That Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Brooke Zimmerman
Heskett
31 January 2013
English 102
That Crazy Little Thing Called Love The following verse is from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always hopes, always perseveres.”
This verse is an example of many peoples view on a kind of love that is “perfect”, a kind of love that is understanding, non-judgmental and, most importantly, respectful. As individuals, everyone has their own cultural and social beliefs that they must uphold. Is sex before marriage okay? Is sex before marriage not okay? There are many questions surrounding the debate on whether sex before marriage should be frowned upon or if it should just be accepted and people shouldn’t be judged about it. Different people have their own opinions and everyone tends to think that their opinion is right. In general, sex is a very private and special thing no matter how old or what kind of person someone is. Your sexuality is a huge part of who you are as a person. Sex should be between consenting adults. Not because people need to be a certain age to have sexual interactions per-say, but because of the amount of mental risks that are involved with them. There are many emotional consequences of premarital sexual involvement and many worries that come along with it. Worry about pregnancy and STD’s is normally at the top of the list. For many people, this is a huge emotional stress and can really take a toll of a person family life and social life. Regret, self-recrimination and guilt come next. For girls, they are more likely to “see sex as a sign of commitment in the relationship” and when all of a sudden the relationship gets broken off, they feel cheated and cheap (Linkota, Par. 4). Also with the guiltiness comes a kind of loss of self-respect. Many people feel a loss of self-respect for many reasons. For example if they discover that they have a STD they all of a sudden feel “dirty” and like a low-life. Even if someone doesn’t contract an STD, temporary sexual relationships can lower the self-respect for both the person that was being used for sex and the person that was the one using someone. Casual sex can lower self-esteem, which can eventually lead a person into a cycle of casual sex to try to find some kind of self-worth. Though this cycle can be a possibility for some comfort, it eventually catches back up with someone and the self-esteem breakdowns occur sooner or later. When people go through many breakdowns and feel so down on themselves, they will start to develop trust issues and a fear of commitment. Younger people who feel like they were used only for sex in a relationship may experience difficulty with trusting people and letting them in when it comes to future relationships and may also start to feel very cynical towards the emotion or even the idea of love and being in love. On a more serious note, after being hurt so many times and after feeling betrayed and used so many times, some people will go into a deep depression and even consider suicide because they feel that they have absolutely no self-worth or that they have no other purpose in life other than just being a sexual item to be tossed around from person to person. In the past 25 years, teen suicide had tripled. In a 1988 survey by the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, one out of five adolescent girls and one out of ten adolescent boys had stated that they had tried to kill themselves because of the feeling of being used in a relationship. Along with all of these negatives, there also seem to be some positives to premarital sex. Many people say that there truly are some great positives that can come from premarital sex. Marriage should be viewed as a commitment that a person makes for the rest of their life. In olden times, many people waited until marriage to have sexual relations and found that they were very unhappy with their sex life and this unhappiness is what caused many divorces and love affairs. To be sure that marriage will have a chance at lasting, a person should “probably participate in some safe sex prior to the marriage” (Rlanda par. 6). Another thing that people find beneficial about sex before marriage is the intimacy that it brings upon us before marriage. Many couples who later become married and have never had any sexual relations before that marriage typically don’t really have any idea what to do when it is finally “okay” for them to have sexual relations with someone. Having sex before marriage helps a couple explore each other’s sexual compatibility. It also exposes a person to the kind of intimacy that his or her partner likes. Typically, sexual intercourse with a person for the first time is very uncomfortable no matter how “experienced” someone is. Sex before marriage helps in “making sex life better after marriage” (Kamalasanan par.7). Another benefit to sex before marriage that people always seem to refer to is that it gives you experience. It is believed that if a person has sex before they are married, they will have better experience and will have certain knowledge about what to do when they finally decide to settle down with someone for the rest of their lives. Nobody wants to sit there awkwardly on their honeymoon when they first get married and have no idea what to even do. I tend to think that there are more cons to sex before marriage then there are pros. In the relationships I’ve witnessed that have included premarital sex, almost all of them seemed to end in heartbreak. No, not the little heartbreaks that people get over in about a week, but the kind of heartbreaks that take months and months to get over and cause depression and self-image issues. With the breakups that I’ve witnessed, the girls that didn’t have sexual relations with their boyfriend- of the time had a quicker recovery time when it came to the breakup compared to the girls that broke up with their boyfriend that they did have sexual intimacy with. The way I see it, sex is for people that truly love each other and plan on spending the rest of their lives together and not with anyone else. Even if couples have promise rings to each other, I still don’t think that means it’s acceptable to have premarital sex because I’ve witnessed couples that had premarital sex and promise rings to each other still ended up breaking up, which caused the girls great heartache because they thought that that guy was “the one”. All in all, everyone will have their different views and ideas about sex before marriage. Whether it’s from personal experience or religious-based beliefs, two people will almost never have the same exact view on this subject. Even though the subject has many obvious views as to why sex after marriage is better than sex before it, there are really no specific rules regarding why someone shouldn’t have premarital sex if that person really wants to.

Works Cited
Kamalasanan, Bhadra. "Should People Wait for Marriage to Have Sex?" Should People Wait for Marriage to Have Sex? N.p., 3 Apr. 2012. Web. 04 Feb. 2013.
Linkota, Thomas. “What’s the BIG DEAL About Sex?” Physicians For Life. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.
Rlanda. "Pros and Cons of Sex Before Marriage." HubPages. N.p., 31 Mar. 2009. Web. 31 Jan. 2013.

Cited: Kamalasanan, Bhadra. "Should People Wait for Marriage to Have Sex?" Should People Wait for Marriage to Have Sex? N.p., 3 Apr. 2012. Web. 04 Feb. 2013. Linkota, Thomas. “What’s the BIG DEAL About Sex?” Physicians For Life. Web. 30 Jan. 2013. Rlanda. "Pros and Cons of Sex Before Marriage." HubPages. N.p., 31 Mar. 2009. Web. 31 Jan. 2013.