We have created a strange sexual contradiction.

We tell young men that they need experience.

We tell them they should know what they are doing before marriage.

We sometimes laugh about boys “getting it out of their system.”

We praise male sexual confidence.

We treat a young man sleeping with several women as though he is developing some kind of prowess.

Then we turn around and tell young women to restrain themselves.

Protect yourself.

Do not sleep around.

Do not let men use you.

Do not become somebody’s practice woman.

Do not get pregnant by some wayward boy.

Do not damage your future.

The contradiction should be obvious.

We cannot sensibly tell our sons to spread their sexual desire across many women while hoping everybody else’s sons leave our daughters alone.

There is a better way.

Teach both young men and young women self-government while they are growing.

Teach them that sexual desire is powerful, normal and not something to be ashamed of.

Teach them that desire does not give them a claim on somebody else’s body.

Prepare them seriously for marriage.

And when two consenting adults are mature, prepared, compatible and ready to marry, stop acting as though postponing marriage for years while they struggle against powerful sexual desire is automatically some sign of superior maturity.

This is not an argument for marrying children.

It is not an argument for pushing unprepared people into marriage.

And it is certainly not an argument that somebody should marry simply because they are sexually frustrated.

It is an argument against unnecessarily postponing marriage for prepared young adults who genuinely want it while simultaneously normalizing years of sexual experimentation during the delay.

When two adults are ready, let them marry.

Then let husband and wife unleash that sexual desire on each other.

Let them learn sex together.

Let them become confident together.

Let them make mistakes together.

Let them laugh together.

Let them learn each other’s bodies together.

Let them become sexually wise together.

Let them build extraordinary sexual fluency with each other.

Now the very things society claimed the young man needed to collect from several women can grow inside one marriage:

And now nobody else’s daughter has to become his training ground.

There are fewer overlapping sexual connections through which sexually transmitted infections can move.

Parentage becomes far less complicated when husband and wife are sexually exclusive.

Young men and young women are no longer raised under opposite sexual rules.

And sexual desire stops being something civilization glorifies in men, fears in women and then struggles to manage after the damage has already been done.

The Current Contradiction Makes No Sense

Consider what we have been telling boys.

A young man should have experience.

He should know how to please a woman.

He should not enter marriage completely inexperienced.

He should sow his wild oats.

He should get it out of his system.

He should enjoy himself while he is young.

Fine.

Now consider what we often tell girls.

Do not let boys use you.

Do not give yourself away.

Protect your body.

Be careful.

Do not get pregnant.

Do not become known for sleeping around.

Save yourself for somebody who actually loves you.

Those instructions cannot coexist without somebody absorbing the contradiction.

If one group of young people is supposed to practice and another group is supposed to refuse to be practiced on, where exactly is all this practice supposed to happen?

That question is not complicated.

It simply exposes the logic.

If you do not want somebody else’s son using your daughter for sexual practice, stop teaching your son that somebody else’s daughter is required for his development.

Sexual Desire Is Not the Problem

Young adults having strong sexual desire is not some shocking discovery.

Human beings are sexual.

Young adulthood often comes with strong sexual energy, curiosity, attraction and desire for intimacy.

The mistake is treating that desire in one of two foolish ways.

One approach says:

The other says:

Why are those our choices?

Why should strong sexual desire either be scattered across several people or treated as something that must remain locked away indefinitely?

There is an obvious third path.

That is not suppression forever.

That is direction.

Self-Government Is Different From Suppression

There is a difference between telling a young person:

“Your sexual desire is bad. Crush it.”

and telling them:

“Your sexual desire is powerful. Learn to govern it.”

Those are not the same lesson.

Self-government means you do not become a servant to every appetite that appears.

You can want sex without believing somebody owes you sex.

You can feel attraction without pursuing every attractive person.

You can become aroused without treating arousal as an emergency.

You can wait without pretending you have no desire.

And when the proper place for that desire arrives, you do not have to continue pretending it is something dirty.

You can enjoy it.

Fully.

The goal should never have been to produce sexually frightened adults.

The goal should be to produce adults who can govern themselves and then enjoy sexual intimacy responsibly when they enter marriage.

Stop Treating Prolonged Sexual Frustration as an Achievement

There is also something strange about deliberately pushing marriage later and later while acting surprised that young adults continue to have sexual desires.

A young adult can be physically mature, experiencing strong sexual desire, emotionally capable of deep attachment and strongly desiring intimacy while being told:

Then years pass.

And during those years society still has to deal with the sexual reality it postponed.

So the young man is quietly given one answer:

And the young woman is given another:

Again, we have created the problem and then handed men and women contradictory instructions for surviving it.

This does not mean people should marry recklessly.

Marriage requires judgment.

Compatibility matters.

Character matters.

Emotional maturity matters.

The ability to communicate matters.

The ability to live responsibly with another person matters.

And age by itself does not answer those questions.

An 18-year-old can be an adult and still be completely unprepared for marriage.

Another 18-year-old may genuinely understand the commitment, have chosen a compatible spouse and be ready to build a life together.

A 30-year-old can also be unprepared.

There is no magical birthday at which wisdom suddenly arrives.

Modern culture may normalize later marriage, but that does not mean we should quietly redefine adulthood to mean “around 30.”

Marriage Does Not Need to Come After Sexual Experimentation

There is another assumption worth challenging.

Why should marriage come after the sexual experimentation phase?

Why not let marriage be where the sexual learning happens?

A young man does not need ten women to prepare him for one wife.

A young woman does not need ten men to prepare her for one husband.

They can learn together.

And they are going to have to learn each other anyway.

Previous partners cannot tell a husband exactly what his wife enjoys.

Previous partners cannot tell a wife exactly what her husband enjoys.

A new spouse is still a new person.

So instead of:

Why not:

That is far more coherent.

Let Husband and Wife Unleash Their Sexual Desire on Each Other

This is where I think civilization has been unnecessarily timid.

We should not be afraid of strong sexual desire between husband and wife.

We should want it.

We should want husbands who strongly desire their wives.

We should want wives who strongly desire their husbands.

We should want marriages where sex is not some reluctant duty performed occasionally after everyone has spent years being told that sexual desire is dangerous.

If a young husband and wife are strongly attracted to each other, let them enjoy that.

Let them explore each other.

Let them have sex.

Let them learn.

Let them discover what works.

Let them become less awkward.

Let them become more confident.

Let them become more attentive.

Let them become increasingly skilled at understanding the person they actually married.

Marriage Becomes the Sexual Learning Environment

This changes the entire idea of sexual preparation.

The husband does not arrive expecting to know everything.

The wife does not arrive expecting to know everything.

They arrive ready to learn.

And over time, the awkwardness decreases.

Confidence increases.

Knowledge increases.

Trust increases.

They become fluent in each other.

That is a much more sensible sexual education than sending young adults through a succession of temporary partners and calling the resulting history preparation.

First Bird: Sexual Experience

Sexual experience is simple.

You gain sexual experience by having sexual experiences.

A married couple can do that together.

They do not need strangers for it.

They become familiar with nudity.

Touch.

Arousal.

Communication.

Rhythm.

Timing.

Their own bodies.

Each other’s bodies.

Sex stops being mysterious because they are actually living a sexual life together.

The husband gains experience.

The wife gains experience.

Nobody needed to become somebody else’s practice person first.

Second Bird: Sexual Wisdom

Sexual wisdom is deeper.

This is where people learn that sex is not merely about getting what they want.

They learn patience.

They learn communication.

They learn how moods affect intimacy.

They learn that bodies change.

They learn that sometimes one person wants sex and the other does not.

They learn tenderness.

They learn restraint.

They learn generosity.

They learn how to hear no without becoming offended.

They learn how to receive correction without ego.

They learn how to tell the truth about what they enjoy.

They learn responsibility.

They learn that desire does not create entitlement.

They learn how sexual intimacy fits into the larger life of love, marriage, children, exhaustion, illness, recovery, work, rest and ordinary daily life.

That is sexual wisdom.

And a husband and wife can grow in it together.

Third Bird: Partner-Specific Sexual Fluency

Then comes something no collection of previous partners can give them.

Partner-specific sexual fluency.

This is the deep knowledge two particular people develop of each other.

Not women.

Not men.

Not what previous partners liked.

This person.

What makes your wife relax?

What makes your husband feel wanted?

What touch does she love?

What makes him uncomfortable?

What pace works today?

What changes during pregnancy?

What changes after childbirth?

What changes during exhaustion?

What changes with age?

How does your spouse communicate desire?

How do they communicate hesitation?

What makes the two of you laugh?

What makes the two of you feel safe?

What makes the two of you feel close?

That fluency cannot be collected from strangers and carried wholesale into a marriage.

It has to be built with the person you actually married.

Three Birds With One Marriage

So look at what has happened.

Instead of sending a young man through several women so that he can supposedly become sexually prepared, husband and wife have developed together:

Sexual experience.

They have actually lived a sexual life.

Sexual wisdom.

They have learned how to handle sex with judgment, care, communication and responsibility.

Partner-specific sexual fluency.

They have learned each other deeply.

And nobody else’s daughter had to be sacrificed to the training program.

Nobody Else’s Daughter Has to Be the Training Ground

This is one of the clearest benefits.

The old model says the son needs women before marriage.

The new model says:

No.

He needs self-government before marriage and a wife he can learn deeply inside marriage.

Now the father does not have to hold two contradictory positions.

He does not have to say:

My son needs experience.

But please keep your sons away from my daughter.

He can teach the same principle to both.

Fewer Sexual Connections Mean Fewer Routes for Sexual Disease

There is also an obvious public-health consequence.

The more overlapping sexual connections a population has, the more routes sexually transmitted infections have through which to move.

A person sleeps with several people.

Those people sleep with several other people.

Those people have other partners.

The network expands.

A mutually faithful marriage sharply reduces that network.

This does not mean marriage magically eliminates every sexually transmitted infection.

It does mean fewer partners and fewer overlapping sexual connections mean fewer pathways through which infections can spread.

That is not complicated.

If civilization wants less sexual disease, encouraging young adults to accumulate partners as a form of preparation is a strange strategy.

Parentage Becomes Simpler

Sexual exclusivity also removes much of the uncertainty created by overlapping sexual relationships.

Who is the father?

Whose child is this?

Who is responsible?

Who knew about whom?

Who was sleeping with whom at the same time?

Those questions have caused enormous conflict throughout human history.

That does not require a complicated sexual network.

Sexual exclusivity produces much greater clarity about parentage.

Sons and Daughters Can Finally Be Taught the Same Sexual Standard

One of the greatest strengths of this approach is its consistency.

We no longer need one sexual morality for boys and another for girls.

We do not have to tell the boy:

Go gain experience.

while telling the girl:

Do not become somebody’s experience.

We can tell both:

That is one standard.

Not male permission and female restriction.

One standard.

We Do Not Need to Fear Female Sexual Desire Either

This matters too.

If we are going to stop treating male sexual desire as a force that must be scattered across women, we should also stop treating female sexual desire as something embarrassing that must barely exist.

A wife can strongly desire her husband.

Good.

A husband can strongly desire his wife.

Good.

That is not a problem civilization needs to solve.

That is something marriage can contain, develop and enjoy.

The answer to male sexual appetite is not prostitution.

The answer to female sexual appetite is not lifelong suppression.

The Transition Into Marriage Has Been Badly Designed

This is the larger issue.

Civilization spends enormous energy managing the consequences of sexual behavior.

Then we act as though the structure that produces those outcomes cannot be questioned.

It can.

We can ask whether we have designed the transition from sexual maturity into marriage sensibly.

We can ask whether delaying marriage unnecessarily while normalizing sexual experimentation actually serves young adults.

We can ask why men are taught that multiple women build sexual prowess.

We can ask why women are expected to absorb the consequences of that training.

We can ask why marriage is treated as the destination after sexual experimentation instead of one of the primary places where sexual maturity can deepen.

And we can build something more coherent.

Teach Self-Government. Prepare Them Well. Let Them Marry. Let Them Learn Each Other.

That is the proposition.

Do not teach sons to unleash their sexual desire across many women.

Do not teach daughters that their sexual desire must simply disappear.

Teach both self-government.

Prepare both for marriage.

Teach both how to choose well.

Teach both responsibility.

Teach both communication.

Teach both that desire does not create entitlement.

Do not marry children.

Do not push unprepared young people into marriage.

But do not quietly turn “adult” into “around 30” either.

An adult may be 18, 19, 20, 21, 24 or older.

Some will be ready for marriage.

Some will not.

Readiness should be examined, not assumed from a fashionable age number.

And when two mature consenting adults genuinely choose each other, understand the commitment, are compatible and are prepared to build a life together, stop treating marriage as something that must be postponed until after years of sexual experimentation.

Let them marry.

Let them desire each other.

Let them enjoy each other.

Let them become experienced together.

Let them become wise together.

Let them become fluent in each other.

Three birds with one marriage.

Now whose daughter has to be your son’s training ground?

He has a wife.

And she does not have to spend her young adulthood being told to suppress the very sexual desire that civilization encouraged her future husband to scatter everywhere else.

She has a husband.

They can learn together.