Sex, Lies, and the Truth
(Dating, Waiting, and Choosing a Mate, Part 4)  

(For overhead outline of this lesson, click HERE.)

Review

            Last week, I had you imagine that your younger sister came to you for counsel on whether or not to have sex with her boyfriend.  During the lesson, I gave you lots of ammunition.  Let’s brainstorm in review.  Tell me some reasons you remember from last week.  (Put up last week’s overhead if you need to.)  

Last week we saw that a definitive study found the best, most satisfying sex goes on in the context of a committed for life relationship, which we call marriage.  To quote this study one more time,

"Those having the most partnered sex and enjoying it most are married people. The young single people who flit from partner to partner and seem to be having a sex life that is satisfying beyond most people's dreams are, it seems, mostly a media creation. In real life, the unheralded, seldom discussed world of married sex is actually the one that satisfies people the most." (1)

Introduction

"But wait," some people object.  "I don't see people reaping these consequences.  One in four adults have an STD?  Come on! All I hear about are people bragging about all the fun they are having.  The consequences of sex that you're reporting from scientific sources just don't seem real."  

Teacher: Either use the following to expand upon what the students have responded, or add these ideas to what they missed:  

Reasons we don't believe the facts about the consequences of early sex:

Deception #1: TV Shows and Movies Don't Tend to Tell the Whole Story.

Illustration: Each year the average person views 9,230 scenes depicting sex or implied sex.  And 81% of the sex is outside of marriage (Why Wait?, p. 41).  Now, we know that one out of four students who have sex will acquire a sexually transmitted disease. But of the 92,000+ sex scenes you have viewed over the past 10 years, how many of them depicted the character picking up gonorrhea or herpes? Perhaps a few? Certainly not anything near one out of four! Does this strike you as odd?  If we saw 92,000 TV and movie characters playing in war scenes over the past 10 years and we never saw an injury, Roger Ebert and the rest of us would be crying out for some reality.  Yet, when it comes to TV sex, we're subtly getting the message that it's all fun with no consequence.  

Illustration: It would probably shock a lot of people into reality if James Bond, who tends to sleep around with various women, were to develop a troublesome itch, visit a doctor, be diagnosed with herpes, and be warned to stop all sexual activity.  That would be reality for a person who sleeps around as much as Bond. But will we ever see it on a Bond movie? 

So, one reason we tend to believe we won't get STD's from sex is because of the fanciful way sex is presented in movies and TV shows. Another source of our confusion is that...        

    Deception #2: Our schoolmates don't tell us the whole story.  

The locker room bragging over recent conquests never seems to turn to the subject of venereal diseases or pregnancy.  But apparently a lot of our classmates are suffering a private heartache that no one but their doctor will ever hear about.  But think about it for a minute. What would you expect? That after a football player's diagnoses with Herpes, he tells all his teammates in the locker room and purchases a bumper sticker for his car that reads, "Honk if you have Herpes!"? 

Expect to hear about people's sexual conquests, either true or fabricated. But don't expect to hear about the negative. 

    Deception #3: Young Minds Resist Believing Tragic Truths.

All people, but especially young people tend to believe that car wrecks and pregnancies and STD's happen to other people, not them.  Psychologists have a name for it: "The teen fantasy."  "Other youth may get pregnant, but not me."  "Other youth may get STD's, but not me.  Hoods and greasy people may get them, but not me."

It's as if each month viruses hold a convention and compare pictures of potential hosts to see who they will infect next:

Virus #1:  NO WAY, NOT HER, SHE'S A POPULAR CHEERLEADER, HAS GOOD PARENTS, AND WASHES HER HAIR REGULARLY. 

Virus #2:  YEA, I DESPISE THE POPULAR ONES.  SHOW ME A PICTURE OF A REAL LOSER! 

"The Teen Fantasy" seems almost humorous. But it is real.  And powerful. 

Illustration: Catch this: one teen mother of 3 children said that she still had sex without birth control.  Her reason?  She didn't think she would get pregnant! It's "The Teen Fantasy," and it's scary!

STD's are scary.  Some STD's, such as AIDS, can lie dormant with no symptoms for an extended period of time.  People can be passing the disease on to people they really care about without even knowing it!

They are also serious.  Their symptoms range from recurring sores, rashes, blisters and fatigue to blindness, paralysis, insanity, cancer, birth of a blind or diseased child, or death.  This is not sensationalism.  I'm not trying to use scare tactics. I'm just passing on the truth. 

But the good news is that there's a way to stay clear of STD's. You see, these diseases are spread by sexual contact between multiple sex partners (one partner this year, another partner the next, etc.) Here’s an example:  In an article in Jane Magazine quoted an astonishing statistic: Women who have sex with more than one partner are 500 times more likely to get Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID) than those who have sex with only one. 

The solution?  Can you say MARRIAGE? If you save sex for marriage and stay faithful to your marriage partner, you have little to worry about. 

The bottom line:  If you want to avoid STD's, save sex for marriage.

Transition: But there are other reasons, besides pregnancy and STD's, to postpone sexual involvement.

Reason #3:  Because Premarital Sex Strains Emotions.

Sexual intercourse is more than a simple physical experience.  It often produces some kind of emotional bond.  

Illustration:  Dr. Francis Braceland, clinical professor at Yale and editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry reports that premarital sexual relations have "greatly increased the number of young people in mental hospitals."  Sex is not simply a recreational thrill, like bungee jumping.  It creates a kind of oneness, which, if the relationship dissolves, can cause some people's emotions to go berserk. 

You might think, "Yea, but this relationship will never dissolve.  We're in love and this is the real thing."  But "one study shows an average of five 'real loves' for kids between ninth grade and the second year of college." (2)

Illustration: One study found that from 1974 to 1984, "guilt and remorse resulting from sexual involvement have doubled among teenagers."  (3)  Another "freeing" result of the sexual revolution.

The bottom line:  if you want to avoid guilt and remorse, save sex for marriage.

Reason #4: Because Premarital Sex Can Harm Your Relationship as a Couple. 

Over and over I hear stories of youth who give in to the pressure to have sex, thinking that it will strengthen the dating relationship.  But often, the opposite happens.  As one girl wrote:

            "I thought Mike really loved me, but last night we had sex for the first time and this morning he told my girl friend that he didn't want to see me any more.  I thought giving Mike what he wanted would make him happy and he'd love me more.... I don't know how I can go on." (4)

      Her experience isn't unusual. Is strengthening your relationship with your boyfriend or girlfriend a concern?  Consider what bringing sex into the relationship can do:

• Consume the relationship and cause a breakdown in communication.

• Cause mistrust.

• Lead to a loss of respect for both of you.

• Lead to bitterness.

• Lead to an unhealthy focus on the physical rather than focus on the relationship.

The bottom line: If you want a good dating relationship, save sex for marriage.

Reason #5:  Because Premarital Sex Can Endanger Your Future Marriage.

  Married couples who had premarital sex are:

• more likely to have extra-marital affairs.  

• women are twice as likely.

• tend to have less happy marriages.

• are more likely to divorce.

• are less happy with their married sex life.

I've never heard a married couple say that they wish that had experienced sex before marriage. 

Bottom line: If you want the best sex, save sex for marriage.

Reason #6: Because Premarital Sex Can Cause Guilt and Regrets.  

We probably all have those things we've done wrong in the past, like we've hurt someone we love with our words, destroyed something we shouldn't have, etc., that are hard to get off our minds. Whenever we think about them, we cringe or shudder.  We feel guilty, and wish like anything that we could go back and change it. 

For a lot of people, premarital sex is something they could kick themselves for doing. Some feel they did something stupid. Others feel they hurt another person. Some live with the fact that they got a girl pregnant or passed on a disease. Others feel they violated their religious convictions. Whatever the case, none of us like that feeling of regret. 

Bottom line:  If you want less regrets, save sex for marriage.  

Reason #7: Because Premarital Sex Can Make Us Miserable.  

I know...this point goes against everything we see in the movies, where the guys and girls scoring the most casual sex are incredibly happy and fulfilled with life. The miserable losers are the ones who don't get the premarital sex.

Yet, scientists who study real teenagers paint a different picture. When 6500 teens were asked questions about their sex lives and their happiness, we discovered that: 

"When compared to teens who are not sexually active, teenage boys and girls who are sexually active are significantly less likely to be happy and more likely to feel depressed."

"When compared to teens who are not sexually active, teenage boys and girls who are sexually active are significantly more likely to attempt suicide."(5)

At some point, we've got to decide whether we want to believe the voices of actors in movies, telling us that early, casual sex is the way to happiness; or the voices of thousands of real teens, who are telling us that sex is making them miserable.  

Bottom line:  If you want to be happier, save sex for marriage.  

Conclusion

You've heard the facts.  So what will it be for you?  I challenge you to make a decision, to set a standard, now, while you're thinking clearly. Don't wait till you're in the back seat of a car, with emotions and hormones exploding. That's no time to make a decision about sex. 

Now, with your head clear, you can set a standard that will help keep you through the tempting times. It makes tons of sense to commit yourself to saving sex for marriage. 

Some of you already have your mind cluttered with sexual regrets. Maybe somebody pushed you into it and it wasn't your fault. Maybe you've been making sexual choices without the facts, but now you know better. Whatever the case, you feel you have already blown it.  The great thing is that life is all about new beginnings. Just because you've had sex doesn't mean you can't make a commitment to "no more sex until marriage." Remember, the less partners you have before marriage, the less your odds of getting an STD.

 1) Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, Edward O. Laumann, and Gina Kolata, Sex in America: A Definitive Survey, (LIttle, Brown and Co., Boston and New York), p. 131.
2) So Larry Richards (p. 24) and Jim Burns, (p. 17). Short says 3 to 5 relationships.     
3) Why Wait?, p. 26.
4) Ibid., p. 16.
5) "Sexually Active Teenagers Are More Likely to Be Depressed and to Attempt Suicide," by Robert E. Rector, Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., and Lauren R. Noyes, Center for Data Analysis Report #03-04, June 3, 2003. Found at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/cda0304.cfm . Based on the results of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, Wave II, a study of 6500 adolescents from across the nation in 1996. It was sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and 16 other federal agencies.