I guess I'll dub this "sex and the city". Someone made a quote quite recently about sex being viewed as dirty before (some decades ago), but not anymore. Then a few weeks ago, I was about driving off to work one morning, when I received a text message from a friend of mine asking if I could kindly write an article on effects of premarital sex on the society. I asked if he was for or against it? he didn't give a straight forward answer (apparently lots of people aren't comfortable talking about such topics openly). I went further to asked him what prompted his suggestion of the topic? In my mind I wondered what must have happened. As it happens, he had a patient who has been married for 13 years with tubal factor infertility. She had a criminal abortion as a youth (with her current husband before they were married). It was done by an nurse, apparently not experienced and in bad environmental conditions. It became septic and she ended up in a hospital lucky to be alive but left with a frozen pelvis i.e all pelvic organs glued together and undifferentiable. Both tubes got blocked, now she can't have a child.
Some of you my dear readers may already know that I give some lectures in a marriage class. However what you may not be so familiar with are the topics of my discussion. I have been asked to talk severally on anti-abortion (I'm Catholic), methods of family planning and HIV/AIDS amongst others. Just to digress even more, I'll go into a bit of politics, about laws governing abortion and the right age for consensual intercourse. In some countries, abortion have been legalized and in others, the age for which consent can be given by the female partner has been reduced so drastically, (I wonder if that doesn't encourage paedophilism).
Now, libido is a normal reaction and craving for everyone right from the adolescent years. Sex is also something to be enjoyed, no objections about that. But pray tell me, why anyone would want to go into such relationships blind-folded and without enough information to fend for and protect themselves. In this day and age of blatant wickedness and numerous diseases spreading like wild fire? In this course of this discussion, I'll be focusing more on the negative effects of pre-marital sex. Some people may eat their cake and still have it. So this focuses on those who may not be as lucky. And not every can successful wait till the wedding night. With marriages now occurring at more advanced ages (particularly for women). For instance my mum married at 21. Her own mum (my grandma) married at 15.
WHAT TO EXPECT:
There are a few things to have in your back left pocket to arm yourself with before getting into a sexual relationship;
- Sex is not LOVE!! Don't get it twisted dear. Ever heard the expression "guys think about sex everytime, and then food next?" It's true. Gone are the days where a guy marries a girl because she got pregnant for him.
- Have also in that pocket that there are numerous diseases flying around the world. A lot of sexually transmitted diseases e.g. gonorrhea, syphilis and topping the list HIV/AIDS. The world is now a global village. So, if you aren't careful, something all the way from Antarctica can meet you in Africa.
WHAT TO DO:
- If you can, ABSTAIN!!!
- Don't be easily swayed. Don't sleep with him because you are pitying him, or "he's pestering me a lot, let me just do it and get it over and done it". Or all my friends are not virgins anymore, I have to just the bandwagon. ("I cant be left alone syndrome").
- Always protect yourself, use a condom. If you do it in a hurry, you may end up dealing with unwanted circumstances in a hurry too.
- Be faithful to only one partner. Also try to make sure that your one partner is also faithful to you. If he/she has multiple sexual partners, you do too.
- I won't add get married as one of the things to do, even if it is the right thing to add. This is because a lot of people no longer honour their marriage vows.
CONSEQUENCES:
This is for the ladies and the gents! Yep, that's right, no one is spared, although the women seem to have double the trouble as they are not only exposed to contracting an STD, but are also the ones who get pregnant.
- Exposure to Sexually transmitted diseases: It can cause infertility in both sexes, especially gonorrhea and syphilis. If you are lucky and detect it early, it may be treatable without dire consequences.
- There is HIV/AIDS to contend with. Tell me why anyone in their minds would pick up a prostitute and not use a condom. Then they run to the hospital the next morning for a retroviral screening (HIV test)?
- Getting pregnant: this can end in any of the following ways;
- The guy marries you and you lives happily ever after (becoming rare by the minute).
- He denies and abandons the lady to bear the brunt of single parenthood. This may turn out to be good or bad. You never know.
- You opt for an abortion so you may be free to go on with your normal life as it was.
- An abortion may be successful especially when done by the expert in good environs. It may also be very unsuccessful with some of the consequences enumerated below.
- Guilt
- Excessive bleeding
- Infection
- Infertility: from chronic infection (pelvic inflammatory disease), Overzealous curettage (scrapping) of the uterine walls, leaving them to fuse together during its healing.
- Injury to the uterus or it's surrounding structures. This usually results from a perforation in the uterus.
- Death
EFFECTS ON THE SOCIETY:
The society suffers in more ways than one as you can well imagine;
- Our children grow up with the wrong practices, thinking them to be the right ones
- The law makers are pressured into making laws in order to prevent untimely deaths resulting from unsafe abortions.
- Because the majority of people affected by these are the young and upcoming adults who would make up the work force in the future, you have old people working well past their years of retirement to help buffer their children.
- More drop-outs and illiterate young people who may be unable to fend for themselves. Let's face the truth only a handful of people make it with little or no form of education. (if you are university drop-out, you are not included in this group since you'll acquired some level of education at least).
Be safe guys, remember you are loved. Don't make a mistake today that would ruin your life tomorrow.
Cheers....
From Nigeria 7.0, I had written...
ReplyDeleteKeren,
I have some contrary and agreeing opinions about your take on pre-marital sex.
I used to, but no longer support the "law" to abstain till marriage, as quite frankly, and you did note this, I believe both men and women are already BIOLOGICALLY pre-wired to have sex once they reach matured ages, I put that any where between 15-20 years old.
I most certainly do not want 15 year olds to be running around town having sex with each other, absolutely NOT! Fortunately mine did not! But our reality is our bodies are biologically ready by that time.
Now as a society, or most societies have agreed the age to engage in sexual activity is 18, or 21 in more conservative societies, so if men and women are not going to get married till their mid 20's and more and more nowadays till their 30's what do they do?
Another school of thought I have is abstaining from sex is a direct product of religious beliefs, as you rightly noted, you being a Catholic, see this issue from that perspective. And that is quite okay, but as I noted above, that religious belief goes contrary to biological wiring of the human body. So the debate remains whats best?
So one might make quite the opposite argument that once a body gets to a mature enough age to have sex, denying that person / body from having sex is detrimental to the person! Consider the fact for example, the commonly held notion that women are best at child bearing in their 20's.
Where I strongly and completely agree with you is everyone, men and women need to ensure they engage in SAFE SEX. Nobody should be making a mistake on that.
Now lastly on pre-marital sex, we should not forget, there is a small minority of both men and women whom, NEVER plan to get married but want to continue to have sex, we have some rare women who want to have kids but, not get married. We have divorced men and women who already have kids, do not plan to re-marry and of course want to remain sexually active.
So its a huge mix we have out there. I think the younger ones, need to be taught how to be safe AND smart about their sexuality, educate them to better arm themselves to prevent both STD's as well as unwanted pregnancies.
Prime example, as a guy I don't know that much on this, (but as a married man, I certainly know a bit! lol) but how many young girls (and guys) know about their menstrual cycle? That time in their circle when they are most fertile and most likely to get pregnant? And when they are not? How many are even tracking their cycle and the days and noting when ovulation is potentially taking place et al? How many understand how this biological circle affects how and when they get pregnant? And why they might have sex with Bobo nice three times, nothing happened, but they did with Bobo not so nice once after some heavy party and BANG! Wahala don shele?
My sense is, the more the younger men and women are aware of these things, the better decisions will be made, beyond simply saying they abstain. Let's assist them to make smarter decisions as they mature.
NB: I have written extensively on this issue on a few fora in the past, this is just an abbreviated outlook on a topic on which I have much more deeper and stronger opinions as regards sex and marriage in general and our societal norms and religious beliefs. They are on a few forums somewhere floating in cyber space! if interested I can post a few links, in fact I will try to do that!
Thanks Ajibola for obliging me. Thanks also for this extensive explanation. Cheers
DeleteI'm not sure if anyone still reads this or whatever, but there are glaring issues with your rebuttal ajibola. First of all, relgious belief doesn't go contrary to our natural human responce, modern day society does. A thousand years ago by 15 in many cultures and societies girls were women, not girls, and had maybe even two children Already.
DeleteAlso, premarital sex has countless negative effects on society and people in general regardless of how loud the left wants to convince us it's harmless. The only postive thing it gives, which depending on your perspective could also be a negative, is instant gratification to our desires. People like to rip on restrictions placed by religions, but you know what? Patience really does pay off No matter what topic is being discussed. Fighting your desires makes you a better person, a more successful person, regardless of your own belief structure.
Sex introduces a million intracacies to a teenager's , and any person in general, life that can only lead to issues. Number one, societies with such a loose culture around sex tend to experience far higher divorce rates and cases of extra marital sex. Of course they would, sex is not viewed as a sacred bond between man and wife, it isn't taken seriously and just like anything else ok n the world, If it isn't given the seriousness and consideration it deserves, people won't think twice about ignoring it.
You get young girls who are pressured by those around them to lose their virginity just to be cool like the rest, and the same goes for boys as well, I'm just focusing a little more on girls because they can potentially get pregnant, and at the end of the day of the girl says no, that's the end of that (I'm not talking about rape of course, but we are talking about young adults and teenagers, average people, not rapists) but no, peer pressure, not just from friends but from media at large. In this country we care more about how little someone has on their body in terms of clothes than how Mich knowledge they have to offer us from their mind. There are so many things that can be linked extremely directly to the way our culture has completely flown off the deep end, I'm not a republican by any means, but liberals are driving this country down the shitter and people need to wake up. Just abstain, save yourself for that person, it's not easy, or it wouldn't be a struggle. It's by no means impossible. I did it living right here in the US and so have many others .