First as a single male and later as a married-at-24 male, I have had a number of conversations with friends single and married about the sex dilemma faced by single adults.
The traditional Christian stance on sex is that it belongs in marriage. However, the median age for first marriages appears to be rising; in 2000-2003 it was 27 for men and 25 for women, a substantial increase from 1960 when “the bride was just over twenty and the groom was under twenty-three.” While a variety of social factors are at play in these figures, what is certain is that teens once commanded to hold out until they get married in their early twenties are now growing up into adults who are presumably also told to abstain for even more years until tying the knot.
This practice is not without certain benefit. There is no such thing as safe sex–pregnancy and disease contraction are both potential results of any coupling, protected or otherwise. There is also perhaps no such thing as emotionally casual sex, either; I can’t imagine that intimacy flung nonchalantly aside does not leave at least one party feeling used, forsaken, or otherwise downtrodden. So abstaining until within the boundaries of marriage is not necessarily an unhealthy approach. Perhaps it’s ideal.
The trouble is that all adults–even single ones–are sexual beings. Even when idealistically hopeful, they can’t simply turn off their sex drive until entering into some sort of illusory marital unity of eternal sexual bliss. Here’s the question: How can conscientious, single people maintain practical sexual health without compromising their ideals, endangering their health, or harming others?
One answer, which I’ve heard many times, is that single people should just throw themselves into creative endeavors and use their sex drives to do great if asexual things. However, while single people are uniquely unfettered and therefore more suited to the sacrifices required by great thing doing, I bet they still feel a little excitable at times.
“That’s when you pray,” some might say, “until you fall asleep too exhausted to think about anything impure.”
(I’ll just mention here that this doesn’t work; there’s nothing like a little impurity to wake me up. Not that any of us should subscribe to that notion that sex is impure. Hell, it’s how humanity’s made it this far.)
These answers are unsatisfactory, I think, as are many others. All I’ve been able to come up with is the notion that until marriage, when both can be addressed in the same setting of relationship, physical and emotional needs are best met separately. Meeting purely sexual needs (although some would argue that there are no such things) should be worked out individually (minding addiction dangers) while fulfilling emotional needs should happen through nonsexual, intimate friendships.
At bottom, perhaps, sexuality in singlehood is a process inevitably muddled through–and one neither to toss about lightly nor to condemn by the many who have ourselves survived, scathed or otherwise, through our own muddlings.
I would be glad to hear additional ideas. And so, probably, would a whole lot of singles out there.
