The Best Sex
by Anne Morse

I usually start my day with a cup of hot cocoa and The Washington Post.

He signed the letter "Wanting to Forget."

Well, "Wanting to Forget" isn't likely to forget Carolyn Hax's tart reply:

Saving yourself for marriage is often just a cover, "hiding fears of one's sexual capabilities as well of emotional and sexual intimacy."

Just how bad IS Hax's advice? Let me count the ways.

Western Journal of Nursing Research, "because of the high incidence of STDs among adolescents, they are more likely to have sexual partners with an STD than are adults, even if the adolescent has had only one partner." Left untreated, these diseases can lead to severe health problems, including infertility.

There's more grim news for women: Females who have slept with three or more people over a lifetime are 15 times more likely to get cervical cancer.

That's a pretty steep price to pay for being "well-informed."

Third, Hax claims that "saving yourself for marriage is often just a cover" for people who are really afraid of intimacy, both sexual and emotional.

If people really want to make well-informed choices about sex and marriage, they ought to listen to the real experts: People like Mike McManus, a Christian newspaper columnist and author ofMarriage Savers: Helping Your Friends and Family Avoid Divorce. McManus, with his wife Harriet, has counseled hundreds of engaged couples. A few of the facts he's collected about sex and marriage:

• The more promiscuous you are before marriage, the more likely you are to commit adultery AFTER marriage. (The sexually self-indulgent have had no practice in self-restraint.)
• Couples who live together before marriage are unlikely to marry. A Columbia University study found that "only 26 percent of women surveyed and a scant 19 percent of men" married the person they were living with. Another study showed that even if they do marry, couples who begin their marriages through cohabitation are almost twice as likely to divorce within 10 years compared to all first marriages: 57 percent to 80 percent.
• People who have premarital sex run the chance of marrying someone who's not right for them. Why? Because sexual intimacy can be emotionally blinding: it makes couples feel closer than they really are. "Real love," McManus says, "can stand the test of time without physical intimacy. The sexually active lose objectivity."
• Couples who sleep together outside of marriage "often suffer guilt and fear due to the dangers of STDs or unwanted pregnancy. Guilt can lead to frigidity and impotence."

Roberto Rivera, a cultural critic and Fellow at the Wilberforce Forum in Reston, Virginia, explains it this way: "We live," he says, "in an age in which people say, 'facts, schmacts.' To previous generations, the fact that sex outside of marriage might lead to disease and sterility would give them pause. But today's culture teaches that there is no one truth out there that governs everything, so they feel free to pick and choose AMONG truths."

For example, Rivera says, "we have statistical facts that say, 'if you engage in ready-and-rampant sexual behavior before marriage, ultimately, it's harmful.' On the other hand, there's this competing fact: 'I enjoy sex.'" What really miffs America's secular elites, Rivera believes, "is that these two truths are mutually exclusive: You can't enjoy the benefits of chaste behavior without being chaste." People like Hax get angry at people like "Wanting to Forget" because, Rivera maintains, they're reminders that some things are true whether we want them to be or not. "They know that a biblical view of sexuality brings physical and emotional health benefits. But the last thing they want to admit is that the way they choose to live has this big downside."

The consequences are hidden by cultural trend setters who pretend that sexual downsides don't exist. Take the recent hit film Pleasantville. The plot revolves around a teenage brother and sister whose TV remote control magically transports them into the peaceful, black-and-white world of a Fifties TV sitcom. The sister promptly seduces the captain of the high school basketball team, and before long, the once-innocent teenagers of Pleasantville are all engaging in sex. Soon, their dull, black-and-white world turns to glorious color. The director's message is obvious: Sexual promiscuity will lead to freedom and happiness.

The Pleasantville view of the universe could benefit from a little perspective. In The Abolition of Man,

Ironically, it's people who marry as virgins and remain monogamous who actually have the best sex lives.

A few years ago the Family Research Council surveyed 1,100 people about their sexual satisfaction. In a Washington Post op-ed, FRC's William Mattox, Jr. took a look at the exciting results. The poll "found that 72 percent of all married 'traditionalists (those who 'strongly' believe out of wedlock sex is wrong) report high sexual satisfaction. This is," Mattox said, "roughly 31 percentage points higher than the level registered by unmarried 'non-traditionalists' (those who have no or only some objection to sex outside of marriage) and 13 percentage points higher than that registered by married non-traditionalists."

It gets better. Mattox noted that the survey "found that strictly monogamous women experienced orgasm during sex more than twice as often as promiscuous women." He quoted National Institutes of Health researcher David Larson, who says that couples who don't sleep together before marriage and who are faithful during marriage "are more satisfied with their current sex life and also with their marriages compared to those who were involved sexually before marriage."¹

²

This is a godly approach to sex and marriage, and as McManus puts it, if you "play by God's rules, you're much more likely to have a lifelong marriage, which is a goal that almost everyone longs for."

McManus is right, and if "Wanting to Forget" is smart, he'll take his advice. People who wait till marriage to have sex are healthier, both physically and emotionally. Plus, they have a better sex life when they DO marry. Much, much better!

* * *

1. See "The Hottest Valentines: the Startling Secret of What Makes You a High-Voltage Lover," by William R. Mattox Jr., The Washington Post, Feb. 13, 1994.
2. For more information about Marriage Saver programs, including PREPARE and Engaged Encounter, contact Mike McManus at 301-469-5870. Also see McManus's book, Marriage Savers: Helping Your Friends and Family Avoid Divorce (Zondervan).

Burden of Truth (a collection of BreakPoint commentaries) with Colson in 1997. She is a graduate of Seattle Pacific University.

http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0000055.cfm