Your Sex Life Is Your Business, Not Anyone Else’s

Many people are afraid to approach the topic of abstinence (or self-preservation/purity, whatever floats your boat) out of fear of offending people with hardcore beliefs or those who justify their decisions based on their religion. However, that doesn’t mean we should avoid the topic entirely.

While I don’t have a problem with people who wear purity rings or have a childhood dream of losing their virginity on their wedding night or swear to their ancestors that they’ll abstain from sex for the rest of their lives, I do find it particularly offensive when some people shove their hardcore beliefs down someone’s throat and make him or her question his or her moral standards by virtue of this belief.

We should all engage in discussing issues that are considered by some to be taboo in society, but bear in mind that you have to take whatever anyone says about abstinence with a grain of salt. Because when it comes down to it, NO ONE has an authority on what you should or shouldn’t do.

People are so obsessed with being self-righteous that they tend to forget about one important thing: Your body is your own. Whatever you do or don’t do with it is no one’s business but yours.

Women find this hard to swallow, especially, and don’t even get me started on power struggle and patriarchy. There have been times when I’ve wanted to take a friend by the shoulders and shake her because she’s worried of what her family might think of her if she ever makes that “big decision.” Or on a more macroscopic level, what society will think of her.

But there is no plainer truth than this: no matter what you do, how many times you’ve had sex or haven’t, how you choose to present yourself to the world and how you look and feel about your body, people are going to judge you. People will manage to find something wrong about you, and people will find a way to invalidate the things you believe in.

And that’s regardless of where or what you are in this world.

At the end of the day, the questions you should be intent on finding the answers to are these: Is this something I want for myself? Am I comfortable doing this? Does this coincide with what I believe in? Is this something I’m going to be proud of myself for doing, 5, 10 years from now?

You have to realize your own agency. Nobody but you will be able to determine that. You are the only one who knows your priorities and truths.

Personally, I don’t believe that abstaining from sex makes marriage “more” special. You don’t quantify how special something is because life commitments are not races or competitions. Some people are better with commitments while some are simply not. In the same way that people believe that preserving themselves until they find *the one* is the right way to go, while some simply don’t believe that *the one* exists and that therefore, you should have fun while there’s still some of it to be had.

Some people see sex as a sacred activity that should only be shared by people who love each other, while others only see it as a human experience. And there is nothing wrong with accepting that we all see it differently and think about it differently, because we don’t believe in the same things.

If your partner is making you feel bad about whether you’re having sex or not, or whether you should or shouldn’t be having it, stop for one second and reevaluate: if this partner really cares about you, he or she wouldn’t pass judgment as quickly or as easily. It is infinitely better to set things straight and lay it all out on the table.

If you really are serious about having the talk, don’t think about playing your cards right. Don’t even play at all. Because if you’re serious about this kind of thing, then you shouldn’t be treating it like a game.

At the end of the day, no matter what you decide, think about what you’d really rather be doing: not apologizing to everyone for doing what you know is right or apologizing to yourself for giving in to whatever people declare is.