Why is premarital sex a sin?

The sexual use of our bodies must honor and glorify God, and this cannot happen outside marriage.  Read on to learn why.

Readership: Men; Women; Parents of adolescents; Singles; Christians;
Length: 4,000 words;
Reading Time: 30 minutes;

Introduction for Parents

It is well understood within Christendom that premarital (and extramarital) sex is a sin.  But most people don’t understand exactly why that is.

For example, if we were to ask a typical young person whether it would be OK for two people to have sex if they are in love, or are engaged to be married, then they could readily come up with several culturally inspired reasons why that would be acceptable.

On the other hand, if we were to ask the same young person why he/she should wait until marriage to have sex, the answers would make reference to the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy or contracting an STD.  If the youngster is a church-goer, the answer might be “cause Mom said so”.  An older adolescent might assume greater personal agency and hunt for a better response.  “Umm… because the Bible says it’s wrong?”

Moreover, there would be no sense of morality, certainty, or conviction behind these responses.  If we were to follow up with the question, “Why is it morally wrong?” or “Why does the Bible say so?”, they will draw a blank.

This post is an attempt to fill in this blank.  Use this knowledge to explain to your children the reasons why sexual purity is important, and to back up your admonitions for your children to refrain from sexual promiscuity.

Introduction for Adult Christian Men

The top fact is that marriage is an incredibly bad deal for men these days.  The rational conclusion for a man is just to spin plates or go MGTOW, but many Christian men have a damningly strong libido and/or a redemptive purpose to form a family that just won’t let them quit.  Hence, many men still cling to the ideal of marriage with a “do it or die” attitude.  And many end up dying (figurative of the soul and finances).  There is really no good choice here.

Through several posts this year, one inconvenient truth that has come to the surface of our understanding is that a man is incentivized, or more or less required in many cases, to engage in some degree of premarital sex in order to arrive in a marriage.  This is presumably no less true among Christians, due to the general convergence of the church with the visages of modern feminism and traditional chivalry.

Although this method of engaging in premarital sex really “works” (in the sense that it duly leads to marriage), nevertheless, it is still indeed a very bad approach to marriage.  This is because the woman does not have the mindset necessary to build a marriage that glorifies God.

Background Fundamentals

To explain exactly why premarital sex undermines the formation of God’s archetype, a Christ centered marriage leading to sanctification, I’ll refer to a familiar Red Pill paradigm as an ontological model: the Alpha Fux/Beta Bux (AF/BB) female mating strategy.  According to this paradigm, a woman’s choice to have sex is motivated by two outcomes.

1. She has sex in order to gratuitously submit her body to a highly qualified male, and to seize the opportunity to collect top-quality seed. (AF)
2. She has sex to claim dominion and assert power, largely motivated by her desire to secure various forms of his investment in her. (BB)

In both cases, the relationship is based on carnal mating strategies, and does not necessarily embody an organic symbiosis of complementary personalities and shared values — a union which would glorify God. 

• If she has sex for the first reason above (AF), then she has foolishly forfeited her purity, and his favor for her as a potential wife.
• If she has sex for the second reason (BB), then she has selfishly abandoned her favor for her husband and will neglect to respect him properly. At an opportune moment, she will display her hypergamous inclinations to trade up and monkey branch, and is thus unlikely to remain faithful. 

In both cases, the reasons for pairing are based on foolish or selfish motivations which will be explained in the next two sections respectively.

As long as a man conforms to the woman’s mating strategy, the focus is on Game techniques (or the catastrophic lack thereof) and playing her game, and this is unlikely to yield a Christ-centered marriage.

Going deeper, the beginning of this breakdown occurs when the woman fails to act as a gatekeeper of sex.  To explain how this happens, Derek left this gem under 8 Examples of IOI Word Semantics (2020 August 8).

The evolutionary method: Man sexually desires woman and pressures her for sex.  Woman rebuffs his advances (for a while).  Man has unlimited sperm for multiple sexual partners, but woman can only be pregnant by one man.  She selects her mate.

Feminism flips the script: Women throw themselves at men.  For (evolutionary) normal men, coupling soon follows.  But commitment is poor, since woman gave up control of sexual access.  This is her power.  By shedding it, men use her.  Cohabitation, MGTOW, divorce, single parenting, marital sexual starvation… all the logical result.

Men have an unsatisfying choice: (1) Give in to base desires to score easily, or (2) take on the woman’s role of sexual gatekeeper.  The former means lots of sex, but is sin.  The latter is righteous, but lowers your chance of getting lots of sex due to weeding out the sexually voracious in favor of the stable and godly.  The third choice is perhaps even worse: (3) settling for used goods.

As you can see, when women fail to be sexual gatekeepers, men are left with no good choices and God’s archetype of a sanctified marriage is debased.  As a result, we see strange pairings and fewer happy marriages.

Such mismatched pairings abound.  Men want women who like sex, but are not promiscuous.  Thus in light of the above,

““Hunting for a unicorn is an individual solution not a societal solution.””

Women need become chaste pre-marital sexual gatekeepers again.  The sexual voracious need to use control of sex to acquire the best mates, not just the best looking and sexually willing.  This would dramatically increase the odds of ‘unicorn parings.’ But we no longer have the social systems required to mandate this.

Derek’s analysis makes it clear that the woman is relinquishing her power when she allows the man to assume the role of sexual gatekeeper.  Of note, this is a role which men are not wired to adopt, and thus will seldom do so.  The result is a reduced interest in investment (i.e. commitment), widespread promiscuity, and a disintegration of the MMP, culminating in a plethora of very dissatisfied men and women, and very unhappy marriages.

But this begs the question, why would so many women, who are insecure by nature, willingly pursue whoredom when there are so many risks and negative consequences attached?  Are women really that horny and that dumb?

Maybe some are, but there is more to it.  While Derek’s viewpoint is accurate, there is a parallel paradigm from the female perspective in which, that by abandoning her responsibility to remain chaste, the woman usurps the spiritual authority of the man, thereby flipping the hierarchy of control.  This results in her holding the reigns of power in the relationship.

Women’s choices are outlined in a previous post, The Feminine Dilemma (2018 October 27), which can be summarized as basically either AF or BB, or both through engaging in serial monogamy.

Now, let’s consider what happens when a woman relinquishes her moral agency of being a sexual gatekeeper in order to engage in premarital sex – first by riding the carousel (AF), then by seducing a Steady Eddie into marriage (BB).

1. The gatekeeper of sex abandons her post in order to seize AF opportunities

A woman’s natural desire to be ruled over is commonly expressed as a hypergamous desire for a top quality man, because she intuitively perceives that such a man has the visceral power of authority over her.  Rightfully, an unmarried woman should be ruled by her father,* and Christ, if she is a believer.  However, there are many women these days who are lacking a cover of authority over her head.  The lack of authority and moral guidance, combined with the passion and ignorance of youth, yields a libertine agency that is prone to error.  This could happen through one of the following ways.

1. Her father fails to act as a functional figurehead of authority over her.
2. She willingly departs from under her father’s protective covering.
3. A combination of the above is especially catastrophic.

In the first case, she may desire to marry a suitable man who can rule over her properly, but since he has the power seat, she has no control over his willingness to commit to a marriage.  She must prove to him that she would be a worthy wife (e.g. through feminine attractiveness, kindness, submissiveness, etc.) in order to attract his commitment.  If she gives it up to an alpha before marriage, she has shown herself to be “easy”, which signals that she is unstable and unfit for marriage, and by doing so, she has basically forfeited the opportunity to marry him.  Why?  It’s because Men won’t commit to a relationship unless it’s an obvious win for them.  If he’s already getting all the sex he needs, then what motivation does he have to accept a much larger responsibility for it?  As the saying goes, why should he buy the cow when the milk is free?

In the rare event that he is an uncommonly righteous man, or if there is a pregnancy, he may be willing to marry her, but this is unlikely since he has already shown himself to be of questionable moral standing by engaging in premarital sex, and since he is presumed to be uber quality, she is not likely to be the only contender for his investment and affections.

Throughout history, women have long noted the apparent inequity of male-female courtship roles, making God out to be unjust for this arrangement, and have indignantly expressed their disapproval through Feminism and sexual rebellion.  But this response to God’s design only makes it all that much harder for all women (and most men) to obtain a joyful, sanctified marriage. 

In the second case, she must have a motivation to stray.  Below is an abridged list of possible reasons, all of which are included in the Feminist Life Script.

• Seeking higher education or employment opportunities away from home and out from under her father’s authority.
• “Discovering herself.”
• Riding the carousel.
• A desire to assert power and autonomy.
• Outright rebellion.

Of note, the desire to assert power and autonomy is intensely alluring.  Dalrock described this phenomenon in his essay, Women’s morphing need for male investment. (2013 August 24).

When women are young and have the power position in the SMP, promiscuity is intoxicating to them.  Since they have the power, the short term nature of most of their relationships isn’t seen as them being rejected by men, but as them rejecting men.  Young women today don’t feel the need that previous generations did to secure commitment in their late teens and early 20s because:

1. Only small numbers of other women their age are going after the more public and durable forms of male investment.
2. Their hopping from man to man is seen as occurring on their own terms.

However, as women progress into their late twenties all of this starts to change.  Their SMP power relative to men starts to decline and at the same time their peers start to marry in much greater numbers.  In other words, their need to secure male investment occurs fairly suddenly, and at the very time their SMP power is starting to dive.**  This is surprising to many young women because of our cultural denial of the SMP realities Rollo describes.

If her particular pretension of the feminine imperative is ruled by her own desire for power, then any relationship she enters into will start off on the wrong foot with her presuming to be in control.  If she spends a considerable number of years exercising her p*ssy power over men, then it will be extremely difficult if not impossible for her to abscond from the habit.  Even after she has tired of the carousel and is ready to settle down, she will probably choose a husband according to the same standard.

In all of the above cases, she has missed the chance to marry a preferred man and eventually has no other choice but to marry a lesser man (by her standards).  In effect, she is forced to resort to hypogamy (marrying a man below the tier of her expectations), which reprehensively violates her natural desire for hypergamy.  In reality, the man offering commitment may indeed be an equitable match for her, or even higher, but because of the Alpha Widow syndrome, deep in her soul she regards him as being sub-par.  Thus, after marriage, she’s stuck with a man whom was selected by his inability to take the lead, nor generate the Tingles.  This unfavorable situation inevitably leads to severe discontentment, contempt, and rivalry, culminating in the woman’s morphing need for male investment (i.e. frivorce).

* The present discussion suggests why it is extremely important for a marriage-minded man to vet a potential wife by examining the relationship she has with her father.

** The event of change described in Dalrock’s last paragraph is commonly called “hitting the wall” within the Manosphere.

2. The gatekeeper of sex abandons her post in order to seize power

Women use premarital sex to qualify men.  In this scenario, you might imagine that a woman thinks of a man as a kid’s wind-up toy.  The first part of the game is to determine his winding style and strength.  This exercise allows her to become familiar with and own her p*ssy power.  If she shows a little bit of cleavage, or a lot of leg, will that get him wound up? Maybe a bare-breasted titty show might get him to see things her way.  Not enough? Some popsicle popping will surely get him to soften up and conform to her wishes.  The challenge is an integral part of the game.  If he gets too excited from a gesture too small, then a gaming woman might throw that small fish back into the pond and go fishing for a bigger challenge.  She’s hunting for the high SMV man that can hold out for the grand finale.  As a preselection characteristic, high SMV men can get a lot of action from many women, are under less compulsion to toss their load, and are more likely to hold up to her sexpectations.  Instead of his low pressure cooker type of self-control serving as evidence that he is an unreliable, promiscuous player, it’s taken as a confirmation that he’s a big fish.  Thus, by its very nature, using premarital sex to qualify men tends to screen for promiscuous men, and filter out chaste marriage minded men.

Women use premarital sex to ensnare men.  Basically, the man’s natural prerogative is to conquer, dominate, and inseminate.  But when this goal has been reached through engaging in premarital sex, the man’s mindset changes.  His aggressiveness in pursuing a relationship becomes more relaxed as he resorts to the follow-up role of preserving and maintaining the new status quo.  This role focuses on consolidating his position as a defacto “husband” (and possible father), and in peacefully maintaining the “territory” he perceives to have “conquered”.  In effect, she has “disarmed” the man, and has put him into a defensive position.  For many men, this translates into greater investment (e.g. commitment, time, housing, food, resources).  In effect, she has bartered off her sexuality for his greater interest and investment.  By its nature, this is a type of soft whoredom.

Women use premarital sex to control men.  After the man is sufficiently ensnared, it is at this time that the woman shows her claws and fangs.  Men are caught unawares, and are already hooked on the oxytocin and endorphins.  She is now able to pour on the heat, and she threatens to disrupt the status quo of him having a satisfying relationship and regular sex.  Meanwhile, men become confused and find it extremely difficult to reverse gears and return to the aggressive mode of being a conqueror.  In the hope of maintaining the peace and continuing on with the sexual relations which he has already tasted, most men will not only tolerate her demands, but will bend over backwards to satisfy her particular conditions.  Because of this motivation for continued sex and sanctification, men become placated and comply easily to the whore’s demands.  This also explains how premarital sex quickly turns into the habit of her withholding sex after marriage.  It’s all about control – her control over him.***

In short, a woman uses premarital sex to select high quality, but weak willed men who are then duped through his natural desires.  First, his fleshly desire for sex, and then after sex, his desire for peace and satisfaction.  It is through this manner that the God ordained hierarchy has been flipped on its head.

*** PUA’s commonly encourage the exploitation of soft whoredom merely for the sake of getting laid, teaching men to abandon the relationship when the fangs come out.  Similar to prostitution, such an approach may indeed deliver sexual gratification to a man without him being controlled.  However, this behavior is condemned in scripture as whore-mongering.  (See Ephesians 5:5, 1 Timothy 1:10, Hebrews 13:4, Revelation 21:8, Revelation 22:15.)

Why premarital sex leads to a dysfunctional marriage

It is the nature of women to desire a man, but a woman’s desire to control a man is part of her fallen nature.  Since sexual desire is perhaps the only area in which women genuinely have visceral power over men, especially younger men, it is a no brainer solution for her to combine her desire for a man with her desire to control a man simply by applying her thighs to the stud.  She can knock out Two Birds with one stone, and enjoy the ego rush of power in the process.  As long as women perceive their sexuality as a form of power, they will carry a mistaken sense of control, and will be continually tempted to abuse this power.

As mentioned earlier, single young women tend to revel in their sexual power, and they learn to use this power to leverage male desire in order to extract attention, affirmation, and various forms of provision, as well as evade responsibility (AKA the p*ssy pass).  But within marriage, she becomes acutely aware of the consequences of her actions (i.e. sex reveals her vulnerability while it empowers the man) and the relevant responsibilities.  With this information added into the equation, she must now resort to a new strategy in order to continue exerting power and evading responsibility.  This invariably results in her using sex (i.e. the denial thereof) as a weapon.

Before marriage, she had no sense of responsible agency, only the thrill of passion, affirmation, and the illusions of liberty and control.  After marriage, familiarity and selfishness kill the passion, the affirmation is a once and done deal, and her perceptions of liberty are transformed into adultery and become a liability.  In short, all her previously dearly held idolatries are eliminated in one fell swoop.  The true nature of her depraved spiritual state is revealed in all its gory, leaving her floundering for some other idol to latch onto.

Since women are intuitively familiar with this method of control, one might think that they would continue to flex their perineal muscles even after marriage, which might actually be helpful in terms of closeness and bonding.  But in fact, the nature of marriage requires both partners to form a relationship that is structured according to God’s archetype, or else it becomes miserable.  Men and women who enter into marriage with any relationship structure contrary to this are forced to evolve according to God’s prototype, or else fail.

The only way to reinstate the proper hierarchy of authority is for the man to stop having sex with the woman, and to start demanding her submission, wherein her obedient compliance is rewarded with love, attention, and other favors, possibly sex if they decided to marry during the interim.  The thing is, this remedial approach is extremely difficult for both the man and the woman.  It is even more difficult than it would have been to resist having premarital sex in the first place.  It is difficult for the man for the reasons discussed above, and it is difficult for the woman because it requires her to assume a posture of humility and respect after having succeeded in dominating the man.  Most women will patently refuse.  For others, the sudden invalidation of her power breaks the continuity of her once reliable ego fixation, and suppresses the satiety of her addiction.  Her depraved grasping for love, security, and control is exacerbated, even amplified to hellish proportions, which will guarantee he does not succeed if it does not drive him away altogether.

Furthermore, if men try to implement a remedial strategy, it is very likely that the now frustrated woman will be tempted to monkey branch and try her hand on dominating another man, rather than to do the hard work of being obedient to God and her husband in a relationship that has already lost its spark and has become filled with the grievances of sin.

All this clearly explains why so many marriages have a rocky start for the first 2-5 years, and 50% of them end in the divorce courts.  In other words, 50% of them prefer to return to the idolatries of their youth, and there’s probably a good proportion of those who stay married who are merely tolerating it, while empowering themselves to “stay faithful” by dreaming of the Asherah poles of the past whenever they’re rutting.

Concluding Statements

Because of the tomes of discussion about the AF/BB female mating strategy in the Manosphere over the past decade, we have come to regard this strategy as the natural default.  However, while I was composing this essay, I realized that if a woman obeyed God by postponing sex until marriage, and she married sufficiently early in life (early 20s), then the AF/BB strategy (and all its transgressions) may never ensue.

Thus, the AF/BB strategy is only the default strategy for those women who have abandoned the God proscribed prerogative to avoid sex until marriage and instead have pursued the feminist life Script, relishing their own p*ssy power and indulging the idolatry thereof.

In other words, the AF/BB strategy is a peculiar manifestation of feminism, a result of worshipping the idol of female rebellion.  It only seems like the dominant prototype because feminist ideology prevails as a conventional benchmark for women.  Another way to say this is that we are witnessing the once rare catastrophic consequences of promiscuity now played out as a societal norm.

Men want to interpret a woman’s willingness to have premarital sex as meaning that she loves him so much that she just can’t control herself.  But this notion is just a projection of male lust and a denial of God’s archetypical relationship structure.  Remember, women are the gatekeepers of sex, and the only time she should be opening her legs that gate is in obedience to God’s will for her life.  That means celibacy before marriage, and afterwards, submission to her husband’s advances, and only her husband’s advances.

It is my opinion that women who are unwilling to follow this course should not get married, because as long as a woman obeys the fleshly nature (following evolutionary psychology) she will maintain a utilitarian approach to sex (i.e. informal whoredom along the AF/BB trajectory) and will fail to fulfill her role as sexual gatekeeper according to God’s designations.  A woman is not fit for marriage unless/until she grows past her barbaric nature and can willingly submit her body to the worthier purposes of marriage and procreation.

The bottom line is in whether she (and he) will choose to be obedient to God’s will prior to the wedding day.  If she cannot resist illicit sex before marriage, then it is unlikely that she will resist illicit liaisons afterwards.  If she will not prove to be obedient before marriage, then it is highly unlikely that she will suddenly become obedient afterwards.  For a man to think otherwise is unreasonable, and foolish.  To briefly reiterate, foolishness is when you can’t (or won’t) see what will come next, based on the nature of things and the track record of past behavior/events.

Any way you look at this, premarital sex is a sin.  Of course, we already knew this, but now we know why.

Related

• Dalrock: Reframing Christian Marriage (Part 5) – Sex as a Weapon (2012 May 20)
• Dalrock: The Unexpected Challenge to Modern Christian Orthodoxy (2016 December 12)
• Dalrock: They’re too traditional to stay married (2019 May 17)
• The Asia Dialogue: What does Premarital Sex mean in a Dating Culture Compared to a Courtship Culture? (2019 November 19)
• Biblical Gender Roles: 3 Ways Wives Try to Control Their Husbands (2020 April 9)
• Wintery Knight: Radical Feminists Explain How Feminism Prepared Them for Marriage (2020 July 29)
• The Male Factor: 5 Ways to Stay Safe from Gold Digger Girlfriends (2020 July 30)
• Full Metal Patriarchy: You Can’t Negotiate Genuine Desire but that’s not the Point (2020 August 4)