Cohabitation Before Marriage

Based on this week’s reading chp 7, 8, 9 & 10 in Balswick, J., & Balswick, J. (2008). Authentic human sexuality: An integrated Christian approach (2nd ed.). Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press. ISBN: 978-0-8308-2883-8.

In what ways do you think the church is succeeding and/or failing when it comes to guiding singles on matters of sexuality and cohabitation? What does scripture teach and research show regarding cohabitation before marriage?

Use course materials and/or external research to add to the post discussion.

Use Chapters listed above. Lecture Notes and/or external research to support your discussion. Minimum 350-word count in answer to the question with in text citations to include Integration of Christian worldview and biblical themes into responses as appropriate. APA format.

If you do not have access to the reference listed in post please do not bid on post.

Authentic Sexuality

Balswick, Judith K., and Jack O. Balswick. Authentic Human Sexuality : An Integrated Christian Approach, InterVarsity Press, 2001. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/detail.action?docID=3316493. Created from liberty on 2017-11-14 06:51:19.

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Sexuality and Singleness

In 1960 Paul Goodman wrote a book about coming of age in the United States, which he aptly titled Growing Up Absurd. Not least among the absurd aspects of growing up is how to behave sexually. Exposed to the electronic media, singles are bombarded with an onslaught of messages enticing them to act out sexual impulses, yet the Christian community continues to uphold the standard of sexual absti nence before marriage.

Asking unmarried singles to control their sexual impulses for longer and longer periods of time is a fairly new phenomenon in our culture. This has been brought about by an earlier-age onset of puberty combined with later-age marriages. Throughout history, young people in most societies married just before their sexual and reproductive capacities were devel- oped. Around the middle 1800s, girls reached menarche between ages 15 and 16 and married around that same age. Today the onset of menarche has dropped to between ages 12 and 13, while the median age at first marriage is 23.6 for women and 26.9 for men. The combination of early hormonal development cou pled with a culture that encourages sexual in- volvement during dating makes it even more difficult for singles to remain celibate before marriage. The early awakening of sexuality through the constant bombardment of messages about sex in modern culture is cause for most singles to consider celibacy an absurd request that is quite im- possible to manage during this ten- to twenty-year waiting period before marriage.

We start with the assumption that sexual feelings are extremely pow-

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erful, but a person has a clear choice about sexual behaviors. We need to teach teens that it is all right to have sexual feelings and desires, but that they must learn to contain them. The media counter this message by teaching youth that if they have sexual feelings, they should act on them. We need to develop media awareness programs to train teen agers to recognize how they are being manipulated by the media and how they can take constructive steps to counter its destructive messages. One needs only to understand the economics of eroticism to realize why teenagers are among the most manipulated groups in society today. It is enormously profitable for the media to provide sexually titillating and erotically sug- gestive messages to a large group of vora cious consumers whose hormones are raging.

Sadly, many churches and parents turn a deaf ear to this dilemma, refusing to address the difficult questions about sex and singleness. Al- though rarely articulated, two messages seem to be given to teenagers and singles. Perhaps the most common message is, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” This response is actually a nonresponse. The other message, “Just say no!” may reflect a stance that ignores the struggle of living in a sexually saturated culture.

Singles need to feel understood as well as receive helpful guidelines in their desire to follow a standard of abstinence. Pretending that young people are not sexual leaves them in a quandary concerning how to be an authentic sexual person in today’s world. They need to know how to exist in a singles’ subculture that endorses premarital sex, while holding on to the Christian belief in celibacy before marriage. Significantly, the two types of behavior most correlated with teenagers delaying sexual in- tercourse are religious behaviors such as praying and attending church. The church and biblical teachings are great resources for singles as they develop sound reasons for cultivating person-centered relationships.

In this chapter we present a brief historical outlook on sexual standards, then offer a biblical perspective and give some practical sugges tions about how to affirm sexuality while remaining true to biblical standards.

Premarital Sexual StandardS There are four recognized premarital sexual standards held in the United States today: sexual abstinence, double standard, permissiveness with affection, and permissiveness without affection. Although the idea of sexual abstinence

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continues to be a primary sexual standard when it comes to beliefs about sex before marriage, it is not the actual behavior reported by the majority of singles. The double standard, on the other hand, which accepts sexual intercourse outside marriage for males but not for females, has continued to decline during the past sixty years.

Permissiveness with affection is the most practiced sexual standard when it comes to actual behavior. Many young adults believe that sex ual intercourse between two consenting individuals is permissible when they are “in love” and have committed themselves to one another. Society gen- erally accepts this arrangement when couples are in exclusive dating rela- tionships or engaged or living together. How ever, there is still a societal sanction for legal marriage when a couple decides to have children.

Some confusion comes into play with the “permissiveness with affec- tion” standard. There are those who practice what might be called serial monogamy: they are true to one partner at a time, yet change partners every few years. They have affection for the partner during the sexually exclusive relationship, but they will move on to another partner when they “fall out of love” or become attracted to a new partner. In another sce- nario, singles report having affection for the partners they have sex with, but that affection may extend to several partners at the same time. As you can see, there is a wide variation in how this standard is interpreted. It can be justified to fit most any situ ation where there is an intentional relationship.

Permissiveness without affection, although less acceptable as a stan dard when attitudes are surveyed, has become a fairly common prac tice in the past thirty years. This view considers sexual intercourse to be a casual, recreational experience between two consenting adults. The recent AIDS epidemic has jolted many into rethinking this standard, due to the serious ramifications of such a promiscuous sexual lifestyle. There are obvious reasons to consider the grave consequences of engag ing in sex with many different persons for whom one has no affection, both from a physical and psychological perspective. Because of HIV, relationships from the past may have infected a person with a life-threatening illness in the pres- ent. Thus, casual sex for the sake of sexual pleasure has been questioned increasingly in recent years. However, there is not only concern about the increased risk of contracting sexu ally transmitted diseases but also about the emotional influence of being sexually intimate with a number of dif-

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ferent partners for whom there is no affection. The long-term trend is that youth have become more sexually permis-

sive. It is estimated that today approximately 90 percent of youth have en- gaged in sexual intercourse by age 20. The sexual lifestyle of many young adults could be described as serial monogamy, having sex with a series of partners, but only with one at a time. There is recent evidence to suggest that some youth are making a decision to become less sexually permissive. The number of sexually active teens decreased during the 1990s and early 2000s, according to Grunbaum and others (2002). Also, fewer youth in the 1990s, when compared to youth in the 1980s, believed that it was okay to have premarital intercourse (Ku et al. 1998). The teenage pregnancy and birth rates have also declined during the 1990s (Grunbaum et al. 2002).

It may seem evident, but worth recognizing, that marriage greatly re- duces sexual promiscuity. Upon reaching young adulthood (age 26-39) most persons are maintaining a monogamous sexual lifestyle. It is esti- mated that approximately 80 and 90 percent of sexually active single het- erosexual men and women, respectively, report having had only one sex partner with the last year (Laumann et al. 1994).

Cohabitation Before Marriage

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