Loren Pechtel

Suppose you go to a singles bar. You pick up someone who is not a member of any of the risk groups for HIV. You go home and have sex with that person with a condom.

What's the most dangerous thing you did? Drive home.

seebs

That's a good point. I think I was, at that point, responding to the "how can you know if the sex is any good without some breadth of experience" argument.

This is separate from the "have sex before you get married in case it's bad" argument.

However, that said, I don't see much point; if "sex might not be good" is a deal-breaker, then you shouldn't be getting married.

I tend to agree, but once one starts making sex very meaningful, the distinction between what one is doing and marriage seems a bit fragile.

That seems to vary greatly from person to person. I was one of the people who didn't expect exchanging vows to change things very much, and I was quite surprised.

Well, I'd certainly agree with that.

On the other hand, if you shake all the straw out of the idea, you get claims like "sex which is not inside the context of a committed relationship is bad for us spiritually", which are much less ludicrous; perhaps false, but if so, it's nowhere near as obvious.

Seems to me that it's more than a tad arrogant to declare one's views necessarily "realistic". That's a pretty good use of loaded language to support a position, but it's a very, very, bad argument, because it works for anything. You can do it to anything. Feel like justifying cheating?

"If you don't subscribe to this magical idea, like us sinful hell-bound hethens on the other hand, you will have a realistic idea about cheating."

It works equally well for any noun you want to put at the end of that sentence.

The claim "there are no substantial moral implications here" is not, in and of itself, inherently a "realistic" one. Indeed, given the number of ways in which sex appears to be able to acquire moral connotations, it seems like rather a surprising claim to me.

Indeed. Working at it is much, much, more important than some mythical "innate compatibility".

If you show me two couples, and one of them tries having sex, doesn't like it, and breaks up, and another commits to working on it together until they *do* like it, it seems to me that the former is the one who expected something magical.

There is a great deal of fun to be played with the drawing of the line between hangups and fetishes; these terms have a certain amount of inherent bias. "Oh, she's no fun, she has a hangup about oral sex" and "He's really pushy, he has this fetish about oral sex" could easily be descriptions of the same relationship.

Most of the Christians I know seem to have very few "hangups" about sex. Maybe they're atypical, but it seems more likely to me that the people with all the "hangups" are the less-typical, but more vocal, group.

seebs

I suspect he's arguing, rather, that having sex can cloud judgement.

He's probably right, but being very very horny and not having sex can cloud judgement too.

Because it is.

At least, it has been for a number of people I know.

And huge rewards if you succeed. It's a tradeoff.

I think you're mistaking civil marriage for marriage. Marriage is the thing that some couples do, which may or may not ever be legally recognized, and which not all couples with civil marriages do.

Okay, imagine that we lose the word "marriage", and the concept of a civil ceremony, so the relationship is just one big, long, process with no special demarcations.

I think it's pretty clear that when in this you start having sex can have a substantial influence on how you understand and experience the relationship. If, in any relationship you start, you start having sex quickly, then this will change how you experience all of these relationships.

My gut feel for this is that certain answers to "when is it a good idea to start having sex" will work better than others, assuming that your goal is to eventually form a life-long pair bond with someone. One answer might be "only when I feel this relationship has a real chance of becoming a life-long pair bond".

In the end, if you're a decent judge of character, this answer turns out to be very similar to "no premarital sex".

Stop looking at the ceremony. Look at when people commit to each other. The question makes a lot more sense when considered that way.

Loren Pechtel

Because failed marriages used to stay together a lot more often than they do now.

When my wife first came here she was horrified at the marriage-hopping she saw. Over time, though, she's come to see that while divorce was rare in her culture it didn't mean people were happier. The majority of her relatives are in failed marriages. But since they are in marriages they aren't really free to seek out someone they might be happy with.

seebs

Hmm. I wonder how much of this is the specific people, and how much of it is the way they choose to treat their spouses. I know a couple of couples who, at one point or another, would have been agreed to be in a "failed" marriage, but who decided to fix it rather than giving up.

Yes, this requires both partners to be willing to do it - but if they are, I am not convinced that there exists any pair of people who couldn't make it work, outside of underlying questions of sexual orientation and the like. Indeed, I know of one guy who was an "ex-gay", got married, finally admitted he was still gay, and realized that, nonetheless, he and his wife were happier together than they would be apart.

The problem is that a lot of people who are expecting a cakewalk of some sort mistake problems for insoluble problems, or figure that it's better to just look for easier problems. I once heard a claim (no idea how to verify it) that, of married people who describe themselves as "miserable", those who stay married are much more likely to describe themselves as "happy" five years later than those who divorce. Lots of sample biases here, so I don't know how well it generalizes, but I think the underlying implication may hold; at some point, if you aren't willing to work on your relationship, you won't be happy no matter what.

HelenM

Exactly. I'm glad to see you acknowledging the significance of the emotional component. I think it's very significant too.

Helen

alek0

HelenM,

again, some problems cannot be solved. And please don't tell me that is only matter of trying hard enough. Or maybe you think that five years is not long and hard enough trying to make it work?

Experience has tought me that there are issues which cannot be solved. Experience has tought me how to solve the issues which can be solved. Experience has tought me how to make it better for both my partner and myself. I have never had an STD and never got pregnant. So, what have I lost by it?

Basically what I am arguing here is not that sex can't be good if you are inexperienced, it is rather that if sex is going to be bad it is better to find out before marriage. Same as for all the other issues relevant for living together. That doesn't mean that you try it, it doesn't work, you give up immediately. That means you try it, if it doesn't work you both try your best to fix it and you don't get married till all the major conflicts if any are resolved. What is wrong with that approach?

Rational BAC,

vaginal birth is not exactly painless and enjoyable experience, and most certainly not the one to be repeated every couple of days. Furthermore, majority of women give birth with some kind of pain relief. What should a woman do then - go see anesthesiologist for a walking epidural every time her husband wants to have sex? Or just endure it, women are not supposed to enjoy it anyway?

IMO, you have no idea what are you talking about. Being with a man who is too big feels like spliting in half. The most excruciating pain I have ever experienced.

seebs

Hmm. Seems to me the "how do you know" argument can go on forever. How do you know these issues really can't be solved? Have you tried everything? Not in a single human lifetime, you haven't.

Length of time spent trying isn't what does it. "Five years" is neither too long nor not long enough; it's just an arbitrary number.

As to what you've lost, you've lost the experience of having lived a different life, same thing everyone loses when they make any choice.

scigirl

seebs I pretty much agree with you here:
I still think that for different people, the timing of everything varies. In addition, while I agree that sex can have far-reaching consequences, this does not mean that every single sexual encounter need to be monumentally meaningful. While some may err on the side of "casual sex is always ok," I think it's equally fallacious to err on the other side- that any sex must either be within the bounds of a serious relationship or never happen at all. There must be some happy medium.

scigirl

alek0

Funny... Isn't your side of argument that you don't need to try in order to know?

If I'm happy with my life and wouldn't want a different one, that is no loss, isn't it?


And ditto to Scigirl's "timing varies for different people" and "there must be happy medium".