SEX AND LOVE BEFORE MARRIAGE.

Love and sex

Sex is too important a matter in life to be simple. It is one of the most delicate realities we have to handle. It can be broken and, if it gets broken, it can break a life or several lives with it. Few things are more destructive than unregulated sex. This might seem to be a negative or an exaggerated judgment. Is it? To think it out, let us put side by side two statements: "sex is good" and "there is nothing wrong with sex". These might seem to be two slightly different ways of saying the same thing. They are not. Sex is good. Christianity not only accepts but defends the goodness of sex. But to say that sex is good is not the same as saying 'there is nothing wrong with sex'. That is a very different proposition. It is a proposition that no thinking person can maintain, any more than one can maintain that there is nothing wrong with human nature. Our human nature is good. But there are plenty of things wrong with it. Is there nothing wrong in our reactions of greed or anger or hatred or revenge?... No; whatever the reason (Christians say it is Original Sin), many of our instincts, good in themselves, so easily go wrong, even crazily and wildly wrong. Sex is one of them. Sex, in its proper place, has a noble role to play in life, and a noble fulfilment in marriage. Yet sex is not easily kept in its proper place. Its proper place is one subordinated to love, controlled by love. But it takes all the best efforts of love - love for God and human love - to keep sex in its place. The fact is that sex is not easily subordinated to love or to anything. And insubordinate sex tends to be destructive of everything, especially of love.Some distinctions It can help to see this clearly if one remembers that, contrary to what some people seem to suggest today, sex and love are not the same thing. Far from it. Subordinated to love, as we have just noted, sex has a noble role. But sex that dominates, sex on its own, sex in isolation - what is properly called lust - is anything but noble and is very different to love. Sexual desire after all can be towards any attractive member of the other sex; sexual love is towards one in particular. Further points of contrast quickly suggest themselves: - Love is generous; sex is selfish; - Love seeks to give; sex, to take; - Love wants to please; sex, to have pleasure; - Even physically, love is gentle and tender; sex is rough and aggressive. We could continue with the contrasts: - Sex can be bought; love cannot; - Love laughs, is light-hearted; sex is grim and intent; - Love opens a person to the good of others; sex closes one up in one's own selfishness; - An act expressive of love makes a person feel happy and uplifted; a sexual satisfaction (I repeat, I am speaking of sex isolated from love) leaves behind a sense of sadness and even of degradation. So, people can be raised up by sex - by the attraction between the sexes - if they see and live it in the context of God's plan for personal maturity and for human love and marriage. Or people can be pulled down by sex, can become enslaved in selfish desire and so close themselves to the possibility of loving truly or of being truly loved. Therefore not all sexual activity shows love or fosters love. We all have a general attraction towards the other sex. But when this attraction becomes particularized towards a concrete person, it is elementary - if one wants to know oneself and to know where one is going - to ask: is this an urge to love, to show my love for someone, or is it an urge to self-seeking and to use someone as a means to that end? If we do not ask this question, then we do not know ourselves and perhaps do not want to know ourselves.
Attraction and possession Sexual attraction can be just bodily; then it is physical desire rather than love for the person. Physical sexual desire needs little or no time for development. It is quickly aroused and seeks immediate satisfaction. It wants possession of the body but involves no real commitment of the heart. It is fickle, it tends to change, it can lead to promiscuity.