Should I Have Sex Before Marriage?

Choosing when to have sex should be a personal decision, but between religion, culture, friends, family, it can feel like a really challenging one to make. So today we're going to unpack and break down how to decide when to have sex. So we want to hear from you. Let us know in the comments if you've ever felt confused about when to have sex. Even if you already have had sex, let us know. Like, was this a challenging decision for you to make? Make.

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All right, so let's get into it. Our first bone to pick here is with the terminology around this concept. We often talk about losing your virginity as if there's a bad thing. Like, you're going to lose something that's really valuable. Yeah, you don't want to lose stuff. Right. It implies that you kind of need to hold onto it. But in reality, when you have sex for the first time or any time past that, you're not losing any part of yourself, like, emotionally or physically. We prefer to refer to this as your sexual debut. Like, that sounds a lot more fun and actually realistic in terms of what you're doing. Right.

Okay. So let's be honest. The concept of waiting for marriage does typically come from religion, and often it's presented in this way of, like, saving you from being impure. We talk a lot about purity culture, this idea that you have to save yourself. And there can be a lot of shame associated with, like, not following the rules. Like, oh, my religion told me this is how it was supposed to be. And, like, I have to follow that.

Yeah, that's what people are expecting of me.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's important for us to acknowledge that there are very few people who follow their entire religion's doctrine to the letter.

Not doing something just to avoid shame is not a very good way to make a decision either. And this can be really hard. But instead, you need to figure out what feels right to you, not just what have you been told is right. What do other people think is right? Like, what are your actual beliefs about sex? It can be really helpful here to try to separate yourself from it. Oftentimes when we are involved ourselves, it can just feel really hard to like to make a decision that isn't the decision that other people have been telling us to make. So instead think, like, what would you be telling your best friend or your younger sibling? What advice would you want to give to them? And then think about that and then try to apply it to yourself.

Yeah. Another way you can think about it is like, are you telling yourself that you can't have sex or that you don't want to have sex right now? There's a really big difference between, between those two things.

So if you do decide that you're open to having sex before marriage, we'd also, we want to make sure it's really clear you don't need to go out and just have sex with anyone. Like, obviously you get to still be as discerning as you want. Just because you make the decision that you want to have sex, it doesn't mean you have to go do it right then and there. It can be like, I'm going to do this in many years. The key is that you should choose someone that you really care about and that you feel safe with. That is the most important thing.

So personally, we both made the decision to have sex before marriage. I know, like, as a sex therapist myself, I obviously recognize that sex is really important. It's central to the majority of relationships. And it can be really challenging going into a relationship without having had this experience. So you can discover that you may not be compatible with your partner. Like, you have different interests, desires, different ways that you want to have sex. Then it can be really devastating to realize this after you've made this major life commitment to each other. It's is really similar to, like, getting married, but not having had a conversation beforehand about whether or not you want kids. Like, one person may want it, one person may not. And you don't realize that until it, like, feels like it's pretty late in the game.

So even if you do decide to wait until marriage to have sex, it is still really important that you talk about it. You have more than just one conversation about it. Like, keep talking about it. So that could be like, what do you want your sex life to look like once you're married? What are you interested in trying? It can be fun and exciting to talk through that stuff and start to kind of get prepared mentally. I think the key thing to acknowledge, though, is that even though you're talking about it, you're not ever going to have the full picture of what that's actually going to be like until you really start doing it together and see for yourself what it's like.

So just to be perfectly clear, we absolutely respect religious beliefs, but we just want you to understand that it's your choice whether or not you want to have sex before marriage. And if you do decide to have sex before marriage, that does not make you dirty, dirty, impure, unwanted, bad, any of those things.

Yeah. And if you do decide that you want to have sex, we are going to share a video that is going to help you have your very best sexual debut down in the resources section. So make sure you watch that next.

So that wraps up our video on deciding whether or not to have sex before marriage.

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Thanks for watching.

See you next time.