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I’ve heard people say that growing up as an evangelical meant they never talked about sex. This wasn’t my experience. I grew up in the thick of evangelical purity culture and we talked about se x A LOT. We just spent all of that time talking about how and why NOT to have it.
As someone who waited until I was married to have se x, I was assured that I would be guaranteed an easy and rewarding se x life. When reality turned out to be different, I was disappointed and disillusioned. Only through gradual conversations with other married friends did I realize I wasn’t alone.
I started to wonder if maybe the expectations themselves were wrong. Maybe what I’d been told or inferred about post-marital se x simply wasn’t true.
Here are four of the biggest lies about se x I believed before marriage
1. Any and all physical contact is like a gateway drug to se x.
Once in high school I attended a big Christian youth conference. One night, one of the chaperones addressed the girls: “Girls, we have noticed some very inappropriate touching going on…”
The inappropriate touching she meant turned out to be two high school couples in the youth group holding hands. This woman was deadly serious. “I know it may not seem like a big deal to you,” she said. “But hand-holding leads to OTHER THINGS!”
I heard similar things from parents, teachers, church leaders and books. In my church it was not unusual for people to pledge not only to save se x until marriage, but even to save their first kiss for their wedding day. “Don’t start the engine if you aren’t ready to drive the car,” and other similar metaphors warned me that any physical contact was a slippery slope straight into the jaws of fornication.
On this side of things, I can honestly say that there are SO many conscious decisions you have to make between kissing and having se x. Despite what Hollywood says, clothes do not take themselves off and bodies do not magically and effortlessly fit together.
If you are committed to waiting until you’re married to have se x, there are many valid reasons to set boundaries on your physical relationship, but the fear of accidentally having se x shouldn’t be one of them.
2. If you wait until you are married to have se x, God will reward you with mind-blowing se x and a magical wedding night.
Before my wedding night, I had been told that honeymoon sex isn’t usually the best se x. I had heard that good se x takes work. I knew that it would probably be uncomfortable at first. But what nobody ever, EVER told me was that it was possible that it just might not work at all at first. On my wedding night, my mind and heart were there, but my body was locked up tighter than Maid Marian’s chastity belt.
I entered marriage with the firm conviction that God rewards those who wait, only to find myself confounded by the mechanics. I felt like an utter failure, both as a wife and a woman. And while we did (eventually) get things working, this was hard, frustrating, embarrassing and a huge blow to our confidences.
Saving se x for marriage is not a guarantee that you will have great se x or that se x will be easy. All it guarantees is that the person you fumble through it with will be someone who has already committed to love you forever.
Saving se x for marriage is not a guarantee that you will have great se x or that se x will be easy. All it guarantees is that the person you fumble through it with will be someone who has already committed to love you forever.
3. Girls don’t care about se x.
As a teenager and young adult I cannot count the times I heard something to this effect: “Boys are very visual and sex ual, so even though you aren’t thinking about se x, you need to be careful because you are responsible for not making them stumble.”
Let’s disregard for now how degrading this is toward men and focus on the underlying assumption that boys are sexu al and girls aren’t. For years I was told that “girls don’t care about se x.” Well, as it turns out, I do. This has been a deep source of shame for me. For a long time I felt like a freak, until I started to realize that I wasn’t the only one, not by a longshot. But I never knew it because no one would admit it.
Many girls (yes, even Christian girls) think about sex. Many girls (yes, even Christian girls) like se x. This doesn’t make you a freak. It doesn’t make you unfeminine or unnatural. God created us, both men AND women, as se xual beings. Enjoying sex makes you a human being created by God, in the image of God, with the capacity and desire to love—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and sexu ally.
MANY GIRLS (YES, EVEN CHRISTIAN GIRLS) THINK ABOUT SE X. MANY GIRLS (YES, EVEN CHRISTIAN GIRLS) LIKE SE X. THIS DOESN’T MAKE YOU A FREAK.
4. When you get married, you will immediately be able to fully express yourself se xually without guilt or shame.
Many Christians have spent years—from the day they hit puberty until their wedding day—focusing their energy on keeping their se x drives in check. Then, in the space of a few hours, they are expected to stop feeling like their se xuality is something they must carefully control and instead be able to express it freely. And not only that—but express it freely with another person.
Many of us have programmed guilt into ourselves—this is how we keep ourselves in check throughout our dating relationships. And that “red light” feeling we train ourselves to obey doesn’t always go away just because we’ve spoken some vows and signed some papers.
It took me several months to stop having that sick-to-my-stomach guilty feeling every time I was together with my husband. Not everyone experiences this, but for the many people who do, it’s terribly isolating. Once again we’re experiencing something our churches and communities never acknowledged as a possibility. We feel alone and broken and filled with a profound sense that this isn’t the way it’s meant to be.
I don’t regret waiting until I was married to have se x, and I’m not advocating that churches stop teaching that se x is designed for marriage. But I do think there is something seriously wrong with the way we’ve handled the conversation.
If our reason for saving se x until marriage is because we believe it will make se x better or easier for us, we’re not only setting ourselves up for disappointment, but we’re missing the point entirely. Those of us who choose to wait do so because we hold certain beliefs about the sacredness of marriage and about God’s intentions and wishes for humanity, and we honor these regardless of whether they feel easier or harder. In the meantime, we in the evangelical church has a lot of work to do correcting the distorted ways we talk about se x and se xuality, especially to our youth
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