Musings on Love, Marriage, and the Madness that Ensues

For the last few weeks I have been defending early marriage. Part of my argument for why we ought to consider marrying younger had to do with saving sex for marriage: I believe that sex should stay within marriage, but that it’s unreasonable to expect people to wait until their late twenties — the age at which North Americans generally get hitched — to have sex. Thus, people should consider getting married younger.

The natural — and perfectly reasonable — objection that many readers have to this idea is that it will encourage young people to rush unprepared into marriage just so they can enjoy guilt-free sex.

Obviously, this is a legitimate concern. I absolutely agree that sex alone is a terrible reason to get married. I am certain that countless couples have found themselves in bad marriages just because they wanted sex and thought marriage was the only way to get it. So I don’t want anyone to think that marriage alone solves the sex problem, and I would never counsel a young couple to make their vows just so they can finally get into bed together.

Indeed, couples should never rush into marriage, for any reason. They should take very serious time to think about the decision to make life vows. They should be certain that they are ready to stake their lives on this relationship and that the other person is, too.

But I do have one thing to say:

Our sex drive does have some merit, and we should listen to what it has to say.

I believe that sex was all God’s idea and he just loves it. He thinks sex is the bomb. He loves seeing committed couples copulate (whew! — alliteration) and he gave us sex drives for a reason.

I think God invented the human sex drive in part to encourage us to get married.

Sex drive is powerful for a reason, I think. God wanted us to feel — in a very powerful way — the weighty significance of sexual relationships. He probably knew that we would need some nudging in the direction of marriage. We might be more reluctant to ever get hitched — to make that enormous, sacrificial commitment — without a little prodding from our eager nether-regions.

And our sex drives tell us something important: that we’re designed for sex and making babies! And we’re designed to do it when we’re young. When we’re healthy, virile, energetic and . . . elastic. Metaphorically and literally speaking.

I’m not saying that we can’t have babies when we’re older. Lots of fabulous families start (or keep growing) when the parents are in their thirties or even forties. But for the most part, it’s clear that our bodies were meant for early childbearing. There’s a reason that we’re most fertile (and interested in sex) in our early adulthood. That’s when we’re supposed to produce offspring!

God made our bodies this way. Or, if you don’t believe in God, you could say that Nature made us this way. Why should we fight it? Why should we wait until our late twenties to get married and our thirties to have children? (I have responded to some of the oft-cited reasons already)

Our society has all kinds of horrible ways of talking about our primordial interest in sex. They use words like “horny” and “randy.” They wrinkle their noses and ask questions like, “Should a couple really get married just to satisfy their randiness?” To me, this is an ugly way of asking, “Is our sex drive really a legitimate indicator that we ought to enter into a committed relationship?” And my answer to that question is “Yes! . . . At least, that’s part of it.”

Sex alone is not a good enough reason to get married. Of course. But a desire for sex with a particular person, when coupled with a desire for lifelong intimacy with that person, and a willingness to sacrifice everything to that person is a good reason to get married.

Of course, we have to be careful, when considering marriage, to be sure that our sex drive is not fooling us into thinking we are ready for the whole package deal when we’re not. Sex can play tricks on our minds if we’re not careful. Or it can blow past all logical thinking completely and get us to do all kinds of things we regret later if we don’t treat it with enormous caution. We have to be thoughtful and honest and make sure that sex is not the only — or even prime — motivator for getting married. And this is going to be extremely difficult to discern.

But desire for sex is not a completely meaningless component, either. I don’t think we should treat our sex drive as entirely irrelevant. It says something important, as long as we don’t allow it to drown out everything else in the mean time.

So if you’re dying to have sex with your beloved, and you truly feel that you could sacrifice everything for him or her, and that he or she would be willing to do the same for you; and if you think your partner would make a good parent and a good, lifelong friend to you . . . what’s stopping you? Why not consider marriage?

How do you feel about this? Do you think I esteem sex too highly? Do you think there are dangers to this way of thinking? Or is it important? What do you think?

Photo courtesy of Suzanne Clayton.

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