It was only when he got married three years ago that Anthony, a 28-year-old East London resident, tasted sexual pleasure. There was nothing wrong with him.
He willingly opted to remain a virgin, practising abstinence because he wanted sex to be a pleasure only to be shared with his wife.
“I believe that you join a person spiritually as well as physically when you sleep with them. I wanted to be joined only to my wife. I didn’t want the foundation of our relationship to be (based on) guilt and dishonesty as we would be building our relationship on shaky ground. I wanted the first time we had sex to be part of our official commitment to each other,” Anthony, a black Briton, told The Voice last week.
Waiting was not easy, especially after he met his current wife and desire beckoned.
“It was difficult and we struggled to keep to our decision as temptation was very strong at times. We tried to avoid situations that were too intimate and kept ourselves busy by going out a lot and having fun with friends. I did not want to follow the crowd in terms of being sexually promiscuous or end up having a string of relationships that have all been sexual, hence leaving nothing special to give my future spouse,” he added.
Was it worth the wait?
Anthony gave a resounding yes. “And it keeps getting better,” he quipped.
He is not alone.
Virgins
Winston, a 30-year-old black Briton and his 28-year-old wife, Nerissa, were also virgins when they married and they, too, recommend waiting.
“There is such an added feeling of joy, fulfilment and happiness knowing that what you are doing is pleasing to God - not only because you are in a union of marriage but also because you did things the right way and did what God wanted - even when everything else pointed the opposite way,” Winston said.
Nerissa added, “I think it was more special knowing that we were entering a new part of our relationship, a part that we haven’t shared with anyone else. I think when you have sex before marriage and the relationship doesn’t work, it hurts knowing that you’ve been most intimate with a person who no longer holds a special place in your life. Most people wouldn’t give a partner their whole salary or their house but are prepared to give all of themselves to a person they have not committed to in marriage.”
Best decisions
They are no different from Andrea Minichiello Williams, a public policy officer, who, after 17 years of marriage, still proudly proclaims that waiting for marriage to have sex was one of the best decisions she and her husband ever made.
“I believe the Bible tells us how to live. I went in knowing that this person was committed to me. Sex is not recreation. It is a demonstration of the deepest love between a man and a woman and is meant for marriage. When you wait, you really value who you are as a human being made in the image of God. It is also extremely edifying for people to wait. It gives them self-esteem to know that they are worth waiting for,” she said.
But are they right?
Theirs is not a popular decision in Britain these days. An April 2003 report on the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles II and data from the British Social Attitudes Surveys, spanning 1983 to 2007, show that people in Britain are increasingly becoming more tolerant about having premarital sex, cohabiting couples, civil partnerships, premarital and casual sex. The British social attitudes surveys showed that in 2002, 68.5 per cent of people thought it was all right for a couple to live together even if they did not plan to get married.
Only 14 per cent disagreed. Regarding cohabitation, just over 60 per cent thought it was a good idea for couples to live together before they get married and nearly 63 per cent thought there was nothing wrong with having premarital sex. The number of people who saw nothing wrong with premarital sex had increased by more than 20 per cent since 1983. Only six per cent of those polled in 2005 thought premarital sex was always wrong compared to 16.5 per cent in 1983. This is despite data from a report, titled, The Effect Of Changing Attitudes To Marriage On Its Stability, which said evidence suggests that “cohabitees” have less of a sense of commitment than those who marry directly. “This seems to account for much of the greater likelihood of divorce of those who marry after cohabiting,” the report said.
According to the National Sex Survey report, “Only one person in 20 in the general population considered sex before marriage to be mostly or always wrong, and there was little variation in this proportion by age or sex (5.1 per cent of men and 5.3 per cent women). However, religious beliefs appeared to influence attitudes towards pre-marital sex. Those in the general population with no religious affiliation were the least likely to disapprove of premarital sex (1.7 per cent of men and 1.8 per cent of women). Muslim respondents were the most likely to (53.0 per cent of men and 54.0 per cent of women).”
Emotional problems
But sometimes waiting for the wedding has led to disappointment. One bride on website, spiritblog.net, wrote, “From my wedding night until about a year later, it was a sexual disaster. There still were some emotional problems. In my mind I had played by the ‘rules’ and it hadn’t worked out as promised. There wasn’t some magical sex life waiting for me just because I hadn’t had intercourse before. That was one of the realisations that started moving me away from Christianity. If they lied to me about this then what else did they lie about?” she wrote.
But some church leaders argue that the disappointment comes with some people because they do not understand their partners or have unrealistic expectations.
Churches within organisations such as the African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance (ACEA) still urge people to maintain virginity until marriage and if they have not, to marry rather than live together.
“Couples have said they value the advice to wait,” said Katei Kirby, CEO of the ACEA. She said churches were also finding more relevant methods of discussing the subject and sexual relations including “talking about the issues they are facing and the value of waiting.”
People like Anthony, Nerissa, Winston and Williams are proof that people are listening to this advice and are waiting for marriage to have sex without having to resort to drastic measures such as a chastity belt to get there.
Nerissa asserted: “As a Christian you understand that how you live your life is different to how the world lives. We weren’t going to let what everyone else does dictate our relationship. Actually, why follow the world when we are meant to be different. The world should be following our example as Christians.”
Williams was also keen to push abstinence before marriage as the best way forward.
Myth
“I believe it’s a myth — those efforts to try to see whether people are compatible (by cohabiting). I don’t think we have to test each other out in that way to see if we are compatible. The way to see if we are compatible is whether we love each other, communicate well and are good together and we don’t have to live together before marriage to do that,” said Williams, who, along with the organisation she works with, Lawyers Christian Fellowship (LCF), recently backed the case of British schoolgirl, Lydia Playfoot.
Playfoot took her school, Millais School in Horsham, to the High Court, stating that it contravened her basic right to wear symbols of her religious beliefs when it ordered her to remove a celibacy ring because it said was contravening the school’s no jewellery rule. She lost her case last week.
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