At any rate, maybe I am showing my ignorance but it is never too late to learn. And I have to confess that I probably don’t have much of a sex drive, whether due to nature or brainwashing, I don’t know. But one thing I have never understood, probably because I have never experienced it, is feeling so horny that I just gotta have it regardless. it never crossed my mind, not once, to ever force my attentions on someone else or to touch them without their express consent. I wouldn’t dream of it, no matter how attracted I was to that person. To me it is a matter of basic human decency. But, and I know, “not all” guys are like that, but a very high proportion are, and I wonder why. Were they not taught manners? Are their urges THAT strong? Men can be so frightening and intimidating some time. My biggest fear is of being raped, not by some stranger in a dark alley, but by someone I went out with, someone I thought I could trust; and I have come close to it a few times.

What I think is lacking in this whole abstinence debate, to be or not be, is respect for each other’s choices. That as long as you had respect for the other person it should not really matter whether you are sexually active or not. Sometimes the more respectful choice is to abstain and sometimes it is not. But there should never, never be any pressure on a person to be sexual if they do not want to be. In another post you talked about Christians and conditional friendships. You could substitute men, women, gays, straights, for Christians and say the same thing, I don’t want a friendship or relationship that is “conditional” on my having sex with someone. That is not how I am made. My decision to have sex, I feel, should be one freely made, because that is what i feel like doing with that particular person at that time and they with me.

Unfortunately we don’t live in that kind of world . . .

Well thanks Its an odd thing growing up in a culture that tries to suppress everyone’s natural sex drive and then getting flung “into the wild”, so to speak. Everyone’s curiosity is raging and people are bound to make mistakes.

I think Lauradee is away right now.

If guys are taught the only thing they cannot do before marriage is have sex, then gosh, what are they going to marry for?

Sex.

Reminds me of the story of a coworker who told about a previous lady he had known. This woman was a Christian and she and her boyfriend had done everything except vaginal sex. When she was asked why they just did not go all the way, she replied that because her boyfriend was willing to wait until they were married, she knew he was not after her just for sex.

My non-Christian male coworker just laughed and said “Why else would he want to get married? He just wants to get in there!”

Abstinence can actually exacerbate the problems, in my opinion.

Don’t tear me to shreds! Just my thoughts as a single guy who was taught abstinence.

Thanks for that post. It seems all I ever hear are either people adamantly against abstinence education or adamantly for it. You present a realistic approach of considering the reasons for abstinence as wall as the problems it can bring on.

You should make a new educational series/approach: “Informed and Realistic Choices”.

(another variant is you wouldn’t buy a pair of shoes without trying them on)

Completely unrelated to the actual content of the comment, but I’m stuck buying shoes that I can’t try on. I have incredibly wide feet (6E) and basically can’t find local shoe stores that sell anything that even remotely fits. Growing up I just bought shoes that were too big for me, which would be broken in by the time I grew into them. Doesn’t work so well now, and I’ve taken to ordering shoes from an internet store that specializes in wide shoes; even they only have a small selection of shoes wide enough for me, most of them are between 2E and 5E. So I don’t get the luxury of trying my shoes on before I buy them.

In my opnion sex should not be a battleground. But by focusing mainly on young women and ignoring young men (who overwhelmingly reject abstinence), you are setting the stage for very tense, unhappy dating experiences. Or no dating experiences at all. At the most extreme, it can prime young women for vaginismus, a condition where the muscles of the vagina will not relax and allow penetration. From what I understand, there are treatments but they are not always successful. So what happens on the wedding night when it is discovered that the virgin wife physically cannot make love? Well, that is not the pro-abstinence movement’s problem, is it?

If I were going to talk to adolescents about sex and abstinence, first of all I would say that is a very serious choice and neither option is to be taken lightly. In regards to the comment about buying a car without going for a test drive (another variant is you wouldn’t buy a pair of shoes without trying them on), first of all, I nor any other human being is a car or a pair of shoes. We are all unique individuals. Yes, I am still a virgin. Mainly because I have not yet met a man who is as interested in getting into my mind as he was my pants. Oh, how often I wished I could cut off what was between my legs and fling it in my so-called date’s face and say, “Here, you want this, take it. Just leave me out of it, since obviously you are not interested in anything else.” Because I will not put up with abusive, manipulative, one-sided sex, I have been called all kinds of names; and no doubt am opening myself up for more just by writing this.

So yes, I practice abstinence. I live abstinence. I know whereof I speak. And what these young women are NOT being told, among other things, is that should you choose abstinence as a lifestyle, is that one, you run a very high risk of NEVER being married (look at all the never-married Christian women out there in their 30′s, 40′s and on up) and two, it will affect your relationships with others in the same way that becoming a vegan or keeping kosher. To tell women that they can have their cake and eat it too, that they can practice abstinence and still have a dating life, is to tell them a lie. That is like saying that you can be a vegan and still go out to eat. It depends. And to say that this is God’s law for singles, and that ‘s just the way it is, you either obey him or not, WITHOUT getting involved with helping singles deal with the problem of keeping chaste in an unchaste society, WITHOUT actively helping them find partners who share the same values, to tell them to just say no and then turn them loose to find their own way, is cruel and irresponsible in the least.

There is so much more I could say on this subject, but this is already a very long post . . .