Why Wait to Have Sex?

This month, we are asking the question, “Why?” Last week, we asked the question, “Why do we date?” This week, we are asking “Why wait to have sex?” With apps like Tinder and OkCupid, it has never been easier to go online, connect with a complete stranger in your area and meet up for an evening of debauchery before heading home and never seeing them again. So, what’s the problem? As long as everyone is consenting and knows ahead of time what the rules of the game are, why not have some fun? Well, just like we learned in Pinocchio, every trip to pleasure island comes with a price and you usually don’t see how expensive it is until it’s too late. Today, we’re going to give 5 reasons you should wait to have sex and how you can know with 100% certainty that you are ready for sex, and you might be surprised by what we have to say!

We’ll get the obvious reasons out of the way up front. Our first reason that you should wait to have sex is to protect your physical health. According to the CDC, STD rates have been increasing consistently for the past 6-7 years!

An April 2021 report saw an all-time high as More than 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea & syphilis reported in 2019. HPV is the most common STI in the US. Among 15- to 59-year-olds, 40% or 2 in 5 people will have HPV. While it usually does go away on it’s own, for some HPV can cause warts, growths and even cancer. While using condoms can lower your chances of contracting HPV, areas that are not covered by the condom could still be exposed and the infection could be transmitted. Again, these are just a few examples of the incredibly high std and sti rates that we are seeing in the U.S. today, but another clear physical consequence of sex has nothing to do with diseases or infections – pregnancy. Having a baby is a beautiful blessing. Psalm 127 tells us that children are an inheritance from the Lord. Pregnancy when you are ready is something that countless couples are praying for everyday, but becoming a young single mother or single father is a significant challenge. STD’s/STI’s, cancer and pregnancy are all huge physical consequences of sex, but sex doesn’t just affect us physically.

The second reason why you should wait to have sex has more to do with what is going on up here. Oxytocin is a neurohormone released during sexual activity which helps to create an emotional bond between you and your partner. Oxytocin has often been called the “Love Hormone” because of how frequently it is associated to relational behaviors like hugging, birth, nursing, the initial stages of romantic attachment and during sex. - “Oxytocin During The Initial Stages of Romantic Attachment: Relations to Couples’ Interactive Reciprocity” – Inna Schneiderman, Orna Zagoory-Sharon, James F. Leckman and Ruth Feldman, Psychoneuroendocrinology - Aug. 2012, Jan. 26, 2012 - As wonderful as Oxytocin is, there is increasing evidence that it could also have a significant downside. One joint study found that oxytocin was not only released in romantic relationships while the couples were close and intimate, but particularly in relationships where one partner was more invested than the other, oxytocin seemed to act as a “crisis hormone,” being released in even higher doses and frequency. (Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “Love Hormone is Released During Crises: When You Notice Your Partner is Less Interested Than You Are, Your Brain May Send Out A Hormone That Can Help You Fix the Relationship.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 May 2017.) The researchers hypothesized that this increase in release was potentially happening in order to motivate the more invested partner to try to reconnect and repair the relationship and was still being released even after a break up had occurred. This could help explain why we often feel an almost panicked sense of urgency to hold onto a relationship that is ending or has ended even though we have decided to leave it. These chemical reactions could also play a factor in what keeps an individual in an unhealthy or even abusive relationship long after they know they should have left. Another study showed that the negative impact of oxytocin can long outlive the initial incident that caused its release as it can be triggered and released from bad memories and thereby create an increase of fear and anxiety in future scenarios. (Northwestern University. “Love Hormone is Two-Faced: Oxytocin Strengthens Bad Memories and can Increase Fear and Anxiety.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 22 July 2013.)

This leads us directly into our third reason why you should wait to have sex – protecting your mental health. Teenage sexual behavior also has been linked to teen depression and suicide attempts. When teenage girls become sexually active, they are 3 times as likely to become depressed while teenage boys who become sexually active are twice as likely to become depressed. When a teenage girl becomes sexually active, she is 3 times as likely to become suicidal while teenage boys who become sexually active are 8 times as likely to become suicidal.*(“Sexually Active Teenagers Are More Likely To Be Depressed and to Attempt Suicide” – Kirk Johnson, Lauren Noyes, Robert Rector, The Heritage Foundation, June 3, 2003) Major depression rates between 2009 and 2017 have doubled for both teens and young adults while suicide rates climbed 56% from 2008-2017. - (“Age, Period, and Cohort Trends in Mood Disorder Indicators and Suicide-Related Outcomes in a Nationally Representative Dataset, 2005-2017” – Jean M. Twenge, A. Bell Cooper, Thomas E. Joiner, Mary E. Duffy, Sarah G. Binaural, Journal of Abnormal Psychology – 2019, Vol. 128, No. 3 185-199) - For as many messages as we have all seen over the past few years about mental health awareness, teen depression and teen suicide rates, very few if any of them have pointed to the clear causal link between depression, suicide and teen sex.

In comparison to the last reason, this next one might seem kind of trivial, but our number 4 reason to wait to have sex is to protect your reputation. This isn’t about “slut-shaming” or putting anyone down for their past mistakes, but it is important to acknowledge how our choices today can positively or negatively impact the way that people view us in the future. Teenagers are known to do, let’s face it, dumb things. Last years TikTok challenges where High School students around the country were filming themselves ripping soap dispensers off of their school bathroom walls, stealing school buses for joyrides and even assaulting their schools faculty and staff are ample evidence of that. And what were they doing all of that for? Likes? Clicks? Views on their TikTok and Instagram profiles to become Social Media famous for 5 minutes before facing criminal charges for vandalism and assault. I told you...Dumb. But, we do the same things in our relationships, too. The first people to start dating were popular. Then, it was the first to start rounding the bases, then the first to have sex. After that it became the ones who had had sex with the most people or had sex with the “right” people. As teenagers, those types of things may have seemed like they bought us some popularity and helped us advance up the social ladder. The problem is, your reputation follows you. It precedes you. In fact, many times people hear about you long before they ever meet you. So, what happens when you are done being a player? When you are no longer satisfied with hook-ups and one night stands? Sex is great, but sex is meant to supplement a healthy and fulfilling relationship, not substitute for one. By the time that you decide it’s time to leave the party, you’ll sober up and realize that you want to find something, someone, whom you can build an actual future with. You’ll be looking for “the one.” Now, when you think of the one, are you thinking of the person who had sex with the most people in High School and College? Of course not! With a laundry list of exes comes baggage, with baggage comes drama and drama is great for teen soaps on the CW, not so much for a real world relationship. But, let’s say that you do find “the one,” that one person who checks all of your boxes. Awesome! But, what makes you think that they are going to want to be with you if you’re the one bringing in all of the baggage? Again, this isn’t about slut-shaming, this is real life assessments. We all make choices and those choices have consequences, many times unintended. One of those unintended consequences could very well be that your reputation keeps you from being with someone you really want to be with down the road.

The final and most important reason we have for you to wait to have sex is because of Spiritual Compromise. At multiple times throughout the Song of Solomon, the romantic love song of the Bible, the reader is warned not to awaken or arouse love before its time. The whole book is about two betrothed lovers just before and after they are married and their desire for one another is clearly evident and yet, the warning is repeated on 3 different occasions, do not awaken love before its time. So, when is it time? How can we know that we are ready for sex? Well, how do you know that you are ready to drive? You get a driver's license. To do that, you have to pass the test. The driver’s exam tests your knowledge, asking you about operating the vehicle, the rules of the road, specific types of hazards that you will experience and the risks of dangerous driving behaviors like speeding and drunk driving. Basically, you need to prove that you know what it is and what the consequences are so that you can either protect yourself from them or be prepared when they come. The same is true for sex; you are ready for sex when you know what it is and what the consequences are. So, assuming you know what sex is already, how can you protect yourself from the consequences of sex or be prepared for them? How can you prevent contracting STD’s or STI’s? When are you prepared for parenthood? When does oxytocin become a benefit rather than a downside and when does having sex with your partner actually enhance your relationship without dragging your reputation?

If you’ve been following us for a while, you already know the answer. You can know 100% that you are ready for sex when, and only when, you are married. God created sex to be a gift for marriage. He could have just made it a very cold and mechanical process for us to procreate and make babies if that was all He wanted it to achieve, but He designed us in such a way that sex is both physically pleasurable and emotionally gratifying. He wired our brains with neurohormones like Oxytocin as well as Serotonin, Dopamine and even Vasopressin. These hormones cause us to build and strengthen emotional bonds to our spouse, they make sex enjoyable and drive us to want to experience it again specifically with them, and Vasopressin is one of the hormones particularly found in men responsible for making us chivalrous, wanting to protect and provide for our wives and families! God gave us this very good thing, but He also gave us His instructions for how to use it. Now, we can of course go out and abuse this gift, using it for our own selfish gratification, hurting ourselves and everyone we’re with along the way, but we know that that life will never truly satisfy or give us what we are looking for. It’s only when we keep sex where God created it to be, within the context of marriage, that it can be everything that it is meant to be without the corruption of sexual sin.

Today we tackled the question of why we should wait for sex, but next week we are pushing even further as we answer why any of us should get married at all!