I should have pointed to this post by MrsDarwin when it was fresh, but better late than never. Here's the opening paragraph:
When I was a newly-wed, I worked at a theater. One afternoon, as I was working on tech with two other girls, the subject of sex came up, and both were surprised to hear that I had been a virgin when I got married. That set them off reminiscing about their first times. For all our cultural and moral and experiential disparity, we could all agree on one thing: the first time had been awkward, painful, and kind of alarming. This was a bit surprising to me — surely the heat of the moment ought to be more conducive to getting it on than after a long and stressful wedding day? Not so much, it seems.
It's a good post, but particularly because of the comments — she got a little flak for being, in the eyes of some readers, insufficiently reverent toward marital intimacy. Others (including yours truly) disagreed. I'm glad she didn't take the post down.
Occasionally I will hear someone defend premarital sexual activity as a positive good, even necessary, as a way of making sure that the couple is "sexually compatible" with each other before making a long-term commitment. Pragmatically, I suppose that argument has its own logic, but even pragmatically it falls flat. There are no guarantees that the superficially sexually compatible will remain so. The one guarantee is that you're both going to get older, and things are going to change, some for better and some for worse. So why be so fixated on whether you're "sexually compatible" at this one particular moment in time? The inexperienced will gain experience; the interesting will become mundane. Libido will wax and wane in response to all the myriad influences of rest and exhaustion and presence and absence, in the cycles of childbearing and childrearing. Medical problems may intervene. So why not just accept one another where you are, and learn together how to be together as you go? It's the philosophy of the young, foolish, and naive, and yet… it has served many people very well, including Mark and me.
Pragmatically, I suppose it requires patience, generosity, honesty, and a sense of humor. But then, maybe it can help develop those things too.
bearing blog 