I’ve been working with several engaged couples lately as they prepare for their weddings this fall. It’s such a joy to get to work with couples before they get married and (for some/many) before they’ve been genitally active.
For couples who made the commitment to reserve that specific form of intimacy for after marriage, it’s never an easy task. It takes resolve and steadfastness.
So as they get closer and closer to their wedding, they’re looking forward to the time when all the restrictions will be gone forever!
But…are they? Are there really no restrictions after marriage?
Boy, can this be a tough conversation. These couples have intentionally made the decision to abstain from any genital contact until they’re married. They’ve set boundaries, had accountability partners, left shoes in the door….1 All with the understanding that if they could just hold off until after their wedding, then sex would be easy and smooth and accessible.
Then — months before the wedding — they’re told that that’s not actually the case?!
To be honest, I think many couples just don’t believe me. I’m the first person to question this concept, whereas their youth pastors and biology teachers have never suggested anything different. Why would they believe me?
But the married couples know. If you’re married, then you’ve discovered the reality that sex — even in marriage — still has boundaries. Am I right?
Married couples realize this practically fairly quickly. We could make a long, long list together of things that hinder when a married couple can have intercourse. Things like work, travel, sleep schedules, mental health issues, illness, family visits, stress, postpartum recovery, etc, etc, etc have a huge and — expected — impact.
Of course these normal life factors will effect when and if a couple can be together.
But knowing this — even experiencing this — doesn’t always make it any easier to embrace, especially when they were led to believe otherwise. For many couples, they are dealing (or not dealing) with unspoken disappointment from unrealistic expectations about sex in marriage — especially from the Church.2
There is so much emphasis placed on young Christians to Wait Until Marriage.3
Is it possible that we’re so focused on teaching couples to wait for sex that we’ve forgotten to teach them the goodness of sex?
When the goal is waiting and waiting alone, then the other side of waiting is simply… NOT waiting. The win here is simply sex any time, any place — with their spouse. Is that all the Church really has to offer? Is that really the epitome of the sexual experience??
Praise the Lord: there is beauty, meaning, and purpose to be found in sexual union in marriage. It is a unique self gift of love, commitment, and union that points us back to Christ, the sacrificial bridegroom, and the Church, his beloved bride. It is an act of honoring the whole of the spouse, of giving and receiving, of pointing to something greater, of creating new life!
But, it’s just sex…!
Sorry, no — it can never be "just sex.”
The goodness of sex is not defined — even for Christians — as simply before or after marriage. If temperance is the only virtue involved, we’ve missed the big picture. We’ve settled for pleasure alone, when we could’ve had purpose.4 We’ve mistaken rules for goal posts, instead of guide rails.
Instead, God, in all his goodness, has given us the gift of sex to point us back to him, to honor the other, and to experience a unique depth of intimacy and bond — capable of new life. When we understand the magnitude of the gift,5 the waiting is not the end-all-be-all-goal, but merely one way to honor the gift and the other person.
Waiting before marriage really is good.6 This act that’s so good and special and even holy truly is best experienced and expressed within marriage.
But — as we’ve now established — the waiting doesn’t end after the wedding.
There will be a lifetime of opportunities to practice self control, selflessness, and prudence in sex lives after marriage. These skills, honed so intentionally before the wedding, are not ones to be tossed out on the honeymoon. They’ll be needed just as much during the day in, day out life of loving another human being.
This practice of waiting will help set and maintain a healthy understanding of sex and married love, as well. It’s a reminder that 1. you can wait and 2. your spouse is worth waiting for. It’s a reminder that your spouse is a whole person deserving of honor and love. It’s a reminder that the moments when you can be together are special and to be cherished. It’s a reminder that there are other ways — and have always been other ways — for you to express love and intimacy outside of sex.
So, what do you think? Does it all come down to waiting? Should there be any waiting after marriage? Is there anything you wish you’d learned about sex other than the importance of waiting for it? What does the “practice of waiting” offer to us in our marriages? As always, thanks for your charitable engagement in the comments!
Recent Podcast Episode:
I hope you’ll enjoy this episode with a woman who felt disqualified from using a fertility awareness system like Creighton and how the experience changed her reproductive options and helped her encounter God in this area of her life.
As a reader, you likely value the work we’re doing at Fertile Faith: Thank you! Reading itself is a great way to support this work.
Here are a few other ways that can help keep us going:
Share this post! Do you have a friend who may benefit from these words? Share it with them!
Recommend Fertile Faith on Substack! If you have your own substack, then you know how Recommendations help us all. If you appreciate this work, consider recommending!
Subscribe and show us that you value the continued work and message of Fertile Faith by becoming a paid subscriber!
As a reminder, Fertile Faith is written by Caitlin Estes. Caitlin is the Owner and Certified FertilityCare Practitioner at Woven Natural Fertility Care, and feels passionate about providing empowering fertility education to women. Woven talks openly about the deep relationship between fertility and faith. As a Christian, Caitlin feels passionate about God’s good design of our bodies and fertility, and how this area of our lives can be incredibly fruitful, spiritually.
My Christian college required dorm room doors to be open if the opposite sex was in the room, so everyone would just throw a shoe between the door and the frame to meet this standard :)
Just as a note: not all of my Christian couples have abstained before marriage and not all of the couples who have have been Christians.
And, don’t get me wrong, there are many good and beautiful reasons to do so! This is not a piece suggesting sex should be outside of marriage.
AND pleasure!
For some, this may seem a bit “heavy on the holiness” for how we should view sex, but considering the alternative view that we’re inundated with every moment of every day of our lives, I think it’s warranted.
I work with couples who have and have not waited before getting married. Everyone has the opportunity to discover God’s good gift of sex in marriage, not just those who’ve waited.
I waited until marriage- as did my husband- but we had no illusions about it being a free-for-all once we were married, mainly because I'd had a good grounding in the concept of NFP from my early teens, and my husband had learnt of it in later years but understood the natural restrictions around it well before we were engaged or married. Contraception was never an option for us, we knew NFP would be part of our marriage and therefore we had a pretty healthy understanding of what sex in marriage would look like. It also took a massive sense of pressure off us both because we knew sex was a gift, not a right, within marriage, and that we were working with our biology, and not against it.
I have to credit really healthy and positive Catholic youth retreats and conferences and websites for giving me an early and thorough introduction to NFP.
I appreciate this a lot. Considerations of sex (male and female), personality, temperament, etc. also play huge roles in this. My husband and I’ve been married 20 years, and I’m so grateful he has practiced patience and consideration of me since the beginning. I’ve also learned to be aware of his needs. There’s sacrifice all around as well as blessings. All this is to say that there are definitely limits to sex after marriage, and more young people should learn this.