By: Martha Morales
Some adolescents are like a volcano. Feelings flow in the adolescent with an extraordinary strength and variability. Adolescence is a period of great energy and great discouragement, of great ideals and great skepticism.
Happiness is not found doing what we want, but wanting what we do.
Despite virginity is not in fashion, it must be valued in all its greatness: a 17 year old adolescent said that he would not like to have memories of past sexual encounters in his wedding night. This thought helped him to refrain from having sexual relations before marriage.
Two thousand adolescents were asked in a survey: Has virginity ever been proposed to you at home? Have you ever been told to keep virgin for marriage? Have you ever been told about the benefits of sexual abstinence or the passion stairs? This last concept consists in knowing what happens to a couple that has physical intimacy, and if the girl or the boy intends to keep virgin, when he or she has to stop.
The outcome of the survey was: 80% of the women were urged to have virginity as a goal and the same percentage was given reasons to keep virgin until they got married. On the other hand only 50% of men were urged to have virginity as a goal.
Adolescents have to have a clear goal (refrain from having sexual relations) because if they do not know the benefits and risks of a premature intimacy they will easily fall into an endless succession of sexual encounters that will leave them spiritually and emotionally empty.
López Quintás has pointed out that if a boy thinks that he loves a girl, but what he really loves are the qualities of that girl that are pleasant for him, especially if they are sexual, it is probable that there is more love for himself than anything else and that he loves the praise and charm those qualities produce in him. And if those qualities lose their interest due to the time or any other factor, or they stop being pleasant because of the repetitive stimulus, he may think that his love has disappeared, though it would be more exact to say that, that love nearly did not exist because it was full of selfishness from the very beginning.
A person who wants another person mainly to satisfy his/her sexual instincts, does not establish personal links with that person, he/she uses him/her. On the other hand a person who loves gives what he/she has got and he/she devotes himself/herself. Both are very different attitudes: one comes from selfishness and the other one from generosity.
The more sex there is in a relationship, the more risk that it becomes the union of two selfishness. In those cases, pleasure substitutes love easier than it looks like and it installs in a hedonist atmosphere that casts a shadow over love horizon filling you with sadness and frustration.
Addiction to sex tends always to ask for more, because sensitivity wears out and demands more intense stimulation each time.
Possessive pleasure is selfish, it does not look for the other person, it does not respect the dignity of the other person, and it provokes infidelity and disgrace. A woman must promote her personal attraction, but not loosing part of her intimacy.
Some people will say that not having sex with the person we love is repression, and it is not true; it is to prefer something else. To repress means to do without something attractive and feel empty. But when a mother abstains from something because of the love she feels for her son, it is not considered as repression but as a sacrifice to obtain something better for her son. When a boyfriend or girlfriend keeps his/her body clean to devote him/herself to marriage, they are not repressing they are betting for something higher.
A nineteen year old boy said once: It might be difficult to keep your body for your girlfriend; but when you see it from a wider point of view, you can see that you are preserving a very valuable treasure and you do not want to waste it. When people do not understand you just because you do not act like them, I think I could do what they do without any effort, but it would be very difficult for them to detoxicate themselves from all the sex they have had. I have decided to wait until I get married, and the fact that my girlfriend is also able to wait for me some years, is a proof of how much she is worth and how much she loves me.
Possession is not a “proof of love” it is more like “a death certificate”.
In order to help young people, Romano Guardini wrote: “the most effective factor is the way of being of the educator, the second one is what he/she does, and the third one is what he/she says.
