By Carlos Rodriguez
In the weeks leading up to my wedding 10 years ago, I remember being excited, but nervous.
My soon-to-be wife and I were both virgins. The church gave us so many reasons to wait, and we’re glad we did. The problem was that it told us nothing about what to do when we got there.
Like any other couple, we figured things out, but looking back, it makes me wonder if the Church needs to reconsider some of the ways it talks about (or doesn’t talk about) sex. Why are we so against talking about it, when we are so vocal about talking against it?
I want to make an invitation to us, the Church, to join the conversation (as oppose to shy away from it again). The truth is that sex is found in a lot of areas of Scripture. It was designed by God. And we Christians need to speak up about it, in non-judgmental, honest ways.
We could do a better job and have a sex-talk that is more than the usual “don’t have sex” talk. We seem to think that we’ve done our job if we’re sending our young people into the marriage bed as virgins. But things don’t always happen that way, and even if they do, being a virgin doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have a good sex life. Either way, the amount of conversations I have had with young couples who have struggled with their sex life is staggering. And often, they feel like they don’t have many places to turn to for help.
If we preach all the verses against lust and seduction and sexual sin (which we should), then we also need to teach all the verses on beauty and creativity and romance and awesome sex.
There is far more to this topic than can be covered in this article, but here are some things we should be telling young married (and soon-to-be-married) couples about sex:
Set Realistic Expectations
On day five of our three-month honeymoon, my wife, Catherine, and I had an honest conversation. We were enjoying each other. Stumbling through our first few times, but with more good than bad. The problem was that there was an expectation created by our other virgin (barely) friends. It sounded something like this, “Oh, you guys won’t see the light of day!” and “You will be in the hotel room all day long.”
But it didn’t turn out like that. It was good. We felt connected, but after a few minutes each morning, we were ready to go out, explore the land and just walk around holding hands and chatting about what to do in life.