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[Newbie]

Nowadays a vast majority of people are in relationships involving two becoming one, commitment, and loyalty, outside of marriage. I do not see how signing papers changes that relationship's stance. I do see how uniting in a church setting, under the eyes of God, is what separates a committed relationship from a holy marriage. However, I think that the necessity of this union can be more of a problem than it does good. I have an unbelievable fear of divorce, for example. I have the desire to marry my current boyfriend but by no means have intentions to marry him unless I am financially, mentally, emotionally and materialistically prepared to do so. I am also 22 and living on my own and going to school and working full time. It is going to be many, many years before I am prepared to marry. Marriage is not simply a union of two people nowadays. It is the entwining of two individual's very complicated and involved lives. So, what, assuming I marry my boyfriend years down the road, what would have been the point of continually, daily denying ourselves the emotional and intimate expression of making love with each other for the handful of years prior to our marriage?

I say "should" and "choose" and imply that you should "reserve" sex for love, because it absolutely is a proven fact that negative consequences can come from sexual acts. If I went around, sleeping with other people as a dog humps...well, everything...(to use your reference) I would likely contract countless diseases, have countless pregnancies, make myself vulnerable to many harmful situations. As intellectual beings, most of us know better than that (even if we do act similarly to what I just mentioned - people like that are aware of what they are doing to themselves). I would never expose myself to such harm. I am not asking to. I am desiring to make love to the man I would like to eventually marry. I have an extremely difficult time accepting that to be a sin.

[jimwalton]

I respect your decision not to marry until you are financially, mentally, emotionally, and materially prepared to do so. I would like to think that's the case with most people (though we all know that's not the case as often as it should be, which is always!). It's a great question: What change does signing papers make to the relationship's stance?

I think your unbelievable fear of divorce leads you to knowing in your heart what I'm going to say. Just suppose that tomorrow morning you woke up and found that, staggeringly, you had lost interest in your boyfriend. You'd fallen out of love, as we would say it. What would you do? Well, of course, after some attempts at regaining what you had, you'd end the relationship, as millions have before you. There would be nothing holding you together. And there would be nothing "fun" about the ending. After all, your lives had been entwined. You want to guard against that kind of hurt, and so I have to ask you if giving yourselves in full and intimate physical expression is that path to that security. Loving someone for a lifetime is a rather difficult endeavor, filled with the ups and downs of life, emotions, and personalities. "Being in love" just doesn't cut it, nor does having sex increase your possibilities of success. That's why marriage was thought up. It works to convert the strong feelings of love and physical sex into something that lasts forever. I can tell you want that. Who doesn't? Nobody wants a bad mood, a difficult life event, or a lousy circumstances to get in the way of your lifelong commitment to each other. You say sex is an intimate expression of how you feel about each other, and it is. You also express rather well all the dangers and stupidities of treating sex as less than something special between two people.

You want that lifelong commitment, and while you're waiting, notice the difference between your actions and your desires. You're not living together, you're not sharing economically, there are no legal or public ties holding you and your boyfriend together, and you haven't promised and committed yourselves to each other "no matter what life brings to you." Marriage isn't closeness, it's commitment.

Don't knock a piece of paper, by the way. In our society, if I loan money to someone, there are two ways to do it: I can hand it over and hope for the best, or we can both sign a paper guaranteeing what happened and what will happen in the future. The paper doesn't mean we're not friends or can't trust each other; it's an assurance that the commitment will hold. For any promise given in our society, I'll bet more on the one with a "piece of paper" than on one without it. While it's no complete guarantee, it makes a substantial difference.

Some people talk about marriage as if it's just a chain that keeps two unhappy people locked together. While unfortunately that is sometimes true, it's meant to work as a different kind of lock: a lock two people agree on to keep their love in, to focus and preserve it over the course of your whole lives.

That's what you want, and I applaud your desire to do it right. It's a serious commitment, and the pain of a divorce is to be avoided at all costs. It's a bit ironic, but if you were to google some statistics you'd discover that people who live together before marriage have a higher rate of divorce than people who don't. According to the statistics, sex before marriage can make splitting up more likely by grounding the relationship in the wrong dynamic. Before marriage, sexual fulfillment without total commitment can (and often does) eventually lead to boredom. Nothing is holding you together, and you have spent one of the "glues" that would draw you toward each other. Unfortunately, this is particularly true for guys. They expect so much from sex, and then they discover it's only a part of the total life together, but since they don't have the other parts, they drift.

That's why sex before marriage is considered a sin in the Bible. It's an action created by God to hold people together mentally, spiritually, and physically. It's meant to express a loving, total commitment to each other. While sex is an expression of your deep love, there's no commitment to hold it in. Sex is its very best when it is worked out in a full-time married relationship, sharing everything. Marriage is the ideal relationship to tap its power and make it help you grow as a couple. Outside of marriage it has a different power altogether. That's why God says, "Don't do it." What he wants is what's best, what's purest, what works toward commitment, what honors the body and shows the most respect for each other.

[Newbie]

Thank you for answering. I do know all of this. I just have more praying to do, and this thread helped a lot. I got a lot of the answers I needed even if it was sometimes in a way I didn't want to hear it. A lot of what you said here is repetitive of what my boyfriend tells me when I bring up my frustrations. I'm extremely blessed to have him.

This helps me a lot, even though I'm still unsure. I feel like I'm jaded because I already had sex before marriage. I know what I'm missing out on right now, and that makes holding off so much harder.

You worded this very beautifully. I feel privileged to have read it. Thank you for that as well. And please be praying for me, if I may ask.

[jimwalton]

I would be glad to keep you in my prayers. I know it's hard. There's so much sexual pressure and social pressure. The commitment to seek a better, more godly way is very difficult, but obviously what God wants us to do. I will pray for you, I promise.