Why You Should Wait until You’re Married to Have Sex

First, let me speak to the boys. Girls are different from boys. They risk a lot more than we do when having sex.

First of all, there is the risk that she could have a baby. No birth control is 100% effective. You probably know that Mom became pregnant while she was using about the most reliable temporary birth control you can use (an IUD). Even women who have been told that they are infertile can get pregnant. I know of two women who fall into this category.

Unless a woman is married, a pregnancy places her in a terrible situation. She carries the baby for 9 months without the dedicated commitment and support from the father, and things only get more difficult after the baby is born. The child will be dependent for 18 years of life. Raising kids together within a committed mother/father relationship is one of the most difficult, yet wonderful things a person can do. Doing it well without the support of the father is next to impossible.

Adoption is the best option, but it is devastating for the mother. I think you remember me telling you about a friend of mine who got pregnant in her teens. She moved to another state with family during her pregnancy to avoid the embarrassment. Then she gave her own child away! Can you imagine? She carried her child inside her for 9 months and then gave him or her away—her own flesh and blood—to someone else. She didn’t get to raise that child. She may never get to see her child again. This friend of mine once shared a message on social media on Mother’s Day to share a heartfelt (yet obviously painful) message: “I don’t really have 4 children. I have 5 children.”

Abortion should not even be an option. Don’t kid yourself. No matter what you call the thing inside a pregnant mother’s womb (e.g. “a clump of cells”, “a fetus”, “a parasite”), it’s a little human with a fully-developed and unique genome. That person will have its own smile, personality, and likes and dislikes, many of which come preprogrammed the moment the first cell is formed.

Abortion ends that thing.

I had a professor at UT Austin who posted a video to Facebook of a 3D ultrasound of a baby in the womb. His comment shocked me: “Oh my gosh. That’s a baby!” Besides watching my own two kids (at that point grown) inside my wife’s tummy, I’d seen my nieces and nephews do the same 20 or so times before. I’d watched them react to my voice and kick and roll inside their mother. There was no doubt to me—that lump inside its mother’s tummy is a baby. My professor was in his 60s at the time and never had children. So, I guess he can be excused for dehumanizing babies. Impossible as it seems, I guess he didn’t know. You’ll meet many others who are like my professor—but not a lot of mothers. Mothers know.

It’s popular today to celebrate abortions. I find this change to our culture disturbing and disgusting. It’s easy to find stories of would-be mothers who deeply regret killing their child. Whether that woman acknowledges it or not, there is real spiritual and psychological damage done to her after an abortion. This is a fact that the abortion industry tries to sweep under the rug.

If you plan to have sex the way they do in the movies or TV (whenever and with whoever you feel like it in the moment independent of commitment) the odds that you will at some time contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD) are near 100%. As you can imagine, for this reason, it’s estimated that between 15% and 50% of American adults carry an incurable STD. Think about that for a minute. If you were in a room with 10 average Americans, odds are that 1 or 5 of them would be a carrier for a serious disease! If it were a different type of disease—one that is transmitted by shaking hands—wouldn’t you think twice before shaking hands with anyone in that group?

Mom and I do not have to worry about ever getting one of those diseases because she and I have only had one sexual partner. That fact alone should be enough to convince anyone to wait!

Men and women experience sex differently. Naturally, it’s a bit of an imbalanced relationship for many reasons. The man can easily overpower the woman, so she has to be careful not to put herself in a situation where she could be taken advantage of. What makes this imbalance worse is that men are also naturally more capable of wanting casual sex with lots of partners. (This is an instinct that has proven destructive in humans.) Women are more cautious and careful about who they have sex with since they have a LOT more to lose.

(This is similar to other mammals. Bucks are indiscriminate with their sexual partners. They want as many partners and as often as possible. Does are only available once a year—or so. The rest of the year, they’re mostly annoyed by the bucks even being around them at all.)

Sex has an emotionally bonding effect for both men and women. Even so, both men and women are capable of suppressing that bond and trading it for momentary, lustful, selfish sexual pleasure. Probably for evolutionary reasons, men are more capable of casting a woman aside after using her for sex. This will invariably do tremendous psychological damage to a woman. She made herself vulnerable. She has trusted and given of herself and put herself at risk. Many women believe that a man will commit to her after she gives of herself in this way. Can you imagine the damage when she realizes that she was just used? That he never intended to take care of her after all?

We’ve recently seen an increase in women who are completely jaded toward men—even abandoning them altogether. But if a woman’s only experience with men is the scenario described above, can you blame her for believing that men are pigs and wanting nothing to do with them?

This spiritual and psychological damage isn’t unique to women. Men who wreak this type of chaos & destruction in the life of a woman will have to live with that knowledge. Some might cast it aside and never think twice, but they are guilty nonetheless.

Children might pay the highest price for the promiscuity of their parents. In the US there are about 1,000,000 abortions each year. (When you think about what abortion actually is, that number is almost incomprehensible.) 40% of births in the US are to women who are not married. 70% of black babies are born to unwed mothers! Those children are 3 to 20 times more likely to end up in prison, 25% to 50% more likely to use drugs, and up to 5 times more likely to end up homeless.

Aside from avoiding all of the pitfalls listed above, abstinence before marriage and monogamy afterward is one of the best decisions you can make in your life. Study after study has shown that married couples have better sex and more of it than single partners. (Not exactly the idea you get from the movies and TV, is it?) Sex with your lifelong partner also binds you together in a way that nothing else can. It deepens your connection and commitment to each other. (By the way, if it has that effect, can you see now how doing that outside of a real commitment does real damage when the relationship ends?)

Girls: Ultimately, you are the guardian of your own virtue. Protect and defend it as if it’s the most valuable thing in your life. Pick good boys with the best morals. Dress and act in a way that will attract those boys. Don’t put yourself in a situation where a boy with bad intentions can take something without your permission. Avoid any boy who wants to avoid your parents or who will try to convince you to push things at all. Trust the instincts of the adults around you who love you the most and who live the lives you want to live.

Boys: Respect the girls you date. Don’t ever do anything that would put them at risk physically or emotionally. Avoid girls like the plague who seem to want to be promiscuous. Instead, choose the girls who will do anything to defend their own virtue. Always pick your dates up at her house and insist that you meet her parents. Look them in the eye, let them know what you are doing and when you will bring her home. They love her and are entrusting you with her safety for the night. Aspire to be the type of man that a virtuous girl would want. She wants to be the only one for you, so she isn’t likely to want to take a risk on someone who couldn’t wait until marriage.