For ages, there has been an emphasis on the person you marry being the first (and only) person you sleep with, especially for women. It makes you "pure", the "good wife". Traditionally speaking, it determines the color of your dress on your wedding day.
Meanwhile, no one looks at who you've said "I love you" to. If you've loved another man, you're still in the clear, as long as you didn't sleep with him. I disagree with this choice of what to applaud. Shouldn't love be much more intimate and reserved than sex? Why is it okay in our culture to throw those three words around like birdseed, yet your sexual past is so vital to your moral being? I personally think that people who are too easy to use the words "I love you" are making a much bigger mistake than those who are...well, too easy.
I know that I am much prouder to say that I am marrying the first man I've ever loved (and the only one I've ever told I loved with the exception of family, and my chocolate lab) than I would have been to say that I'd married the first man I slept with.
Do you think society has its priorities wrong, in emphasizing holding out on sex over holding out on love?
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Comments (58)
this is def a greatt blog and I def agree whole heartedly...this is the reason divorce rates are so high...young people who are so anxious to just have sex egt caught up in the moment in thinking this person maybe the one.....and they wanna just get it over with so they get hitched have sex...and when that passion fades the marriage fails.....
i think one should not be held more import then the other i think that they should both be considered equally......
but this stigma abt premarital sex will never go away as long as you have christianity....
haha. that's how i feel. i don't use the word "love" on every guy i like or date. i think it's important to over use the word, because it losing it's valure with me. including sex. but that's just me.
i just don't get the girls/boys that say i love you to every single person they date. i think there is different degrees of love..and sometimes people don't know the difference.
xo
I agree.
It is rather annoying to know that my boy has told other girls he loves them. I'm sure he feels the same way.
i agree with you.
I don't think you can hold out on love. If you fall, you fall. But things fall apart, people fall out of love. You don't always marry that person, and even when "first loves" marry, that can end, too. And that isn't a moral issue, it's an issue of the heart.
You can avoid sex, however. And, another idea: marriages were originally arranged and had little to do with love in many cases. Ta-da! Moral guidelines of mankind.
i like this blog. :) love > sex. i guess it's because you can control who you sleep with, but it's harder to control who you love. and just because you refrain from saying it doesn't mean love didn't exist there.
as for society's priorities... i think society needs to butt out of people's love lives, sex lives, and wedding dress choices.
I think love and sex are on the same level and go hand in hand, therefore neither should be thrown around.
I do agree that it is lame that people put more emphasis on sex then love (it should be the other way around). But, personally, I don't care what my SO's love life consisted of before me. She seems to be more concerned with her current love life than the ones before. :D
Random question, but "back in the day" if you were not a virgin on your wedding day, what color dress did you wear? Off-white? Green? Or was there a scarlet-colored A pinned to the bride's dress...?
I think both are to be shared in only marriage. They both hold responsibility. You should not go around saying I love you to everyone but that doesn't mean you can have sex just because you don't love the person. Love and Sex are intimate things to be dealt with only when married. Other than that, you can say you like someone. But you still should not go have sex with them just for the hell of it.
I would say Sex and Love are very equal. No one at a young age should say, "I love you" just fo the hell of it. No one at a young age should have sex just for the hell of it. But you still have those few who, well, just don't care.
I agree on a level. But Sex and Love are equal to eachother when it comes to being meaningful.
yeah, i think so. sex can be for fun, love should be reserved for what it is, love.
Um, I think I'd much prefer a virgin boyfriend who has told his past girlfriends that he loved them meaningfully than a manslut who only does so sparingly (and probably just to get in your pants). Just saying.
You know i dated a girl who told me we could never marry because I was divorced... and she would never marry a guy who was divorced. And now after her 3rd marriage she has 3 kids and still calls me when her husband is out of town to "come visit" because the kids are at her moms.
So.. you can say you will only ever love your husband... but what is to say he will be the one you will be with forever. You can't control him or what might happen. So think about that.
@sarahzthoughts@xanga - Haha.
That made me laugh...
There are many more dirty, unclean connotations attached to sex. Porn, prostitution, STDs, unwanted pregnancy.
No one's ever gotten a disease or pregnant from saying "I love you."
Plus, you can definitely love more than one person in your life. Not that you're not physically capable of having sex with more than one person, but sometimes you fall out of love. Stuff happens, man. Having sex with someone you don't love, or just doing it for fun is clearly a decision based on a "screw it, it's fun" attitude, which often isn't the attitude people take when they "decide" to fall in love with someone.
The number of people the average 25 year old might say they've loved is probably between 2-4 I'd imagine. Four is kind of high. Now ask some 25 yr olds how many sexual partners they've had and tons of them might answer 5-10. I can handle a person who is emotionally open to love and loving feelings much more than a person who clearly doesn't mind having emotionless sex to fulfill lusty, physical desires.
What a fascinating blog. Probably the best one I've read yet - I wholeheartedly agree. My premarital sex number is higher than one, but I've said "I love you" (aside from the familial sense) to only one man ever, and I'm still with him. Great blog!!!
good point!
It doesn't matter who you sleep with [as long as you're careful] but when it comes to marriage I believe that there should be a lot more thought that goes into it. People do not work hard enough, and they treat marriage like something that can just go away. Good ole Divorces. You should be sure you can live with the person and that you actually LOVE them, and are not just in lust with them. You have to be willing to stick with them through the good times and the bad. When times get bad you shouldn't just run away!
Love, marriage, and communication should go hand in hand.
You might be questioning Christianity indirectly with this since they are one of the biggest proponents of holding out on sex.
Well, I agree with u but girls who easily use those 3 words are usually the ones who sleep around...
And it's better to make the mistake to say something like 'I love you' (which I know have a great and deep meaning behind) than sleeping with someone... After all, we're humans, we don't know who our soul mates will be and for some people it takes time (and experience) to find it out...
I say, to hell with repression of any kind! What are we, the Taliban?
i kind of disagree because love you can't control as much as sex. every guy could be potentially who you're going to marry, but sometimes it just doesn't work out. you have to fall in love first to find out.
good point. got me thinking there!
i hate that people say "i love you" so much.
this has always been one of my biggest problems with american society. :)
i think that people say "i love you" so often for the lack of better words to express what they feel. saying "i really really really like you" just doesn't seem to cut is sometimes, though love isn't what they feel.
in german, we have an expression for that feeling. there's no translation for it, so when talking to friends i always use some different pronunciations or "slang words" for it like "love ya" or "luv you" just to make the difference obvious. i dont want my guy friends thinking im in love with them. :P
i guess since im german, i never really understood why americans have such a big problem with sex, be it in the media or in daily life. i guess it's just the european way to be so much more open about that. ;)
oh, and wearing white on your wedding day representing purity is a mondern day invention. brides used to wear their best clothing to their wedding, which didn't have to be white, just because they couldn't afford to own many different dresses. queen victory of england wore white on her wedding day, i guess partially to show that she could afford such an impractical dress to be made for only one day. after that, many brides also wore white.
but all along the VAIL was the symbol for purity. so if you're not a virgin on your wedding day, you might want to stay away from that. ;)
though, really, i dont think that many people still care about that stuff nowadays.