Editors note: The following is a reply to the column “Wedding night so overrated” by Jodi San Lucas from the Jan. 26 issue of The Maroon.
I love sex.
But because I love sex, I love it at its best: in the marital union.
Hear me out, Loyola.
Imagine all your life being taught counterfeit money was the real thing. Suddenly, you are in college and someone offers you the choice between a real million dollar bill and a counterfeit million dollar bill. Which would you choose?
Chances are the counterfeit bill.
When it comes to sex, our culture has conditioned us to believe that the counterfeit is the real deal. But let me explain …
Typically there are two classifications for the way we perceive sex. The first – we can call it the “anything goes” mentality – does not need much more explanation. I believe Jodi San Lucas’ column promoting sex as a recreational activity served as a nice summary.
The second, referred to as “Puritan” in Meredith Arnold’s letter to the editor in the Feb. 2 edition, prefers that sex not be discussed openly and that sexual impulses be prudishly suppressed.
There’s a third option – “The real deal.” Here, sex is an awesome and mysterious power that should be respected and looked upon with awe.
The real deal is rarely considered, but it is too beautiful and liberating to ignore. It holds the key for living our sexual nature in its fullest capacity.
In this third option, sex is an act between two people totally abandoning themselves to one another. They give completely: body, heart, mind and soul.
This abandonment to the beloved, though, only fully takes place in the marital union.
But why wait untill marriage? Why must we live with a dogmatic and irrelevant list of rules a Church has burdened us with?
The Church has taught for centuries marriage is the only context for a healthy sexual relationship precisely because the Church wants you to have a healthy and fulfilled sex life. Married sex is the best sex.
Before you stop reading, let’s evaluate the logic behind the decision to wait until marriage to have sex.
There is no baggage with marital sex.
San Lucas’ column mentioned the reality of attachment after sex. Naturally, through physical and emotional means, sex creates a powerful bond between the two people involved. In marriage, this bond unites the couple, smoothing the rough edges of the beloved’s imperfections.
In pre-marital sex, the attachments are present but there is no commitment to support them. The baggage clouds the minds of the partners and prevents them from seeing the other in reality.
Also without this commitment, sex can become an act of using another human for sexual pleasure. Unfortunately, our understanding of sex has become so twisted and malformed it has become nearly foreign to think of sex as anything other than a tool for our own individual pleasure. Here, the partner unjustly becomes an object of desire, a means to some end.
And no one wants to be used.
In marriage, the spouse is safe to become vulnerable to the beloved. The mutual, self-giving love between a husband and wife is so powerful that nine months later you may have to give it a name.
In premarital sex, though, this power is feared and must be “protected” against.
Please keep in mind it is a decision, a choice to abstain. Temptations remain (we’re not some asexual breed of freaks who suddenly become devoid of all sexual inclinations), but experience has shown that temptation can be overcome.
Sure, this isn’t easy, but most things worth having aren’t easy.
Sex is not just an itch to be scratched. Nor is it something to fear or reject. It’s a gift to embrace in full.
Our culture has conditioned us to believe the pre-marital counterfeit is the real deal, but we’re cheating ourselves if we settle for the counterfeit.
I challenge you to take the road less traveled, listen to your heart, and embrace the real deal: sex at its best in the marital union.
Benjamin Clapper is a philosophy senior from Mobile, Ala.
