More than 50 students support "Off the Hook," a new group on Grounds that promotes saving sex for marriage. We come from a wide array of backgrounds and are saving sex for marriage for different reasons, but I would like to share mine with you.
I suppose the place to start is my first year at the University. While at a party, I started talking to someone I had met on Grounds. I will protect his identity by calling him Tim. Tim decided to share with me some hard-won wisdom: "See that girl over there?" I nodded. "Hot, isn't she," Tim continued. "We're going to hook up tonight. You know how I know?" I didn't know. "Because I slept with her and walked away," Tim said.
There was a long silence as I thought of something to say in reply. I did not have to say anything, however, because Tim remorsefully tried to explain his comments. But later that night, Tim was in the arms of his onetime fling, sporting a toothy grin that showed none of his former remorse.
It is reasonable to suppose that Tim's prediction was informed by his experience. After all, there is a bonding hormone called oxytocin that creates feelings of deep intimacy, trust and connection in people. Oxytocin is responsible for the way a mother feels about her baby and also the way a woman feels about a man with whom she kisses, cuddles or has sex with. So if a woman hooks up, she is likely to have feelings of deep affection for her partner whether she intended to have such feelings or not.
No wonder, then, that according to a study at Princeton University, more than nine in 10 women say they at least occasionally regret hooking up. They commonly say that they feel guilty or used, and about eight in 10 women report wishing a hook-up hadn't happened.
Hook-ups are supposed to be about pleasure without consequences - he uses her, she uses him and both walk away in the morning. But people are not designed to have sex that way.
But even people who are dating should save sex for marriage, because having sex before marriage means acting contrary to our deeply-rooted longing for true love in a profoundly harmful way.
A person longs to be cherished as intrinsically valuable, as more than a bundle of impulses and appetites to be fed and fed on. A person also wants to be committed to and invested in. You are invested in when another person considers your success to be his success, your pain to be his pain and acts accordingly. It is the stuff of true love, and you deserve no less. Just as we want to be intrinsically valued, committed to and invested in, we want to intrinsically value another, commit to another and invest in another.
If that is a person's dream, what is his or her nightmare? It is to be extrinsically valued rather than intrinsically valued, to be discarded after having outlived that extrinsic value to the other person and to be treated as unworthy of investment. And it is to do the very same to that other person.
Now, sex is an expression of a person's sacred aspirations, a revealing of an individual's most intimate self so that he or she can cherish another and be cherished in turn. As such, sex has the potential to be a blissful realization of authentic love when shared in marriage.
Offering oneself outside of marriage, in contrast, is like stretching out one's hand in the hope that it will be taken, only to have it slapped away. Individuals engaging in extra-marital sex are most likely to find themselves valued extrinsically, treated as unworthy of investment and eventually discarded, despite having engaged in what is supposed to be a sacred activity. That is, sex outside of marriage means living one's nightmare precisely for having tried to live one's dream.
One effect of casual sex is to compromise the heights of romance which your future marriage can attain. To save sex for marriage is to commit to your future spouse from the start, usually without having ever set eyes on him or her. The more we invest in something - academics, a career, a hobby - the more satisfaction we find in it later. Marriage is no different, and by saving sex for it two people heighten immeasurably the romance they share for years to come. Someday, I hope to marry a woman who can say what is said in the Song of Solomon: "My beloved is mine, and I am his." That is why I am saving sex for marriage.
Off the Hook looks forward to sparking a conversation about sex with students, faculty and administrators. So if you want to get involved, or if you're just looking for a good date, come to our first meeting at 7 p.m. tonight in Monroe 134 and be sure to join us on Facebook.
Reece Aaron Epstein is president and co-founder of Off the Hook.
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