Single Adult Resources

Sex on the Wedding Night

For those not married yet, what do you expect and anticipate on your wedding night? Physical intimacy? Excitement? Emotional intimacy? For those who have been married, do you remember your wedding night? Remember the excitement, the mystique and the anticipation of expressing your love to your spouse through God"s special gift between husband and wife, the act of marriage, as it used to be called?

Making love for the first time on the wedding night, and now in a growing percentage of many marriages, making love at all is becoming less frequent! Asra Q. Nomani of the Wall Street Journal writes, The wedding night cultural totem, the stuff of romantic movies, the object of a million gentle jokes about anxiety and performance...In that form, it is becoming increasingly rare. Transformed by three decades of social trends, among them:

• Ubiquitous premarital sex
• Prenuptial cohabitation
• Growing numbers of second and third marriages

"the wedding night for many has simply mutated into an extravagant extended party rather than an extravagant personal moment. Sex, when it happens, is often an apostrophe, not an exclamation point."

After marrying her beau of eight years, one wife says, "I think I wore matching underwear for the first time in my life. But please, we'd been together eight years. The wedding night is just not as romantic as it used to be."

Sex on the Wedding Night

Survey of 3876 newly married people:

• Those preferring to spend the wedding night in non-connubial activities
  • 40+ yr olds.-More than half
  • 18-24 yr olds-One third

-Barry Sinrod - Boca Raton, FL researcher of social trends

• About one third of all ages spend the wedding night opening gifts, sleeping, counting cash presents, partying with friends.

-The Knot.com, A wedding planning website

• The wedding night has lost its mystique. It's sad in a way.

-Deborah McCoy, wedding planner/owner of Elva's For the Bride - Boca Raton, FL

• 1 in 5 women and 15% of men go to their bridal beds as virgins these days. -Edward Laumann - University of Chicago sex researcher

What does all this mean to leaders of young adult and single adult ministries? What implications are presented to the church? At the very least we must understand:

• A higher percentage of single adults have been or are sexually active than were years ago
• The need for biblical teaching on sexuality and purity to single and single-again adults
• Our premarital counseling must include the biblical perspective of sex outside and inside of marriage
• Our spiritual terms and biblical principles may be foreign to some people we marry
• The need for biblical, post-marital education
• The need for mature Christian role models in marriage

WHERE WILL THEY GET THEIR INFORMATION CONCERNING SEX IF NOT FROM THE CHURCH? I THINK WE KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION!

Dennis Franck