A surprising new insight, millennials are having less sex than their parents’ generation. In a recent, popular article in The Atlantic, Kate Julian claims that “young people are launching their sex lives later and having sex less frequently than members of previous generations.” As examples of evidence, she cites that “in the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most high-school students have experienced to something most haven’t.” She also writes that “people now in their early 20s are two and a half times as likely to be abstinent as Gen Xers were at that age; 15 percent report having had no sex since they reached adulthood.”
Although I could only speculate as to what has driven this new trend, I am intrigued by the fact that my personal views on sex fall somewhat in line with our generation’s more conservative approach towards sexuality. For non-religious reasons, I believe that sex is best saved for marriage. Although I respect everyone’s freedom to do what they want to do, I would like to lay out some of the ideas that guide my opinion, in the belief that they will offer points that are rarely brought up in pop culture and in other non-religious spaces, and in the hope that they will resonate with people who might already align with the study’s revelations.
I would also like to note that I reserve my opinion purely for heterosexuals like myself, as I have not cultivated a viewpoint on people who are otherwise, and that I am tailoring my elaboration to girls and young women, since Her Campus is for them.
- Something to consider in a country with a roughly 50% divorce rate–people who wait to have sex during marriage have a fraction of the divorce rate of the rest of the world. Along similar lines, people who live together before marriage have a significantly higher divorce rate than people who don’t.
- There is always a chance that one might feel exploited, whether in a hook-up situation, a non-marital relationship, or something in between. A study in the journal Human Nature looked at how women felt in the aftermath of hook-ups. As the journal Human Nature shows, most women reported on their sexual experiences by expressing their “regret at being used” and a sense of self-degradation. Moreover, I know of a woman who still felt sexually used by a guy, in spite of being in a relationship with him for one-and-a-half years. In her own words, she felt like a piece of herself had been irretrievably taken away.
- My third point is elaborated in the following talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL1l9ZtGC2w&t=298s. Although the reasoning is offered by a Christian pastor–Mark Gungor, I think the logic is something that has a secular validity. He argues that premarital sexual relationships can distort the way men and women view sex within the context of marriage. In the video, Gungor articulates this idea in sophisticated detail, but to summarize, men typically pursue sex outside of marriage because they seek a “lustful environment.” Within marriage itself, these same guys want to keep returning to this previous mode of operating–such that they lose interest in their immediate sexual relationships. When women pursue sex outside of marriage, they end up associating sex with nothing, such that they also lose interest in sex within marriage.
- There is always a chance at pregnancy, no matter what kind of birth control you use. Some of the most common kinds of control, for instance, will range from roughly 85% to 90% effectiveness. Not to mention that a fear of pregnancy might come with being sexually active.
- Similarly, being sexually active means regular check-ups to ensure that you don’t have STD’s, and your potential concern that you might have contracted one since your last check-up.
- Oftentimes, an argument brought up in justification of premarital sex is that you need to test-drive the car before you buy it. Thankfully, people are not Maseratis. If one wants to consider sex a skill, then it necessarily lacks an upper bound.
As an afterthought, I also thought it would be a good idea to offer a perspective from a guy who used to be sexually active but then became abstinent. Although Christian, I believe he offers persuasive points to non-Christians, since I am one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkGsQ_Whq34
I hope what I’ve articulated offers at least something to consider. The ramifications of premarital sex can range from the financial, to the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, and perhaps most obviously the temporal.