By Bosun Bankole
Having established last week that abstaining from sex until marriage is the way to go. It is important that we discuss some means through which this can be achieved.
Not openly condemning an act makes you guilty of secretly condoning it. Thus, you must have a discussion about sex and boundaries in your relationship before or right at the start of the relationship. Do not assume that you and your partner share the same convictions about sex because you are both Christians. Although discussing sex upfront will not make the temptations go away, but it helps to keep you and your spouse in check.
Be busy. You will have fewer things to discuss with your partner if you do not have anything that occupies your life. When a relationship is starved of communication the partners will be bored and boredom is one of the major reasons why people indulge in premarital sex. Not being busy makes you miss your partner in a needlessly extreme way and this creates a longing you will always be looking for ways to fulfill, which in turn increases the temptation to have sex.
Sexual emotions are pleasurable, hence no one should assume they have super powers to suppress it once aroused. We sometimes try to take the shortcut of doing all but the actual sex by penetration forgetting that what God requires of us is not virginity but sexual purity. You should know your relationship is far from solid if you are unable to get your hands off each other as against enjoying the company of each other by maximizing communication. Additionally, any act of sexual stimulation engaged with the opposite sex that results in orgasm is some form of sex. Hence, the best principle to apply in managing sexual urges is fleeing. Do not start what you have no intentions of completing. Fleeing, in this case, is not limited to physical movement but also includes the activities of the mind. The more you think about sex or watch pornographic clips the more difficult it will be to abstain. You have to be persistent in setting boundaries for your thought as you do with your actions because we usually end up doing what we keep thinking about.
Sex is not a proof of love if you doubt this you can ask any prostitute how many of her customers she is in love with. If sex is not a proof of love it should not be a tool for mending or strengthening relationships. So, statements like ‘if you love me you will give it to me and if you do not give it to me then I cannot be with you’ are red flags that should get you running and not confused. If sex is the bargaining chip as proof of love in a relationship what happens when you get married and either of the partners is indisposed to have sex? Marriage is not an escape route out of sexual impurity. If you do not gain control of your emotions before saying ‘I DO’, marriage will not change anything.
One of my dear friends shared a write up with me about sexual fulfillment in marriage and what women can do to get their husband sexually satisfied. Few minutes after, she wrote to me in a chat ‘I am in soup with this sex message I sent to married women on my phone, the feedback is too much. It shows a lot of married people have bottled up emotions on the sex matter’. I smiled in understanding because that further confirms what most of us already know. Being a sex expert prior to marriage does not guarantee sexual fulfillment in marriage. Sexual fulfillment is dependent on the willingness of the husband/wife to understand how his/her partner wants to be served sexually and make an effort to serve him/her creatively based on the developed understanding. Hence, the way to get ready for sexual fulfillment in marriage is not via pre-marital sex, but by developing a healthy relationship with your spouse so that you can freely discuss all things including sex.
