)%20copy.png)
We have finally come to the final week of the year and the final level of healthy relationships. We have covered friendship, similarities, attraction, marriage and now we are finally going to talk about sex!
So, right out of the gate, we want to make one thing clear: sex is good! In fact, sex is a great thing! Without it, none of us would be here! It is life affirming, relationship strengthening and it’s even a great form of exercise! Sex is an amazing gift, but sex can also be very dangerous.
With all of the Christmas and New Years festivities going on right now, many people look forward to spending the cold winter nights with the family around a warm glowing fireplace. People love the Christmas yule log tradition so much that they will turn on a fireplace video loop just to enjoy it’s ambiance when they don’t have a real fireplace in their homes. On the other hand, I doubt that any of those same people would have the same warm and fuzzy feelings if they happened to come home and their entire house was on fire!
You see, fire in the right context is wonderful and beautiful and awesome. Fire in the wrong context is destructive and life-altering. Sex is a lot like fire. In the right context, which is marriage, it is amazing and beautiful and life-giving, it’s literally where babies come from! Sex, like fire, outside of it’s proper context can be equally devastating. Back in September, we talked about some of the data regarding how sex can become harmful. So - what are the benefits of waiting?
According to an article by University of Utah professor Nicholas Wolfinger, waiting until you're married to have sex is actually connected to the overall happiness of your future marriage. His research showed that for both men and women, marital satisfaction was consistently higher for those who had only been sexually intimate with their spouse and was lowest for women who had had 6-10 sexual partners.
In an earlier study, Wolfinger also showed that women with zero or one previous sexual partner were the least likely to divorce!
In response to Wolfinger’s research, University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen put it, “you could have a lot of sexual partners, not because you’re good at sex, but because you’re bad at relationships.”
Even with research backing it up, abstinence is not a popular choice in the U.S. today and it can often be that sense of loneliness in it that adds to the difficulty of making that choice. While it’s true that most data puts the percentage of Americans who successfully wait until they are married before becoming sexually active,
(https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/pubs/journals/2007/01/29/PRH-Vol-122-Finer.pdf)
that still means there are roughly 10 million people around who are facing the same challenges and temptations. You’re not alone and waiting really is worth it!
For others who have already become sexually active, does that mean your marriages won’t be satisfying? Not necessarily. One of the other surprising revelations from Wolfinger’s research was that, overall, marriages in general are much more satisfying than many of us would expect! 64% of those surveyed said that they had “very happy” marriages! Even if you’ve made some mistakes along the way and even have a few regrets, you can still start making choices today to bring about a happier and healthier relationship in your future!
As we close out 2020, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for joining us over these past few months. Every video view, every like, every comment, has helped us reach more people with just one video than an entire years worth of speaking in schools! Thank you for your support, your questions, your challenges and your time. Stick around because this next year will get even better!
Comments