Often, you read social liberals say that abstinence is impossible: it doesn't work.
(As if not having sex doesn't avoid pregnancy and STD'S!)
What they really mean is that if teenagers continue to act the way they do, and don't change their thinking AND attempt abstinence, they will end up pregnant.
Well duh.
The thing about abstinence is that you must program your life for it. I should know, because I was abstinent before I was married about 7 years ago.
If you make abstinence until marriage your goal, then you must program your life, your behaviour, your habits and your thinking accordingly.
In other words, you have to re-program yourself.
First, if your goal is to remain abstinent until marriage, then you can't date until you're ready to marry. I know what some people might think: you mean to say kids can't have a steady partner until they can marry?
Why would you want to enter into an intimate union if your goal is no sex before marriage? If you're in love with someone, naturally you want to have sex with them. But if the goal is abstinence before marriage, then if you date before you're ready to marry, you're setting yourself up for failure.
I went through a long engagement. I dated in my teens, and I married my high school boyfriend. I can tell you: it's not a good idea. Is it hypocrisy on my part? No, because I came to realize it's not a good idea by having done that.
If you want to be sure you don't have sex before marriage, don't do the things that lead to sex before marriage.
Another thing is that you have to practice modesty: modesty in dress, in speech, in what you view. You have to be able to think like a chaste person in order to act like one.
And once you do date, you have to be able to set limits: to only date people who share the goal of no sex before marriage; of only dating in a manner that doesn't set you up for prolonged physical intimacy.
There's more to it than that, of course. But what I am trying to say is: yes, you can be abstinent before marriage. The notion that it can't be done is ridiculous. You just have to program your life in consequence and be willing to reject anything that might jeopardize that goal. But I fear that so many teenagers are emotionally starved, they think that by being intimate, they're getting self-esteem. Actually the opposite is true. It's by respecting yourself FIRST and developing self-mastery that you develop self-esteem.
