There are numerous articles and arguments floating around by a diverse range of authors and people about why waiting till marriage to have sex is the right move.
This very well could be the right move for many people—according to some religions, even for all people. But NOT for the reasons these people give.
In fact, some of these reasons will have a significantly detrimental effect on not only your potential future marriage—regardless if you wait or not—but on your current relationships and your entire outlook on life.
The two reasons I've heard frequently is that when you have premarital sex, you give away a piece of yourself, and you become no longer whole. From youth groups, sexual ethics books, church retreats, and well-meaning adults, I've heard frankly horrific analogies to prove to young people—especially women—that having premarital sex makes you as worthless as a trampled rose or a chewed-up piece of gum. Let's look at giving away a piece of yourself and becoming no longer whole.
An argument I've heard and read frequently is that when you have sex with someone, you give away a piece of yourself to them. One author asked: "Imagine if you do that multiple times. You give yourself away to five, ten, maybe even more people. Then when you meet the person you want to spend forever with, you're no longer whole. You can no longer give those pieces to the love of your life."
This is flawed and dangerous in the following four ways:
1. Giving away a piece of yourself is BAD.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/AaAxpY_froveImRz3Imv...
I don't think anyone would argue that when you have sex with someone, you give them a piece of yourself. You give them your naked body, you give them vulnerability, you give them interest, affection, or love—at the least, you give them physiological trust that they won't give you an STD and you give them the chemical ability to flood you with oxytocin and dopamine.
Let's say though, it's true that you've given away a piece of your heart that you can never get back. Perhaps that's scary, perhaps that opens you up to heartbreak, perhaps that's hard to cope with if things end. But it's not a thing to be avoided at all costs.
I would posit that anytime you love or care for someone, you give them a piece of your heart. And if that relationship ends (particularly if it ends badly or if you weren't ready for its end), it will hurt. We've all been wounded by a parent, a friend, a boyfriend. We've all experienced heartbreak removed from sex. Heartbreak can occur in many ways—a sexual relationship is only one of them.
Is life about utterly avoiding all things that give us pain? If so, we would never care for anyone—ever.
C. S. Lewis perfectly summed it up: "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. […] The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
2. Giving away a piece of yourself is AVOIDABLE.
https://www.google.com/search?q=you+can%27t+avoid+pain+but+you+can+choose&rlz=
The only way to avoid giving away a piece of ourselves is not to avoid sex, but to avoid love. This is certainly not the highest way to live. If we lock up our hearts "in the casket or coffin" of this selfishness: "In that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." That doesn't even sound like a person I would want to be casually acquainted with—much less a close friend, a lover, a spouse.
3. In actuality, it is BEST to give yourself to others.
If we choose to live in love, we will always be giving away pieces of our heart. "If you want to live forever, give yourself away for others (Debasish Mridha)."
Of course, we shouldn't rush needlessly into pain. But we also should not turn from a steady course to avoid it. All great quests in life or adventure have involved trial or pain. Seeking after love is no different. If there's a reason to not have sex till marriage, "because it will make a potential breakup worse" is not one of them.
4. If we give pieces away, we are no longer whole.
Giving away pieces of ourselves means that we are, by definition, no longer whole: if we give away several puzzles' pieces, that puzzle is not whole. So similarly to our discussion on love and pain, we can answer the accusation that having sex outside of marriage makes a person "no longer whole" with the question: is that something we should bend over backward to avoid?
In reality, all of life makes us no longer whole. Humans are sensitive to pain. Some scholars believe that our entire personalities are developed partially in answer to childhood traumas which break us. Feeling empty, broken, worthless, or no longer whole are incredibly difficult feelings to sort through, accept, and resolve. However, having moments of feeling no longer whole are unavoidable as humans. We will experience those moments anytime we lose something that impacts our identity.
Feeling broken is not only inevitable, but it's also transformative. These feelings can arise whether sex was involved or not. So again, if the sole reason you're avoiding sex till marriage is that you're afraid of being no longer whole—your reasoning needs to be rethought.
These arguments of pain and difficulty are meant to scare people out of having premarital sex. And if that doesn't work, the implication of being no longer whole means that you are now somehow worthless. If you present your future spouse a shining virginity card, you are more valuable than a person who has a notch on their belt. And maybe they are better than the person who has 5, or 10, or more.
I could write an entire article on this, but for now, I'll merely end with two questions.
Ask yourself about what you want in the person you want to be with. Do you want a person who looks down on you or deems your heart and soul less valuable because of your past (and maybe even current) experiences and decisions? Or do you want a person who admires your choices, respects what you've gone through, and loves who you've become?
Now ask yourself what it would be like to live a life constantly on the offense against any potential risk of pain: continually guarding yourself, holding yourself back, choosing not to trust people or reach out to them, choosing not to confide in them. If you lived life afraid to give yourself away—afraid to love because you'd be broken—you would never really be living at all.
So courage, dear heart. If you make choices you are proud to live into, then the person whom you would want to end up with would want to end up with someone like you. No matter how many times you've had your heart broken along the way, being sexually involved or not.
There are absolutely valid reasons to wait till you find the person you want to spend your life with before having sex. Having sex—even safe sex—opens you up to the risk of a variety of STDs, from merely annoying to potentially life-threatening. And even safe sex risks pregnancy—let alone unprotected sex. The only birth control that's 100% effective is abstinence.
Sex does chemically influence your body and your bond with a person, and that shouldn't be taken lightly. Once a friend who spent years studying spirituality with shamans and mystics told me that these shamans believed anytime you have intercourse with someone, you are spiritually bonded to them for seven years.
So is that frat boy hitting you up for a booty call tonight really worth being bonded to in any way? Maybe he is! Maybe he's not. That's up to you. But sex is certainly not nothing, if only for its clear physical consequences and potential emotional ones—from a shrug and an "oh that sucks" to being absolutely devastated.
Something as potentially powerful as sex should be treated very intentionally. And you could have beautiful, empowering, personal, or faith-filled reasons for avoiding it.
But being afraid of giving yourself away, desperately trying to avoid being broken, or believing it will affect your worth should not be any of them.
