Does True Love Wait?

For those who grew up in the 90's and early 2000's (and even still today), you might remember a thing called "True Love Waits". I was thinking about this earlier today, still being single at 30, and how most of us in the church are taught how sexual intimacy between a man and women is for marriage. I also thought about how statically today people do not get married until their mid to late twenties. So, if you are 13-19, that means you are looking at roughly ten years of being pure and not having sex. It means having to control your urges, control lust, control your emotions, and stick with Christ. Right?

I would like to suggest that true love does not wait, true love takes action. No, I don’t mean sexual action. I am talking about not being passive with knowing another. Men are told to control urges and seek out women. Females are told to look pretty and wait on men. But is that the end of the story? Are we only meant to know one another in a sexual way? Is there no type of intimacy between males and female except having physical intimacy, controlling lust, or waiting endlessly for that emotional connection?

I believe teaching youth about true love could gain a lot by teaching them about what real friendship is between one another, not just male to male or female to female but male to female and female to male as well. Teaching males and females that they can be friends without always having to only think about lust, sex, or remaining pure.

But what about their hormones? But what are we teaching them? When we separate them we are teaching them that sex, intimacy, the opposite sex, and friendship is bad, evil, and horrible. We are also teaching our children that they cannot be trusted to control themselves, that they are forever at the whim of their hormones and emotions. I think this teaching and separation actually achieves the opposite of what was intended.

How would I change things? Looking back now after being single for so long, I would not just have married people teaching about purity in churches. Sure they can tell you how great it is to wait and reap the benefits; however, they cannot really relate to how it feels to wait, especially to wait for how long some of those teens are going to try/have to wait.

I would also teach the reality that some may fail but there is grace and forgiveness. This may seem like a free license to sin but it is not, instead it is trying to let them know that they can fall but try again. I think a lot of teenagers figure once they have had sex (lost their virginity), though they may regret it, why wait anymore. If the church talked more openly about this and allowed safe spaces for confession, it would go along way into letting teenagers and young adults know God loves them despite the fact that they fall.

Honestly, I would change the whole way these subjects are taught in church. Usually the males and females are separated. I would suggest the first session be separated but then ongoing sessions be switched between co-ed and segregated. I believe it would benefit boys and girls to hear from those who are single, those married, and also from one another. How was someone used in a relationship? What is going on with one another beyond their gender? What are their likes and dislikes? What I am proposing that instead of trying to control them from (not) having sex, you introduce them and have them become friends, or even better, brothers and sisters in Christ.

Being single I have gained so many sisters in the faith. I decided I could be friends with them. Not all have agreed to friendship but I think my life is more fulfilled having the input of those female friends who are in my life. Through these friendships I am able to connect, to go deep into life with females emotionally and spiritually in intimate ways without our relationship having to be solely based on a dating relationship, marriage, and physical attraction/intimacy.

So, I don’t think true love waits, I think it takes action. I think true love makes friendships with those of the opposite gender. I think that true love values the other gender as a whole person, not merely an object for physical or sexual gratification alone.

Lastly, I think true love takes action when you find someone and that connection is more than friendship and then you both choose to pursue the journey of going into a deeper relationship through dating, perhaps later marriage, and the intimacy to match that level of commitment.

~ Doubledb