and most people don’t start out very good at all. A lot of good sex is about listening to your partner and being able to respond accordingly. But how do you know if someone is a good listener or responder unless you try it first?

Size. 

Don’t you want to know if your husband is packing a hunting rifle or a tiny little plastic kid’s pistol? After all, he knows how big your boobs are. I’m not saying size would be a dealbreaker, but don’t you have the right to know what’s down there?

Sexual issues. 

Sexual problems like premature ejaculation, inability to get an erection, or even an allergy to your partner’s semen are all possibilities, wouldn’t you rather deal with those issues before you’re married? This way you know if your future is even going to address them.

Let’s face it, sex plays a big role in marriage. Just like you should discuss children, religion, and where you both want to live before tying the knot, sex is too big a part of a relationship to leave to chance.

Do you think it’s a good idea to have sex before marriage?

Sexual incompatibility is a real thing, and you cant risk finding out your marriage is 50% weaker due to it, after the marriage occurs. Michael stated "Fourteen months into our marriage, Elizabeth asks for a divorce. I try to argue. “I’m doing this for you too,” she say. “I deserve a man whose clothes I want to rip off. And you deserve a woman who gets wet when she looks at you.” YOU MUST DISCOVER SEXUAL COMPATIBILITY BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE...

A dear friend has been candid and willing enough to share her story of saving herself for marriage, wishing she had fucked as many men as possible before marriage.

After Staying a Virgin Until Marriage, I Couldn't Have Sex With My Husband-Lauren Meeks

"I didn't even kiss him until we were at the altar.

Growing up in a Christian home, I was raised to view my virginity as almost as important as my salvation.

It was my most precious possession, to be guarded at all costs — and the loss of it before marital bliss was possibly the most shameful thing that could possibly have happened to me.

I took those warnings to heart. It's difficult to understand if you didn't grow up in the church, but the focus on purity before marriage is so pervasive in many Christian circles that I didn't even question it. Of course I would wait until marriage. How could I think of doing anything else? It would be hard, but if I didn't, I'd regret it for the rest of my life (or so I was told).

When I was 15, I signed the pledge to wait to have sex until marriage. Yes, there was a physical piece of paper that I (along with several of my peers) signed at church youth group after a discussion about premarital abstinence.

My parents gave me a purity ring the following year. Even though I knew that they had lived together for several years before getting married, I never thought of them as being hypocritical, but rather I believed they did their best to keep me from making the same mistakes that they had made in their youth.  They were, after all, very different people now. 

In response to the many warnings about premarital sex from my church, parents, and elsewhere, I embraced an extreme: I restricted my dating life to a handful of guys in college and beyond, and I even decided to refrain from kissing the man who'd become my husband until our wedding day.

I even decided to refrain from kissing the man who'd become my husband until our wedding day.

We were dating for almost exactly a year before we got engaged, and we were engaged for five months before we got married. The fact that my husband and I shared our first kiss at the altar usually gets plenty of incredulous gasps. "How on earth can you know if you're sexually compatible with this man if you've never even kissed him?!" people would ask me. "Isn't that something you should know before you say 'I do'?"

To be honest, I never really worried about marrying someone I was sexually incompatible with, since everyone flat-out assured me that the sex would be glorious once it was done within the confines of marriage. I did sometimes think about my decision not to kiss, wondering if there would be a "spark" there or not, but my fiancé was on board with waiting, so I figured it wouldn't be a problem. 

I laugh now at my naivety.

The nearly constant judgment and expectations from my parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and acquaintances wore on me. I was tired of feeling like a black sheep or even a leper, always on the defensive and having to explain myself, so eventually I just stopped telling people about our decision altogether.

The sexual tension between my fiancé and I certainly didn't make keeping our lips apart or our hands off each other easy. But we had both decided that we wanted to honor each other and honor our God, and so for us the sacrifice was worth it. We were looking forward to sharing that intimacy once we were married.

I innocently assumed that all of that work on both our parts to remain chaste would pay off with a hot, passionate sex life after we had finally said "I do." I assumed this because no one had ever told me differently.

I innocently assumed that all of that work on both our parts to remain chaste would pay off with a hot, passionate sex life after we had finally said "I do."

Neither of us had had any personal experience, we hadn't had candid talks with other married friends, and I hadn't really even had an adequate sex education class in school. Despite my repeated and direct questions about what to expect on the wedding night, the best advice I got from my trusted friends, family, and even doctors was always along the lines of "It'll all work out," or "Don't worry, you'll figure it out," or my personal favorite, "Sex within marriage is great!" 

Let's just say...things didn't work out as planned. There was a problem.

I was diagnosed with Vaginismus shortly after returning from the honeymoon (and after a week of tears and pain and frustration). This meant I had involuntary contractions of the pelvic muscles that made sex extremely painful or even impossible. 

What followed were the darkest few months of my life.

After talking with doctors and therapists, I began to realize 

that decades of "saving myself" had subconsciously convinced me that sex was actually bad, something to be avoided and not thought about. And now that it was "good," my body didn't know what to do, because it had spent so many years not letting itself get too excited around members of the opposite sex. In fact, Vaginismus can be caused by, "Overly rigid parenting, unbalanced religious teaching (i.e."Sex is BAD"), ... and inadequate sex education."

As I came to a more realistic understanding of the difficult road ahead if I wanted to overcome my diagnosis, I fell deeper and deeper into depression, ever more convinced of my utter failure as a woman and as a wife.

My friends were not any more helpful after the wedding than they were before the wedding. I can't really blame them, though. What do you say to someone who's been waiting their whole life to experience such a basic human need, and now isn't physically able to do so? It's hard to find words to address such a challenging situation.

As I fought to find time on the calendar and money in the budget for daily physical therapy and weekly counseling, I found myself becoming enraged with everyone around me — my husband, my family, my friends, and most of all, God.

The injustice of it was more than I could bear.

I had worked so hard to remain a virgin for my husband, and now that I was married I was rewarded with nothing but stress and anxiety.

Sadly, I'm not alone. In reaching out and sharing my story more, I am realizing that this problem (and others like it) are vastly common in the Christian church. We spend so much time teaching teenagers to avoid intimate interactions, that by the time they're married they've been conditioned to react against intimacy. Of course this doesn't happen 100% of the time, but it is far more prevalent than it should be.

The "S-word" (sex) is completely taboo in many, many Christian circles. Kids are told to avoid it until they're married, and that's very often the end of the conversation.

What if we started speaking as frankly about sex as our secular counterparts do? What if we talked frankly about the mechanics and the pleasure of sex? What if we shared amusing tales of awkward first times? What if we candidly discussed the psychological effects that sex has on your brain?

I'm not saying that pastors should start preaching this stuff from the pulpit. There is a time and a place for everything, and I don't think all of these nitty gritty details are appropriate there. But they are appropriate to discuss in Christian circles — with mentors, in discipleship groups, or with trusted friends. If Christians truly believe that sex is a gift from God to married couples, it's time they started talking about this gift in more than hushed tones and cryptic euphemisms.

If I had to do it again, I still would have waited. For all of my struggles, I do not regret being raised in a Christian home, and I still have a strong faith. But I would have encouraged — and even demanded — open conversations about the many good aspects of sex and intimacy, rather than being told over and over again to simply avoid it until marriage.

When you're a teenager, the "until marriage" part is easy to get lost, leaving you with a warped and unhealthy view of intimacy.

If I had to do it again, I would have asked for a more balanced perspective. I would have made sure that I was fully informed so that I could truly make my choice on my own, rather than just doing what I was told". 

IF YOU LOVE THEM YOU WILL WAIT... NO!!! IF YOU LOVE THEM YOU WILL HAVE SEX WITH THEM BEFORE YOUR DESTRYO YOUR MARRIAGE BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT SEXUALLY COMPATIBLE.