Sex After Marriage

Greetings bloggers and readers! Apologies for my long hiatus.

This post is one that I felt was necessary to share, sex from a Christian perspective. Let's face it, we are bombarded daily through movies, TV shows, blogs, magazines, newspapers, and so on with the wrong messages about sex. The messages we get out there are stuff like:

(1) there's no need to wait until you are married before you have sex,
(2) having multiple partners is great - in fact the more the better,
(3) sex is a purely physical need you can meet with no strings attached,
(4) saving sex for marriage is unnatural and outdated,
(5) sex is just a bit of fun to be enjoyed and there are no consequences for having sex outside of God's will, etc.

So I thought a little clarity from a Christian's point of view would be helpful to people who read my blog. And since I had promised to be honest when I started this blog, I decided to give it a go. Nothing too explicit- mind!

Well as you (my wonderful readers) can imagine, after abstaining and waiting to get married before having sex, I was more curious than anything else as to what it's really like. Before marriage, I had tried to imagine and ask christian couples about it, but most people were too shy to give me any satisfactory answers. Until I met my mentors and one day I brought up the topic and we had a frank discussion. The wife told me that the first few times is really awkward because it's all new and strange but after some time, you understand yourselves more and more and you get used to it. Which somehow made sense, but wasn't really what I wanted to hear, having read too many Mills and Boons novels as a teenager, painting a picture that sex is a wild, passionate whirlwind of sensations!

It turned out to be true though. Sex in marriage is a journey of discovery. There's no way you're going to be good at something if you've never done it before! It takes time to get to know yourself, what you like and don't like. It also takes time to understand the other person too, so don't let the pressure of having a "fabulous wedding night" get you under pressure. But having no experience is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact it's a good thing because marriage gives you a safe and secure framework to discover and express your sexuality. Our first time was quite awkward but I look back on it now and smile. A few days into our marriage, we opened our wedding presents and some people had kindly given us some books on sex written from a Christian point of view. We read some of the chapters and it was good to have some more facts we could add to our knowledge. And things keep getting better and better after the first time. In fact, I think that's the way God designed it so that you won't get bored easily.

Seeing sex now as a married person, I really understand why God designed it to be enjoyed within the commitment of marriage. As a single person, you may think that God's rule is just too harsh, too impractical or too restrictive but there are reasons why. Apart from the purely physical stuff, what makes sex in marriage beautiful and complete for me is the fact that it's a hundred and one percent worry-free, risk-free, guilt-free, God-approved pleasure! Did I mention it's fun too? Ha ha! But it's true though. God's rules are always for our own good.

Sex in a loving committed marriage relationship is worry-free for many reasons. For example: (1) I'm assured that this person loves me and he is committed to me,
(2) I know he's not giving me lyrics just to get in my pants,
(3) I know that he is not selfishly using me to meet his own needs,
(4) I don't have to worry about whether he will dump me tomorrow if he doesn't feel I'm good enough in bed,
(5) I know he's not going to slag me off to his friends tomorrow about that babe he has just 'scored',
(6) I don't have to worry about whether he's sleeping with several other ladies at the same time
(7) I know that sex is an expression of the love we have for each other
(8) Nobody can come and arrest me or accuse me of sleeping with her man
(9)I have no fear of catching any funky diseases
(10) I never regret sex by waking up the next morning thinking "OMG, what did I do last night!"etc.

There's also a big issue of trust involved with sex. I personally can't imagine giving myself to somebody that I don't know or trust enough. The idea just doesn't make sense to me. I think God designed sex to be within marriage because that gives you the framework to be yourself. You have to trust the other person to be able to relax and be completely at ease. You have to trust that they won't hurt you. Otherwise what's the point of giving yourself physically but withholding emotionally? Sex is best when you connect at every level. It just makes the whole package complete because it's about pleasure, intimacy and the bond we share, it's not a performance that I have to measure up to. There's no shame, guilt or embarrassment between us.

I could go on but I'll just say a few more things. Sex is never a "no-strings attached act". It creates a deep emotional and spiritual bond between two people. And that's because God designed it to be an intimacy builder in a marriage. So whenever a married couple have sex, they are actually making their bond stronger. If you take sex outside marriage, it still creates a bond between two people. I'm sure we've all heard of people in toxic relationships who can't seem to leave as they are emotionally tied to the other person because they've had sex with them. Or two people supposedly just having "casual sex" but end up having feelings for each other and someone gets hurt.

And one last thing, sex should never be used as a bargaining tool. That defeats the whole purpose it was meant for. Withholding sex for selfish reasons cheapens it and turns it into a commodity. It shouldn't happen in a loving, Christian marriage. I'll stop there, but for anyone who has questions, feel free to email me. If anyone wants to read more I've put up links to some books that may be helpful: Intended for Pleasure , The Act of Marriage , The Marriage Book

As always, stay blessed and favoured!