Abstince is just another way of saying, "Practice Self-Control." Why, in a fast-paced, technology driven society, when any image is at your finger tips and any newest model of this game or that car is just a credit card/loan away, should we teach the very basics of controlling our sexual desires? From a young mother's perspective (relatively young, based on the youth of my children and not necessarily my own), I'll give you four reasons I wish I had been taught in school how to hold off on having sex, rather than how to care for a crying baby doll and a flimsy eggshell baby.
1. We don't need to be taught how to do the bad things, we get into all that mess naturally. How many people have witnessed a mom or dad repeatedly telling their children in a store, "Now, don't touch that" or "Come here, little Johnny, stay by Daddy" or (in a hushed voice), "That isn't nice, we don't say F-A-T." People don't need to be trained to do the wrong* thing, simply because at our wits end we have decided society is too far gone to ever learn to behave. Not even close! In fact, that's a quitter's mentality. We press on, we believe that one day, in fact sooner than later, our little ones will learn to acknowledge wisdom and recognize it upon an encounter. We could teach the wrong* stuff all day, every day, but then we really have no right to be appalled at the outcome of a selfish, morally bankrupt, depressed, and lonely generation, do we?
2. I know what you might be thinking. "I am offended! You kept saying 'the wrong thing,' as in, sex before marriage is wrong!? Well, that's just rude! In fact, it's a matter of opinion."
I couldn't agree more. See above. My opinion, is that we should no longer few sex as something young couples do to see if marriage will in fact be tolerable. Trust me, I've heard it all...
"How will you know you'll like it for the rest of your life, if you don't test the merchandise?"
"It's just fun! I wanted to, he wanted to, so we tried it..."
All the way to:
"So, who drove you to the clinic?" "How long did you have to wait after it happened until you could have sex again"
To:
"I told him I thought I was pregnant. I haven't talked to him since."
"I had to pay for the Plan B pill. It was $45.00. He didn't even care."
Obviously, I could continue, but I won't. There isn't really much more to say. While sex can be "fun" it can also be unsafe, isolating as a female if you deal with a pregnancy alone, sad as a male if you thought she was THE ONE, but she wasn't, etc.
Sex isn't easy to navigate, even as a married couple. Sometimes you hit bumps in the road, but at least you have a partner who was committed enough to plan a wedding with, a life with, who you should know well enough to share your fears, your anxieties, and ultimately, your deepest joys with.
Whoever tells you sex is just sex is a liar. Your deepest emotions are all caught up in that little act, in those sweet moments. Wouldn't it be better to tell our youth the truth about that and ask them to reconsider casual sex for what it is? An attempt to repeatedly rip out your heart and throw it under a bus in some sick game of Russian roulette?
3. One day, you'll get pregnant and, assuming you keep the baby, you'll be a mother or a father. While these times are great and wonderful and could be the best of your life, they will also be tiring, confusing, and down-right emotional. You might it feel like dressing up in some skanky costume once you've given birth to your eight pound child and you might not feel right about having your breasts exposed as pleasurable objects, when you spend the majority of your new life using them as feeding utensils.
Is it okay if I say this? Is it okay if I present the problem with not teaching Abstince as a link to the reason mothers are still feeling pressured to squeeze back into skinny jeans and being paranoid that if they don't start putting out as soon as they recover, their husbands might not start stepping out?
See, if as a youth I'm told, "Since you can't control your urges, here are condoms and here is how to care for an eggshell if you forget the condom," I perceive that sex is bad. I perceive that sex had consequences. I perceive that maybe I shouldn't do it, but if I do....it's not that bad.
But, if I'm told that sex is SO much better when I wait. That if I wait to have sex with my partner until we are financially ready to be married and respectful enough of each other to trust one another and to put the other above our own sexual desire, well then I've learned two very important lessons.
1. I am important enough to wait for. That no matter how beautiful I am, or even sexy I appear, my heart and my value lie more in what life I can produce eventually, than with this momentary pleasure called sex and
2. The man I love has already waited once in his life, for however long it took before we were both ready to be married, that in the future, when it takes me one year or six months to start feeling comfortable again as both wife AND momma, I still have no fear that I have his heart and that he would wait for me, for however long it takes, for us to be sexually reunited, in one accord.
4. There is a lot of fear that goes into the approach of sex after children.
"Well, he's ready and technically, so am I...."
"He says he feels forgotten, like number two since the child arrived..."
Let me just say it like this,
A child arrived (if you are married, hence you were taught Abstince) family makes three. It does not make mom and baby And dad. No. It makes, Daddy, Mommy, baby 1, baby 2, etc. So where the mommy is tired and feels sexually unenthused, Daddy steps up, takes baby, helps mom rest. When Dad feels overloaded by work, financial responsibilities, Mom can help by cooking at home saving money on meals or anything else they think of. The point is, having children, of done right, will strain Mommy and Daddy. Did we learn that in sex ed? Oh no, because my egg she'll broke in a day and instead of go to jail or divorce my partner, we laughed, got a C and thought "Hey, having a baby with my partner was lots of fun today!"
