Practically speaking, don't we need to "test drive the car before we buy it?"

[Sarcelle]

An overreaction. My whole original post was about a couple considering marriage. Shouldn’t a couple have sex before marriage to understand their sexual compatibility, to prevent disaster later on??

Hmm, silly me.

I thought a satisfying sex life is built over time, through working and at times compromising with each other. It is not a given and permanent state. It may be satisfying now but it may not be down the road. So there is no guarantee that test driving a person will guarantee a good sex life in marriage.

By the way, equating people to objects is odious.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Of course the Bible says that sex outside of marriage is a sin.

But we know that sex is a major issue that can make or break a marriage. It is important for people to know what their partners like and don’t like in sex, and how much libido their partners have. We know that a marriage that is not open to life is also a sin, in Catholicism. We know that lack of sex, or bad sex, can ruin relationships and destroy marriages.

So practically speaking, despite what the Bible says, don’t people need to “test drive the car before they buy it,” in other words, have sex before marriage to test each other’s sexual compatibility? Isn’t it a foolish risk to not “test drive a car before buying it?” Wouldn’t it be a possible setup for failure to not have sex before marriage?

Let’s discuss.

This idea is premised upon a perspective that is clearly unChristian and unethical.

UnChristian because unconditional love for others, especially “significant” others like a spouse, children or “neighbors” including enemies means we don’t “discard” anyone after “trying them out.”

Unethical because an important ethical principle is that human beings should be considered ends in themselves and never used merely as means.

To go into a marriage with the expectation that the person being considered for marriage will succeed or fail as one worthy of being loved as a “mate” based upon their sexual performance is a profoundly immoral perspective to begin with. It simply misses the point of “who” others are - treating them as objects in the world rather than as persons (which is why the analogy to a car seems superficially plausible) - and why humans exist to begin with (to live a pleasurable existence.)

If lack of sexual performance/compatibility can, in principle, be a reason not to marry someone, it can, in principle, be a reason to divorce someone after the fact. Such a position advocates, contrary to Jesus’ teaching, that man can (and should) “put asunder” what God has joined together.

The other problem with this perspective is that it completely ignores all the positive reasons why one person should marry another; reasons which, in the end, will be what keeps the couple together.

It is maturity, understanding and depth of personal empathy/intimacy/compassion - and, more importantly, depth of love - that are far more crucial than a physical act (which assumes a superficial view of persons to begin with) that will ensure a lasting marriage.

 

[CaliLobo]

Most of the replies have been some version of “how insulting; people aren’t objects.” But have you considered that:

1. People typically consent to sex, so there is no issue of being used
2. People do not get more damaged with more sexual experience, unlike a car which gets more damaged with more use
3. Cars too drive differently over time, but that still does not warrant buying a car without test driving it
4. Although I haven’t had many sexual partners, I do not regret my sexual experiences, despite it being a sin in Christianity
5. Could it be that the Catholic push for chastity is misguided? Some liberal Protestants are tolerant of sex before marriage, because they understand the realities of life. Even Evangelicals are willing to have a real conversation with you on this topic once you have rapport with them, because they have fallen in this area too, and they understand how strong sexual temptation is. Besides, Jesus will forgive us, right? Perhaps it is a good thing to explore one’s sexuality with as many partners as possible, instead of abstaining from sex totally. It is a time of exploration, growth, and learning about your body and what you like. It is a time to learn how to relate to people sexually. It is also a time to get your wild oats out of your system to avoid infidelity later. Sexual exploration will be an opportunity that is completely lost once you are married, when fidelity comes into play. And we know many marriages fail due to lack of fidelity.
6. Catholic sex scandal? Stop saying that the sins of a few priests don’t represent the whole church. There’s a reason why priests feel so pressured. Maybe what it really means is that we need to rethink whether sex is as taboo as we thought it was.

 

[faithfulwannabe]

Why do I think this whole testing before marriage can end up being free prostitution?

So guy A went to test several women to see which one compatible with him. What make him won’t make excuses like oh I’ve tested hundreds of women and not even one satisfied me. I guess I’m not meant for marriage. Lol.
Btw it’s test, I’m not buying anything so it’s free of charge.

I say this idea stem from lack of humility and more of seeking for personal pleasure instead of marrying for God.

Of course I can’t judge. But it’s still wrong no matter what. It violates the chastity of the testers and therefore disrespect the holiness of God.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Who does this? Seriously, who does this?

I’ve lived a pretty secular life, and I’ve never met anyone who viewed premarital sex as “trying before you buy”. I would not have a serious relationship with someone, much less marry them, if they wouldn’t have sex before marriage. I will do my best to raise my children to believe the same. But “trying before you buy” has absolutely nothing to do with it. Finding out if you’re “sexually compatible” is just not something people do. I mean really, who gets into a serious relationship, doesn’t have sex, starts talking about marriage, and then decides that they should “try each other out” to see if they are sexually compatible enough to marry? No one. Or at least no one sane.

 

[Lorelei12]

Who does this? Seriously, who does this?

I’ve lived a pretty secular life, and I’ve never met anyone who viewed premarital sex as “trying before you buy”. I would not have a serious relationship with someone, much less marry them, if they wouldn’t have sex before marriage. I will do my best to raise my children to believe the same. But “trying before you buy” has absolutely nothing to do with it. Finding out if you’re “sexually compatible” is just not something people do. I mean really, who gets into a serious relationship, doesn’t have sex, starts talking about marriage, and then decides that they should “try each other out” to see if they are sexually compatible enough to marry? No one. Or at least no one sane.

I’ve never heard of this either, not in real life anyway. And I’ve certainly never heard of or read any evidence that not “trying someone out” first leads to divorce. OP, I am interested to know where this idea came from in the first place.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Clueless sex (I’m assuming you mean novice, unpracticed, first-timer sex) can be stupid, and awkward, and embarrassing, but the point of keeping it for marriage is that it’s something that you and your spouse will go through together. Rather than drive you apart, it will bind you through shared experience and learning. Although I was a virgin on my wedding night, as was my wife, the internet had pretty much done away with any of the mystery and surprise of sex; that loss is probably one of my greatest regrets because I didn’t get to fully experience that “newness” with my wife.

Exactly.

 

[Lorelei12]

Sexual exploration will be an opportunity that is completely lost once you are married, when fidelity comes into play. And we know many marriages fail due to lack of fidelity.

If a person is interested in “sexual exploration” with other people, I think maybe that person is not a good candidate for marriage. There’s plenty of room for “sexual exploration” within a marriage. It’s quite a leap to say that if you don’t “explore” before marriage, you’ll get bored, commit adultery, and then your marriage will fail…

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Besides, Jesus will forgive us, right?

Wow. I mean, wow.

Jesus is not a rubber stamp for our mistakes, nor a wite-out marker we can exploit at will.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Heck, I sooner long for the day when I give a Don Juan comeback to every guy that looked down on me for not getting laid as much as they were. Bonus if I did it with little to no actual sex. I’d be the kind of guy only very, very lucky girls would have and one occasional romp with me beats a thousand with those meatheads.

For me, THAT is what I’d want for a miracle.

You seem preoccupied with having a “better” sex life than these men you mention. But that’s just a recipe for resentment, if your marriage doesn’t turn out to be sexually stellar. You can’t put expectations like that on your future wife.

 

[Petersprincess1]

1. People do not get more damaged with more sexual experience, unlike a car which gets more damaged with more use

.

Oh boy. Do I disagree with that line. Speaking as someone who lived a very sinful life before I met my husband (who was a virgin) I regret every single sexual act that I had before him. How I wish I could take it all back and present myself as his wife with the gift of my virginity.

 

[LongingSoul]

God made sex. His plan for it to occur within marriage is, as it always has been, the best plan for human sexuality.

I like that statement. It gives natural order to the relationship between a man and a woman. Unlike animals we are not led by the movement of the genitals into perfunctory intercourse. We have been given the ability to love and experience the divine meaning of a relationship. To that end, sexual intercourse creates in us the desire for commitment, devotion, sacrifice and fidelity. Outside of the commitment of marriage before man and God, these naturally created desires have no meaningful place. Sex without marriage denies the great gifts of love and communion that God gave human beings. It is even more meaningless than the animals sexual life, when undertaken contraceptively. Although they can’t love, they have purpose in their sexual actions that conforms to natural law.

 

[Hunbleandlost16]

This debate is irrelevant for Catholics.
Hopefully, if you are Catholic you are Catholic because you believe, trust in, and have faith in your Church and Her teachings.
You see the world through the lens of Her teachings, rather than through the lens of your own making.
If you are Catholic you really have to trust your Church and jump in completely rather than try to pick at anything that makes the faith more difficult for you personally. Obviously, it would be easier for us to be controlled by our passions but that does not make it right. If we were to just pick and choose what we believe about Catholicism, then we are not Catholics. Picking and choosing which beliefs you keep to suit your own desires is Protestantism. Personally, I would choose to trust in the teachings of over 2000 years of Saints and holier people than I than trust in my own “feelings.” I would expect that the Saints and The Church knew what they were talking about when they gave us our teachings and traditions. Besides, even if some people have good intentions when questioning things like this, most people I know only question it because they would like to rationalize their own behavior or try to change a rule to better suit themselves rather than change themselves to better suit their Church.

PS. Ive met far more people who regret not waiting until marriage than people who regret not having enough sex before marriage.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Oh boy. Do I disagree with that line. Speaking as someone who lived a very sinful life before I met my husband (who was a virgin) I regret every single sexual act that I had before him. How I wish I could take it all back and present myself as his wife with the gift of my virginity.

I guess I have the opposite experience. I was also not a virgin, my husband was, and it has never been an issue for either of us. I don’t want to take it back, but at the same time, I don’t think about it. It just doesn’t affect me or us today.

 

[thewanderer]

So, basically, what your advertising is that when you fall deeply in love with someone, you tell them " I really love you, and I’m thinking about marrying you, but before I propose I just have to check one thing. Let’s have sex, and, if you give me enough pleasure then I will propose and we can get married, but if you don’t meet my standards for pleasure from sex, sorry honey, but you’re out the door." Do you really not see how terrible and demeaning that is? I can promise you this, if a man ever tried to “test drive” me, even if I was OK with premarital sex, he would be gone in the blink of an eye. If you place receiving x amount of sexual pleasure above being with me as a person then I really don’t need you in my life. I dont need the stress of worrying you will walk out on me and the kids because I was exhausted and couldn’t meet your pleasure quota for the week. Op, grow up, the attitude you are presenting has no place in marriage even if the couple in question have sex before marriage, the attitude you are presenting is. Sure recipe for disaster.

 

[Xantippe]

You seem preoccupied with having a “better” sex life than these men you mention. But that’s just a recipe for resentment, if your marriage doesn’t turn out to be sexually stellar. You can’t put expectations like that on your future wife.

Yeah. It’s a really weird thing to get competitive about.

And really, why brag about the awesomeness of your marital sex life? Either it will make others feel bad, and/or they’ll want to enjoy what you’ve been enjoying. There’s no upside at all.

It’s like not bragging about all the gold coins you’ve got in your safe–a prudent person keeps their lips zipped if they’ve got something really valuable at home.

 

[LongingSoul]

So Op, grow up, the attitude you are presenting has no place in marriage even if the couple in question have sex before marriage, the attitude you are presenting is. Sure recipe for disaster.

You can imagine Hitler beginning his theory of life with such reasoning. Next it will be testing babies as they come out for perfection because kids with ‘defects’ put a strain on marriage.

 

[Xantippe]

There have been a lot of good points made, particularly by the older people like Cat and Easter Joy–things really do change a lot over time.

A few more thoughts:

1. Calilobo, perhaps you have been “road tested” and deemed unsuitable. Does that feel good?
2. From the female perspective, we’d need more than a short “test drive” to figure out if we were going to have a good sexual relationship with a man. It might require quite a long time to figure out what all the brakes, pedals, knobs and dials do, and by that time, maybe we’d be single mothers, which is going to severely hamper our ability to engage in more “test drives”. Babysitters are expensive. (Currently, nearly half of all first children are born out of wedlock in the US. It’s over 1/3 overall.)
3. One can expect differing libidos to be more the rule than the exception, particularly after the initial honeymoon phase (whether premarital or marital). She may be pregnant and disgusted by how he smells. She may be pregnant and raging with desire (despite looking like a hippo). She may be postpartum and feel disgusted by even the thought of being touched. He may squicked out by having sex with a pregnant woman or after having watched her nether regions get stitched up after getting torn (torn!!!) during childbirth. She may be a 40ish woman with school age children and enough leisure and confidence to feel frisky. He may be 45 and stressed out by work. She may be 55 and recovering from a hysterectomy. He may be 55ish and dreading his colonoscopy later this week. Etc. There’s a continual need for adjustment.
4. Non-religious men often gripe about how misleading their premarital experiences with their future wives were. “What food destroys female libido?” “Wedding cake.” A lot of men think that that it was all a show or a trap, which is not really fair, as people who didn’t have premarital sex also have ups and downs. In any case, as they say in the financial world, past performance does not guarantee future performance.
5. There are reasonable matters for concern. We don’t want to accidentally wind up with a gay husband, which could be one explanation for why a man finds it surprisingly easy to be chaste before marriage. Likewise, an entirely asexual spouse would be a bummer. It should be difficult for both parties to wait. If it isn’t hard, that should be worrisome. Another reasonable matter for concern is weird sexual tastes. If a person’s desires are suffiiciently “out there,” they’ll be hard to live with. Fortunately, a lot of unpleasant options are off the table for Catholics. Yay!
6. It should be possible to tell if the car really, really, really likes you, and you really, really, like the car. What else do you need?

 

[Rico_S]

I am going to play a devil’s advocate here a bit for fun…

There have been a lot of good points made, particularly by the older people like Cat and Easter Joy–things really do change a lot over time.

Agree 100% with the many posts about how things can change a lot over time and that there is no guarantee that sexual experience before marriage = sex experience after marriage. But I think that is a poor reason to reject the OPs idea. Do we then not evaluate any dynamic factor when considering a potential spouse? Religious views can change, views on kids, alcohol consumption, family relationships, etc. But I would find it absurd to say…“well it doesn’t do any good to take into consideration what his religious views are now, b/c that can change” when trying to discern a mate.

1. Calilobo, perhaps you have been “road tested” and deemed unsuitable. Does that feel good?

Well, it never feels good to be rejected, but really…isn’t this the same thing that happens with dating (or courtship for the more conservative of you out there). “i have road tested you and find you to be not devout enough…or not intelligent enough…or not pretty enough…or not ambitious enough?” None of those will feel great either, but it is essentially a “road testing” as well.

 

[Estevao]

“Despite what the Bible says, we should do X”

Huge false premise OP. The Bible is the objective word of God, true and inerrant. If it enjoins us to avoid sex outside of marriage, only a fool would not follow this.