What's a good response to this argument against no premarital sex?

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johnz123

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I keep hearing this particular argument from people in pop culture who disagree with premarital sex:

“you need sexual experience prior to marriage in order to prepare for sex in marriage.”
They site this as necessary for sexual compatability.

They apply this to both other people and the person you’re going to marry. Even my own sister has dismissed my advice about no sex before marriage because she says that I myself have no sexual experience so therefore there’s no reason to listen to me about relationship advice. Someone else I know essentially made the same point regarding John Paul II and his Theology of the Body. They said “why should I listen to a celibate priest about marriage advice”. This is a classic ad hominem fallacy. Jason Evert had a very pithy response to this argument in one of his videos that I can’t find and can’t for the life of me remember.

It went something like this “claiming you need sexual practice before marriage to prepare for marriage is like claiming you need to practice doing X to prepare for Y” ( and the analogy sounded rightly absurd).

Can any one help me come up with some X and Y’s for the above analogy (or another replies to this argument)? This should be easy. We live in a sound byte culture and it’s I think it’s important to come up with sound bytes in apologetics. I’ve been really tired lately due to a busy schedule so my brain has not been working 100%. Thank you!
 
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johnz123 said:
“you need sexual experience prior to marriage in order to prepare for sex in marriage.”
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People managed to have sex in marriage for hundreds of years just fine during the centuries when women were expected to be virgins prior to marriage and men often were virgins also.

If you love each other it’s pretty easy to learn how to get along sexually after you’re married. It’s not rocket science and you don’t need to train for it for years like it’s a sports competition.
 
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As far as attraction goes: You don’t need to hop in the sack to think, “I enjoy the touch of this person’s hand. I would like more of this, please.”

And the really big thing that everyone leaves out is just how much “sexual compatibility” comes down to being unselfish and finding genuine happiness in pleasing the other. Libido is going to change, so an initially closely-matched couple may (and often does) find an imbalance later, leading to hurt feelings, resentment, and unfulfilled sexual lives. If you find a kind, loving person who wants your welfare and is good at communicating with you, I venture to say you’ve gone a LONG way toward finding someone sexually compatible with you.

As to preferences in bed–these are best formed by the couple themselves. Don’t get a lot of experiences with a long list of other people, and you and your spouse can together work out what’s best and enjoyable for you. Knowing that you are secure in the marriage bond means you can grow over time and figure things out together, which is surely for the best.

So that “Don’t buy the car until you’ve taken it for a test ride” line is baloney. Fewer sexual partners make for happier marriages.


(Yes, I know it’s The Atlantic, but it references an actual study.)
 
Okay, let’s split this into two separate arguments. The generic argument is that people need to have experience with sex so they can know what they are doing to please their spouse when the time comes. The specific argument is that a man and a woman should be able to try each other out before marriage to make sure they are sexually compatible.

The generic one is a dirty trick, because it piggybacks on elements of life where that is true. You do need to have experience at life before you are ready for marriage. You do need to have experience at conflict resolution. You do need to have experience at a whole host of things. Essentially, you need to know who you are.
The major flaw with this is that it presumes inexperienced sex is bad. Poor conflict resolution can seriously damage a relationship, but inexperienced intimacy is still unitive. It involves a level of trust that things can go wrong and yet love is still unconditional.

The specific argument is worse. It applies an artificial ‘you must be this good at sex’ to enter bar. Taking someone for a test drive is the ultimate objectification. True love will never say “Well, I love you, I want to be with you forever, but you are terrible in bed so it will never work.” Couples who insist on cohabitation don’t realize it, but they are putting conditions on their love and it is going to take them a long time to get past that, if they ever do.
 
The sad part of this is that love making is a very special gift you can give each other waiting till marriage. The pop culture makes it sound so good that you have to have it. But if you really love each and care about each other you will make it fine after marriage. It is great to learn together too 🙂

My wife went to a Catholic HS and she tells me about the girls that were fooling around and all of the ones that did got married and divorced. The ones that waited for marriage are still married. Lust and love are two different animals.
 
Well, let me tell you something.

You can learn how to do sex well.

I don’t think anyone ever said, “I really love this person and want to spend my life with them, but I’m walking away because they aren’t experienced at sex”.

Now, they might walk away if they don’t feel respected, if they don’t feel valued.

The sexual compatibility excuse to have sex is just, well, an excuse.
 
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TryingToBelieve said:
My wife went to a Catholic HS and she tells me about the girls that were fooling around and all of the ones that did got married and divorced. The ones that waited for marriage are still married
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To be fair here, I don’t think sex before marriage was the cause of the divorce. More likely it was a symptom of other issues that led to the divorce.

Those that did not have sex before marriage probably did a lot of other things differently as well.
 
TryingToBelieve said:
My wife went to a Catholic HS and she tells me about the girls that were fooling around and all of the ones that did got married and divorced. The ones that waited for marriage are still married. Lust and love are two different animals.
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Speaking as an older person who has seen many couples (and went to Catholic girls school myself), be careful about this generalization. Not saying it’s okay to fool around before marriage, but it doesn’t mean you will automatically end up divorced, any more than waiting till marriage is a guarantee that you will stay together.

People stay together because they are committed to each other. People also don’t all have premarital sex out of unbridled lust.
 
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True. I didn’t mean to imply it is a given it will happen. It was just so striking on how it played out for where my wife went to all girl HS.
 
I think if the person goes to confession and genuinely repents of premarital sex and is healed of their lust before marriage then it’s not an issue. From what I’ve heard from Jason Evert, his wife Crystalina Evert is an example of this. But if the person is still unrepentant or hasn’t been healed by the time marriage rolls around then it could cause problems.
 
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One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of young people make mistakes because they are trying to fit in with the crowd or because one person in the couple (usually the guy though not always) pushes the other person to have sex and threatens to break up, or does break up, if they don’t agree. So it becomes a matter of trading sex for “love” and for the benefits of having a relationship. Or a young person might genuinely believe that they’re in a lasting relationship and that they’re going to soon marry the person they’re having sex with, only to find out later that it wasn’t as lasting as they thought.

After going through some of these situations it’s not uncommon for a person to get angry and stop regarding sex as anything special or meaningful and just act out. If a person is lucky they will eventually meet someone who cares about them for reasons other than sex (it could even be someone who’s been through some of the same bad situations) and settle into a good long-term relationship.

In the days when premarital sex was verboten, it protected a lot of young people, especially women, from having to deal with this kind of emotional baggage which can have a lasting negative effect. Unfortunately our culture currently pushes the idea that women having a sex life with different men (many of whom are just using the woman for sex) is somehow “empowering” while simultaneously pushing the idea that women’s sexuality is a huge part of their value (so advertisers can sell all the products like clothes and cosmetics that you use to look sexually attractive). It makes no logical sense and as a young woman I could see that it didn’t make sense but I felt stuck with it.
 
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Taking a woman to sexual intercourse includes an obligation to marital commitment. If the sex was consentual, it is sinful to engage in sex without marital commitment first. It is called porneia (in biblical Greek).

In the Old Testament, a man who fornicated with a woman (if both were eligible to marry) was bound to take her as his wife.

Deuteronomy 22
If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days.
 
Yes and no. That’s not so much the inherent meaning of sex out of wedlock as it is a legal protection of the woman so that she was not abandoned by society or stoned.
 
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As well as an inherent recognition that, by the standards of the time, her “value” to any other man was largely destroyed once her virginity was taken. Hence the man who lays with a virgin has to pay her father.
 
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Yes, which would include being married to her rapist for life if the man “seized” her and “lay with her” against her will. But at least she wasn’t stoned to death.
 
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No, a forced against will situation is also addressed separately.
 
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I think it was a bit hard to interpret a woman’s “will” in that situation, but I’ll just be quiet and be glad that Jesus came along and put a new covenant in place and also that our society has greatly evolved.
 
I really view the law being discussed with the law about men being able to set aside their wives. As Christ said, some laws were put in place because people were hard-hearted. While I won’t say we don’t still struggle with that, I am glad we are at least capable of understanding more of what we are supposed to be.
 
St Jerome used this passage as grounds for an invalid marriage.

The woman needed to speak out immediately.
 
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