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Here is another letter concering one of those matters of which I feel compelled to speak but have so few opportunities, on which I want you to be able to know what I think without you feeling you have to agree with me or to embarrass either of us. They are just thoughts of mine (Mum agrees with them) of which I wish my father had offered to me the like many years ago. I hope you find them encouraging and helpful.
There is a slogan being promoted by some religious groups: "True love waits". Like most slogans this requires thinking rather than just superficial agreement.
In many cultures a girl's virginity was (and in some still is) considered to be her most valuable asset, not to be surrendered without a marriage contract fully completed. This is not merely a matter of prejudice or simple tradition, it is based on sound principles of public health, community welfare and economics.
It is noteworthy that this restriction is not usually applied to men in the same way, perhaps because apart from the health issues the risks do not lie with the men. (The health risks for male homosexuals, on the other hand, are very much greater and so our traditions provide much stronger prohibitions there). Because the issues of virginity are thus usually perceived as relating mostly to the female this paper also reflects the same bias. We recognise however that it takes two to tango.
The public health issue is simple enough. Intercourse is a good way to spread diseases, and we have a good variety of sexually transmitted diseases available to us to catch. On the other hand the proportion of the community infected in our society at present is fairly small and if we confine ourselves to a very few partners (and refuse intercourse with those who ‘sleep around') our exposure is small. Strict monogamy is a good guarantee against STDs.
Community welfare considerations include the social undesirability of children being born into the society without parents willing and able to ensure their proper care and development. I have written elsewhere about the undesirability of poor parenting and the limitations of nuclear families – children born to teenage single mothers have been recognised as a problem from before the beginning of recorded history, hence the powerful social stigma attached to premarital conceptions. Virginity is guaranteed freedom from this social evil.
The economic issues are somewhat more subtle, but they are perhaps the most deeply ingrained. The stereotyped division of sex roles of men and women has evolved because it is more efficient. Families were better fed and more offspring survived when men did the hunting and killing, and women tended the home fires and cared for the children, and accordingly men and women each tended to adapt to those specialisations. If a man was to be away hunting for much of the time it was important to him that his wife was not sharing sexual favours with other men while he was away. A man does not wish to spend his limited resources raising another man's child. This is a complex matter because these motives are disguised by social conditioning, so many may deny it – however men strongly resist being cuckolded. Her virginity at the start of their sexual relationship is evidence of her genuine intent not to do that.
As noted above the problem with STDs is small if you keep your exposure sensibly selective; the problem of unwanted children surely should have disappeared with the availability of effective contraceptives (only in the last 40 years); and the risk of cuckolding is never eliminated but is also greatly reduced by effective contraceptives.
The social expectations of a girl have also changed. She has become an economic competitor with men in most respects; she may expect to be properly trained and to work at her profession, she is not necessarily fated to be some man's wife ‘barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen', but may grow to be a person of significance in a society of her own choosing.
In this context her sexuality is her own, she must understand and manage it, and when she is ready she may choose to leave her virginity behind.
Sex and love are two quite separate motives. Whether we like another person or not seems to be something which just happens, loving on the other hand is something that we may choose to do (even if we do not like them) or not. It is not uncommon for a parent to have trouble liking a difficult child (or vice versa) but for a strong love still to be manifest, and entirely without sex. Like loving, sex is a course of actions which we choose or refuse, but it is not the same as loving and they must not be confused with each other. Either sex or love may compel a man to pursue a woman although from her viewpoint there may appear to be little difference.
The oldest profession (prostitution) has only existed because there were always men with cash on their hands and the want of a sexual companion. In these days of female emancipation there seem also to be a significant proportion of women who enjoy sex for its own sake. What I read (see for example the notes by Amber) suggests that the one-night-stand has some appeal to many women, and that many try it out. Nobody should ever imagine that there is love in such a relationship, it is simply sex.
The health risks may discourage most from such experimentation, and I would not gainsay it, but at the same time the adventuress experimenting with casual sex is learning the distinction of sex from love, and is much less likely to be tempted to believe she is loved by a man without the maturity to know the difference.
Her understanding of the difference will only become secure as she has experience of both. Her failure to have safe experience of sex will do nothing to help her know what a man is thinking as he presses himself upon her, and if her ignorance is confounded with romantic presumptions of love her chances of choosing well are deplorably reduced.
Likewise his. A young man is easily seduced by a woman who sees the world and her own future in him. It is necessary that he recognise her in the cold light of morning as the woman he wishes to stay together with before he makes that commitment. His chances are improved if sex is seen for what it is and not of inflated importance.
Some feel that the sensations of sex are so confusing to a girl that they should be kept out of her relationships until she is ready to select a life-partner. Without disputing the intensity of the feelings, I disagree, in that I think it impossible to keep those feelings at bay and a woman who was able to get to the point choosing her husband without having them is quite unready for marriage.
Advocates of waiting argue that waiting places sex in its right perspective. I am not sure of that. Sex is not unimportant – it is a very powerful motivator. To suggest that it has no place in a couple's relationship until after marriage is tantamount to denial; if it is of so little importance as to be totally excluded from the relationship a week before the wedding it is no different a week later. If it is important (as I believe it should be) that should be recognised and put in its proper perspective before the knot is tied.
This denial of the importance of sex appears to owe more to the mediaeval church fathers and the Puritans than to careful thinking about how we understand ourselves. It is perhaps popular because it preserves longstanding traditions. Such traditions are valuable so long as they are not overtaken by other changes. Pretending that sex is not important, however, does not honour the important origins of the tradition of abstinence, it is simply denial. Those who deny the importance of sex before marriage should not be expected to behave any differently in later years. Denial can be very hard to live with.
Not before you feel you are ready.
The professional woman is not expected to be sexually subservient to some man, nor is she expected to be sexually vacant if she is unmarried. So what happened to her virginity? She grew up and left it behind in much the same way as he is expected to.
The wise girl is aware of herself and her situation and avoids intercourse (just say ‘No') until she feels she is ready – her discretion alone. When she is ready she takes responsibility for herself – which means she ensures (if needed) that an appropriate contraceptive is in place – and then she chooses to let herself go.
Hopefully she does this with a person she respects and likes, that the moment is appropriately honoured and is subsequently remembered with pleasure. These outcomes do not always work quite as planned (especially when we have no prior experience) but will be much more likely to be happily remembered than if they are unplanned.
As for him? Much the same applies. He is expected to solicit, entertain, seduce and then to perform. If he is not nervous he is not human. Some of us failed at the first try, and the second, ... Failure can be self perpetuating. When he is ready he must take courage in both hands and commit himself to the risks. Frankness certainly helps by reducing the expectations on both sides, but his adolescent ego may not be able to cope with that much honesty. Responsibility is still required to ensure that an unwanted pregnancy does not follow.
Returning to the slogan; consider the words.
Surely 99% of people getting married will say that they have true love, yet in a few years many of them are seeking divorce. There is a belief widespread in the community that some proportion of these failures arise on account of ‘sexual incompatibility’. Just what this term means is never stated and my imagination runs riot with possibilities – none of them at all plausible.
Can some love be more or less true than other love? What nonsense. I may love more or less passionately, but neither is particularly true or otherwise. There is no initial magic of trueness which makes one relationship right (and by implication some others wrong). What makes it right is our choosing to keeping it alive.
Of course if I just say the words of love but I do not feel it, that is untrue, but it is not love either.
As youths we may be confused by infatuation we may have for a particular person, and think our feelings are love – well they are, but they are not mature love which recognises defects and limitations in the object of our affections without deflecting our sentiments. Loving is something we choose to do. I am confident that any person who has been able to read this to this point is also able to tell the difference. I am talking about adults here.
With a fair bit of experience now I will contend that ‘true love’ is a fiction. Margaret and I love each other, and I am sure that the same holds equally for most people who engage in affectionate sex, but whether it will be sustained in the long term is not guaranteed nor threatened by anything the parties do or abstain from initially. Long term success is another kettle of fish altogether.
True love waits. For what? The unstated answer is presumably a marriage contract. Do not be deceived that such a contract has any bearing at all on the love of the parties for each other, or their preparedness to put in the long term effort to make the union successful. Hopefully they are as much in love as the couple who just decide to move in together on the same day.
Marriage has become more like a subscription than a contract, with a large proportion of couples electing not to renew. Serial polygamy is increasingly provided for in our society, with a plethora of maintenance, custody and blended family provisions all supporting the expectation of divorce and remarriage. The growing use of prenuptial contracts witnesses to the expectation of their users that their marriage may be terminated, and the advent of no-fault divorce has made that route often easier than the long-haul work of making the relationship successful.
No doubt the True Lover was actually waiting for a marriage made in heaven – a ‘Christian’ marriage. Might be a long wait, as it appears that the holders of strong religious convictions seem to be no less confronted by the difficulties of changing themselves in a long term relationship, and the temptation of the easy way out appears to be chosen just as often as by the heathens.
Am I advocating sexual licence? Not on your sweet Nellie. I advocate responsibility, and that means in sexual matters too. Sexual responsibility means avoiding practices which spread disease; keeping ourselves healthy and attractive to the best lover we can find. That means not ‘sleeping around’.
It means actively learning about ourselves, about sex and the way it affects us and how we feel about it. It means not being afraid to learn from members of the opposite sex about what they think and the way they feel about it. It means being willing to touch and to be touched, to affect and to be affected, and it means to love and to be loved and to understand how this is different from sex.
It also means to feel free and able to commit ourselves to sex when we feel that this is appropriate. It is understanding that virginity is a part of childhood and stepping into an adult world is something which ultimately we wish to do, and it is being able to look back on having made that step and to remember it with great pleasure.
Alas I was not as responsible as I encourage you to be. Margaret was not pregnant when we were married, but I now realise that was good luck not good management. We were dupes of guilt, denial and ignorance and were very fortunate not to suffer much for it. We do not expect you to be perfect. We will love you just the same even when you make the errors we have warned you against. You owe us nothing, but you owe it to yourselves to try to be responsible.
Times have changed, and they will change again. What is responsible today may become foolish in the future. The above is written for our children growing up into the community in which we live. It might not be appropriate for their children in a couple of decades time, or for those elsewhere right now. Responsible sex recognises and adapts to this.
Responsible sex is also safe sex. Here are some special thoughts for virgins and others who are not much at risk.
Original: January ‘00
This page is part of “Living in the Light”
found at: http://www.tassie.net.au/~phoban/
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