No-Sex Rules Push Some To Earlier Marriage

[OhioChick]

Some Evangelicals Push Younger Weddings

POSTED: 10:31 am EDT August 10, 2009

When Margie and Stephen Zumbrun were battling the urge to have premarital sex, a pastor counseled them to control themselves. The couple signed a purity covenant.

Then, when the two got engaged and Margie went wedding dress shopping, a salesperson called her "the bride who looks like she's 12." Nonchurch friends said that, at 22, she was rushing things.

The agonizing message to a young Christian couple in love: Sex can wait, but so can marriage.

"It's unreasonable to say, 'Don't do anything ... and wait until you have degrees and you're in your 30s to get married,"' said Margie Zumbrun, who did wait for sex, and married Stephen fresh out of Purdue University. "I think that's just inviting people to have sex and feel like they're bad people for doing it."

Against that backdrop, a number of evangelicals are promoting marrying earlier, nudging young adults toward the altar even as many of their peers and parents are holding them back.

Couples like the Zumbruns are caught between two powerful forces - evangelical Christianity's abstinence culture, with its chastity balls and virginity pledges, and societal forces pushing average marriage ages deeper into the 20s.

The call for young marriage raises questions: How young is too young? What if marriage is viewed as a ticket to guilt-free sex? What about the fact that marrying young is the No. 1 predictor of divorce?

The conversation is spreading from what pastors say is a relatively small number of churches and ministries that promote early marriage to the broader evangelical community, with the latest development being a Christianity Today magazine cover story this month titled "The Case for Young Marriage."

More: http://www.newsnet5.com/family/20343410/detail.html

:wtf:

[kestrel91316]

1. Oh, right. Marry the first person you get the hots for. THAT'S a recipe for

a happy family.

It might have worked 50 years ago, but women are a little smarter and more demanding now. And so are men, for that matter. This is just gonna ensure a LOT more divorces when people figure out that their first crush is not marriage material.

[Wizard777]

8. I've seen Younger people marry their high school sweethearts at a young age.

I have yet to see one of those end in divorce. I'm sure it happens. That's hasn't been my observation. Meanwhile people waiting until their late 20's early 30's to get married. The soup can get cold and they'll want a divorce. I've also known couples that refuse to get married. They tend to stay together forever too. So if you gonna get married. It's best to do it young.

[krabigirl]

13. Heck no. I am so glad I didn't marry any of the guys I dated in my 20s.

[SidneyCarton]

17. I married my childhood sweetheart at 22.

It's a mixed bag. Marriages work for a variety of reasons, and fail for a variety of reasons.

[kestrel91316]

28. My sister and BIL got married in their late 20's, AFTER they had both

completed college and graduate school, and are not only happily married with successful kids, they are financially successful, too.

My mom and dad married when she was 19 and he was 22. They did not recommend it to their children.

[teenagebambam]

22. I married the first person I got the hots for

"Married" might be a bit deceptive since we're both men, and we live in Florida....but 17 monogamous years and counting.

[kestrel91316]

31. Hey, I have clients (gay) who got married last year after the world's longest

engagement: 32 years. They have been happily together all this time. Tell me again why gay marriage is a bad thing, lol? They made it through the window, and are still legally husband and husband here in CA.

[davepc]

2. Not having sex untill marriage was easy in biblical times when you got married in your early teens

Now that we wait untill our 20s or 30's (if not later) its not the best advice.

[dysfunctional press]

23. teens and even pre-teens are also reaching puberty at younger and younger ages...

while people are waiting longer before getting married.

it's silly for them to think that abstinence would be sustainable in that kind of environment.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[Blue_Tires]

4. i'm still shocked how many people don't consider sexual compatibility until the wedding night

odds are very slim that it works out well for both parties, and very high that one or the other (or both) get heavy into affairs when older...


I could never marry someone not knowing if she likes what i like and vice-versa...

[OhioChick]

6. No shit....Have to at least test drive the car before buying it...

:rofl:

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

10. As one who divorced over lack of sexual compatibility, I agree.

I married at 27 and he is 6 years older, but we both lived with our respective parents and we lived 50 miles away, so the chances of testing out sexual compatibility were few and far between and, even then, didn't happen. We married about 11 months after meeting, but our sex life was non-existent for all of our marriage. It was like having a roommate. We got along great, we had lots of fun, we laughed a lot, we were like best buddies... but it was a cold and passionless existence.

Sex, while not the most important component of a marriage, was certainly important enough to me that I had to divorce. Thankfully, my life has much improved since then.

[krabigirl]

12. Seriously. I could not imagine...

Also, I couldn't imagine having my husband as my first. We married at 35!

[Wizard777]

18. 6 hours every night isn't a whole lot compared to the other 18 hours in a Day.

:shrug:

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. I got married right out of college so to me I don't see this as being a young age to get married.

Right out of high school might be young, but right out of college?

[Orsino]

7. The contortions some sub-cultures go through to equate sex with marriage...

...are both amusing and sad. The word "purity" is reserved for sexless relationships by the same people who applaud bigotry and wars of conquest.

[Barack_America]

9. Remind me again of the divorce rate among fundies...

Wasn't it something like twice the rate of everyone else?

[krabigirl]

11. I see an upswing in the divorce rate if this trend continues.

[frebrd]

14. Is it any wonder so many repressed, sanctimonious "Christian"® hypocrites.....

are running around "sinning" after a few years?

Ridiculous and pathetic!

[a la izquierda]

15. I live in Oklahoma, and trust me...

there are so many very young couples, with bunches of kiddos. I'm 31 and people are usually stunned when they find out I don't have kids and didn't get married until I was 26. It's very normal to be 21-22, and have one or two kids around these parts (and to be totally broke to boot).
My parents married young and divorced. I had a hard time finding a guy who was willing to follow me all over the country in pursuit of grad degrees...and to be as broke as a grad student normally is. If I had waited to have sex until I met my husband, I can assure you we'd be divorced right now.

[Missy Vixen]

16. I remember the "sex before marriage is sinful" years

I could go into a long narrative about my experiences with the "abstinence is best" crowd. Suffice it to say that I left my church at almost 30 and never went back.

Sexuality is not dirty or sinful. Those who say it is have problems of their own.

[undeterred]

19. This has been going on for years.

Young adults from Christian colleges get married the day after graduation, wildly in love, but having never had sex. Sometimes after all the heat and smoke clears they look at each other and realize that they're a terrible match. They end up divorced.

[hunter]

20. When guilt, shame, secrecy, and deception are associated with sex bad things happen.

It's a terrible way to start a marriage.

I think it's possible for a couple to have sex too soon because raging hormones can mask very serious incompatibilities, but remaining "pure" until marriage often means a lot of feelings and experiences will have been repressed in unhealthy ways.

I'd NEVER recommend early marriage to my own kids. I also think the more practical knowledge they have about sex, the less trouble they'll have in their sexual relationships, married or not. When they choose to be married it will be for all the right reasons and not especially focused on sex.

From my own youthful experiences I always felt sort of sorry for the people who got a greater thrill out of sex if they were sneaking around, or the people who were ashamed of their bodies and their sexuality. Once those patterns are established they don't simply evaporate on the day of the wedding. Unless we are going to sanction twelve and thirteen year olds getting married, those unhealthy patterns are going to be well established by the time someone is nineteen or twenty.

[aikoaiko]

21. This is why God invented oral sex.

;)

[gratuitous]

24. Been going on for years

I remember college days at a small (tiny) liberal arts Baptist-affiliated college, and the hordes of young couples getting married during or right after their undergraduate days. Some of the marriages have worked out, some of them didn't, and there were about a thousand reasons for each. The countervailing societal pressure now is that folks are marrying later in life, which is an additional stressor on the young people in question here.

I'm all for folks taking a sexual relationship seriously, but the rules and the advice has to change over time. You shouldn't tell a 17-year-old the same thing you tell a 14-year-old. And a 22-year-old is a far different person from the 17-year-old that he or she used to be. But nuance, sophistication and giving young people credit for their maturation aren't hallmarks of the "no sex outside marriage" crowd.

[LNM]

25. Well, duh.

I'd guess that's why my parents married so young and so did most everyone in the late 1940's. I know some people had pre-marital sex then but it was very much frowned upon.

[Xenotime]

26. Good grief.

[TrogL]

27. Heinlein proposed the idea of a "starter marriage"

(pun intended) ... with renewable contracts.

That gets around fundies' obsession with pre-marital sex and Jesus' admonition against divorce.

[NeedleCast]

29. ...and the Talibaptists wonder why they have the highest divorce rate in the country

[BlooInBloo]

30. Funny. No-sex rules push most people to just have sex.

[cbdo2007]

32. Don't mean to be crude...but it's also guiding more teens towards anal sex.

They don't consider that breaking the virginity pledge so they're going for it.

When I was in high school 15 years ago, with me and my friends, things still seemed pretty normal as far as going out on a few dates just kissing, then progressing slower to oral after the first month or so and then after a couple of months going all the way.

Now the kids are doing oral the first few dates, then going to anal after the first month or so, or regular sex for those without the virginity pledges.