Desire for sexual intimacy is specifically a desire for an embodied intimacy. Praying and Bible reading is contemplation. Sexual activity is embodied action. Totally opposite categories.

Reading through all these comments is kind of saddening. Something clearly isn’t working if this many people are struggling over this. It just isn’t natural or just to mandate that every unmarried person act like they’re asexual. It all sounds so reasonable when you’re a teenager and you think that you’ll get married in a couple years. When you’re 30 and still aren’t married then it begins to ring hollow. It’s time for the Church to reassess things.

Thanks, Eric. I think you’re right: purity culture with its disdain for the body has failed the church in every way. It’s definitely time for new understandings of healthy sexuality.

Excellent question. I really wish i had an answer for that one. But unfortunately the women today are a lot different from the past making love very hard to find for so many of us single guys now.

I’m 36, female, never had sex because growing up in the church taught me to think it was a sin

Whatever–Michael Houellebecq The Elementary Particles-Michel Houellebecq Platform–Michel Houellebecq (All of Houellebecq’s books are great but those are the best places to start)

Agree with comment above. Yes, I put my career ahead of my personal life and didn’t have much sexual interest until my late 20s. Now there aren’t any Christian men left, nevermind Christian men who are still virgins, or who would be OK with me wanting to wait until marriage.