An atypical question for the married folk.

[Purge187]

Did you guys have any problems making the transition from keeping yourself pure in deed and thought to sex suddenly being perfectly fine and upright as soon as you said, "I do"? Do you feel as if the oftentimes sex-negative beliefs that some churches espouse had a lasting impact on you?

I'm not really interested in getting married anymore, but I've always had a thing for psychology.

 

[CounselorForChrist]

I know I didn't. I realized early on in life sex is not a bad thing and that once married we are to embrace sex with our spouse. My wife through had problems not so much with having sex but what was ok, what wasn't, what to talk about. Although it may be because in her country sex-ed doesn't exist and neither does anatomy class...etc. Shes better now and express herself intimately just fine. Shes much more open now that she understands sex is a wonderful gift from God.

From what I read though alot of couples are weird about sex at first because its been drilled into their head that its a bad thing that they forget once married thats not true.

 

[Purge187]

Speaking for myself, Matthew 5:27 has been troublesome sometimes. I realize that Christ's intent with that and the surrounding passages was to make us realize how often we fall short and how much we need to rely on Him, not to instill us with guilt or fear. Even so, I feel like those words were some of the contributing factors to my becoming asexual and avoiding marriage.

I'd think the sudden transition from forbidden to fine would be jolting. I'm glad to hear that you and your wife have adjusted nicely.

 

[dayhiker]

neither my wife or I had a transition to sex in marriage. The problem came in that she never thought about sex other than when we were having sex. I wanted sex sometimes to be fun and have an adventure feel to it. So there was aspects of our love making that I felt were limited because she wasn't free to think about sex and come up with ideas that she could surprise me with.

So good and bad, definately mostly good.

 

[Purge187]

Day, if you don't mind me asking--was her reluctance due to "religion", or was it just the way she was made?

 

[ValleyGal]

Day, if you don't mind me asking--was her reluctance due to "religion", or was it just the way she was made?

I doubt there is an either/or. We are all combinations of nature and nurture, including cultural socialization (which includes religious indoctrination). I think too often we are ready to place the burden of blame in only one thing, when "blame" is likely better portioned out to the various contributing factors.

This is an issue that I'm pretty sure my adult son will face when he meets a woman he gets involved with - based on a traumatic experience when he was pre-adolescent. Throw religion and other culture (like media) into the mix, and it honestly would not surprise me if he has issues with transitioning, although I pray he won't. He has had some healthy role modeling since, so hopefully he will be fine.

 

[Purge187]

I doubt there is an either/or. We are all combinations of nature and nurture, including cultural socialization (which includes religious indoctrination). I think too often we are ready to place the burden of blame in only one thing, when "blame" is likely better portioned out to the various contributing factors.

This is an issue that I'm pretty sure my adult son will face when he meets a woman he gets involved with - based on a traumatic experience when he was pre-adolescent. Throw religion and other culture (like media) into the mix, and it honestly would not surprise me if he has issues with transitioning, although I pray he won't. He has had some healthy role modeling since, so hopefully he will be fine.

That second paragraph describes me to a tee. Girls in middle/high school were quite mean, and I pretty much spent my "prime" being a misogynist. God and some serious weight-llifting have helped me a lot, but I'm still not a ladies' man by any stretch.

Thanks, guys!

 

[McScribe]

I think it is hard for Christians to accept that when Jesus says "lust" he means "coveting". The common teaching is that any sexual desire is lust--for how can you not want what you admire? If you point out that the example in coveting in the Bible's list of the Ten Commandments includes possessions as well as wives--this rubs us culturally the wrong way. However it's meant to help us to understand.

Coveting means you literally want to HAVE. Sexual desire does not need to be this way. For example there is sexual desire that could say the following things:
- If I had a wife, I'd like her to look like that. That's hope an desire, not coveting.
- I find this way of behaving very attractive. I hope my wife behaves like this. Again, not coveting.

However nearly all human civilizations have some way of encouraging sin. This is where for instance pornography, with its theme of instant gratification and guilt free sex with anyone you want, becomes a factor. It may seem easier to just call pornography adultery and any feeling of desire outside of marriage adultery, but this is not accurate and as we've seen in the OP, unhelpful.

If by contrast we accept that God's will for us is good, that marriage should be the right place for actual expressions of sexuality, that it is the actual coveting that is wrong and that we need, as Galatians 5 tells us, to encourage godly thoughts about ourselves and others, then we see that Christ's burden is a lot lighter than we tend to think it is.

 

[Godsgirl79]

Did you guys have any problems making the transition from keeping yourself pure in deed and thought to sex suddenly being perfectly fine and upright as soon as you said, "I do"? Do you feel as if the oftentimes sex-negative beliefs that some churches espouse had a lasting impact on you?

I'm not really interested in getting married anymore, but I've always had a thing for psychology.

Well I had a friend who wasn't a virgin when she got married but married a virgin. She confided to me that he once had a problem with watching porn though repented. They both agreed to save their first kiss until they married to help keep themselves pure and they did. That didn't mean that they didn't occassionally have that feeling for eachother. They were both worried tha t because of this their married sex life would suffer because it wasn't built on that. However, once they married and had their honeymoon things happened naturally and they were both pleased.

What you describe isn't natural. Despite everyone's attempts to keep themselves pure, everyine will have impure thoughts every once in a while. That is why the apostle Paul said that it is better to marry if you burn with desire. Having those desires is not sinful because god intended that we have sex. Its wha t we do with those desires that can become sinful. Did this answer your question?

 

[Luther073082]

Did you guys have any problems making the transition from keeping yourself pure in deed and thought to sex suddenly being perfectly fine and upright as soon as you said, "I do"? Do you feel as if the oftentimes sex-negative beliefs that some churches espouse had a lasting impact on you?

I'm not really interested in getting married anymore, but I've always had a thing for psychology.

I didn't have a problem personally, although I have known of other people on here that had a problem transitioning from being very sex negative to enjoying marital sex.

I think there is a problem with the way churches teach about sex and they often turn sex into a dirty thing rather then just teach that it should be something done in the right context.

When you hear enough of that and have that drilled into your head by both church and parents, then it would be hard to start thinking of sex even with your spouse as a good thing.

 

[ProudMomxmany]

Growing up, I was always told that sex was dirty, nasty, disgusting and something that a woman just had to do when she got married. My husband, on the other hand, had a quite different view due to his upbringing (his mother was a widow who was the town "loose woman").

We married VERY young and although I had "experimented", I didn't go all the way before marriage. We were both essentially virgins when we married. We didn't have any problems going all the way after our wedding, we were READY!!! (must have been, baby #1 showed up 16 days before our first anniversary)

I do agree that instead of the negative "anti-sex" preaching and teaching that is prevalent in churches, it needs to be changed to letting the kids know that although sex before marriage is wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with sex inside of marriage. God made it to feel good. It is a way to further bind a couple together, and of course procreation.

 

[JCLover779]

Do you feel as if the oftentimes sex-negative beliefs that some churches espouse had a lasting impact on you?

Absolutely. I made choices I regret due to this. It's hard not to be angry at God sometimes because I believe in a combination of pre-destination and free-will - which means that I am where I am because He chose this path for me. I do try very hard to focus on the good parts I have been given, but ultimately, my deepest needs - that human companionship/physical closeness that sex is supposed to offer - are left unmet - and I may spend my whole life that way. It's hard when I know that I have both the capacity and the desire for those things.

My experience with the negative beliefs was more family/society generated than things I heard in church. In fact, I believe my high-school Presbyterian youth group and my Cathlic Junior High exposure were both very positive about sex in the right time and place. There was a difficult penteostal college experience that impacted me.

 

[Inkachu]

I don't think that acknowledging that you're interested in and looking foward to sex with your spouse-to-be is wrong or sinful at all. It's normal and healthy. As long as it doesn't deterioriate into lustful fantasies or inappropriate behaviors, of course. But just looking at the person you love and thinking "I cannot WAIT to be free to be intimate with him/her"... what's wrong with that? Nothing! You'd be next-door to a robot if you DIDN'T think that in the days approaching your honeymoon!

I've never been in a church that had "sex-negative beliefs". And I've been in many churches.

 

[Inkachu]

That second paragraph describes me to a tee. Girls in middle/high school were quite mean, and I pretty much spent my "prime" being a misogynist. God and some serious weight-llifting have helped me a lot, but I'm still not a ladies' man by any stretch.

Thanks, guys!

You don't need to be a "ladies" man. You only need to be the right man for the one lady God has for you. And you won't need to impress her by trying to be anything you're not

 

[CounselorForChrist]

You don't need to be a "ladies" man. You only need to be the right man for the one lady God has for you. And you won't need to impress her by trying to be anything you're not

QFT

 

[Johnnz]

My church background was pretty healthy concerning sex. But there were gaps regarding the experience of one's sexuality. Masturbation was never raised. Why a guy (me included) found female bodies so attractive visually for example.

Transitioning into marriage was straightforward. I read widely and had read sexual materials that I came across - far harder to find something in those ancient times. I had a reasonable information base, but some real gaps too. I just wish I was given as a teenager what I have come to believe now. Life would have been so much less fraught in many ways. I despair at what some young people are obviously being taught, or not taught so they then 'fill in the gaps' for themselves.

John
NZ

 

[Purge187]

My church background was pretty healthy concerning sex. But there were gaps regarding the experience of one's sexuality. Masturbation was never raised. Why a guy (me included) found female bodies so attractive visually for example.

Transitioning into marriage was straightforward. I read widely and had read sexual materials that I came across - far harder to find something in those ancient times. I had a reasonable information base, but some real gaps too. I just wish I was given as a teenager what I have come to believe now. Life would have been so much less fraught in many ways. I despair at what some young people are obviously being taught, or not taught so they then 'fill in the gaps' for themselves.

John
NZ

That's been a problem for some of the people who've posted about their experiences on some of the forums I've researched. There was one particularly depressing story about how one woman "needed stitches" after their honeymoon.

 

[JennLynn456]

To be perfectly honest there has been some confused feelings with my husband and I. We are still very newly married so we're still transitioning to be honest.

We both had a sexual past, we both committed to Christ, and to not having any more sex of any kind until after marriage. Then we met fell in love and committed to eachother. We had a couple of slip ups which resulted in us basically needing to completely avoid the topic of sex until we got married, it was too much to handle to talk about it much.

So now we're married, and we both want to, but we struggle talking about it, and I think it's leaving us both feeling a little confused sometimes about what the other person wants. We'll get there, but it is a transition for us. Honestly, I think more for my husband than for me because it was SUCH a big struggle for him he really had to train himself to avoid sex related things, and now he can indulge in them inside of our marriage but he's struggling a little. We'll get there, it's a marraige, we have our lives together, and God willing, hopefully that will be a while.

 

[Johnnz]

Talking about sex together is important. Any sort of negative background can inhibit that taking place later. Addressing any negativity is important, getting at its underlying roots.

John
NZ

 

[Luther073082]

To be perfectly honest there has been some confused feelings with my husband and I. We are still very newly married so we're still transitioning to be honest.

We both had a sexual past, we both committed to Christ, and to not having any more sex of any kind until after marriage. Then we met fell in love and committed to eachother. We had a couple of slip ups which resulted in us basically needing to completely avoid the topic of sex until we got married, it was too much to handle to talk about it much.

So now we're married, and we both want to, but we struggle talking about it, and I think it's leaving us both feeling a little confused sometimes about what the other person wants. We'll get there, but it is a transition for us. Honestly, I think more for my husband than for me because it was SUCH a big struggle for him he really had to train himself to avoid sex related things, and now he can indulge in them inside of our marriage but he's struggling a little. We'll get there, it's a marraige, we have our lives together, and God willing, hopefully that will be a while.

How long have you been married? Despite your communication problems are you still having regular sex?

The thing that would concern me is that if you don't communicate with one another and sex is a taboo topic that the two of you can't even discuss it in private then it could easily lead to situations where one person because frustrated and confused as to if their spouse still wants, desires, or enjoys sex.

Needless to say having one or both people questioning if their spouse is still interested in sex with them is NOT good for a marriage. And that kind of thing can easily happen if you don't talk about it.