Celebration of Love

As a follow-up to my article about the dangers of pre-marital sex, in this article I present 5 tips that I have used and others have used to prevent pre-marital sex. However before presenting the tips I would like to give a background to that.

Not having sex outside marriage is the ideal. Most people would agree that it is wrong to have sex with another person when you are married; however the major issue is with sex before marriage. Please read my article on the dangers of pre-marital sex. The tips in this article are mainly for un-engaged couples or those who are not in any relationships. When you get engaged, it’s a different ballgame all together. I will write about that in another article.

1)  Know and understand for yourself that there is no scenario under which pre-marital sex or extra marital sex can be advantageous or acceptable. This is the most important tip in this article and it could be the only one. If you are still trying to “hold-on” based on what your pastor said, what the Bible says or does not say you may find it really hard to wait until you are married. You must examine the issue critically and come to an informed decision that it never pays to express love sexually without an appropriate commitment. You must accept the fact for yourself that marriage is not the wedding but the full commitment of your partner to a life-long relationship. Once you are able to settle this in your heart, the other tips will not only be useful, they will be reasonable. Otherwise, you may as well stop reading because the rest of the article may not make much sense to you.

2) Make your convictions clear from the start of the relationship. Many relationships today are sex based, sex motivated and sex sustained. You need to make it clear to your partner form the beginning of the relationship that you are not looking for sex. You may not need to say it directly, but I can assure you that within a couple of dates, the issue will come up (these days, its usually the 1st or 2nd date) and you must make your position known. If you are the one initiating the relationship, it may be a little (only a little) easier but then you still have to make your intentions clear. What you need to do is develop friendship, show affection in appropriate manner and postpone all other show of affection. The ideal situation will be to find someone who shares the same convictions about pre-marital sex. There are many Christian men and women out there who are willing to wait until marriage before having sex. If you only realized this half way through your already sexually involved relationship, simply discuss the issue and understand that it may not be easy for your partner, but be firm and loving show to your partner that the sex cannot continue. Be prepared for a breakup, but be sure that this breakup was inevitable anyway if that is what it comes to.

3) Center your relationship on God. If you want your relationship to last and grow deeper over the years, start it based on God and godly principles. For this to be possible, you have to have the same religious beliefs. A “born-again” Christian should only plan and aim at marrying another “born-again” Christian. Actually, I can only imagine how hard and frustrating it will be for a person who claims to have totally surrendered their life to God through Jesus Christ, to be married to someone who doesn’t care about this same God. This point is usually very obvious to the one who has committed their lives to God for a Life-long relationship and so I will not elaborate more on this at this point.

4) Don’t start anything that you can’t finish. Don’t start kissing if you know you won’t have sex. Don’t start having internet or phone sex when you know you can’t finish it. Let the relationship be about knowing each other better. Spend time together talking about each other, playing games, reading the Bible, praying, attending conferences and other things. In your marriage you will spend more time doing regular everyday things and it is more important to know how your partner is in everyday life than to know how he or she is in bed. Dedicate most of the first few months of your relationship to discovering the habits, likes and dislikes of your partner. Don’t just assume you know because they said so. Most people do not even notice their own mannerisms.

5) Don’t tempt yourself. This point is the flip side of the previous point. Your partner may be stronger than you and they may want to do a few things that you find too tempting, so I advice you not to do anything to increase the temptation. Meet in open places and always make sure that you are not in a room alone without a possibility of someone walking in. If you are living alone, its not a great idea to have sleep-overs or late night visits. Things are a lot easier once the boundaries have been drawn and you both know that at this point you are only trying to get to know each other.

Trackback URI |