Saving Yourself for Marriage by Kaylee

Saving Yourself for Marriage by Kaylee - March 2017 Scholarship Essay

I don't generally enjoy giving any sort of speech. However, I think that teenagers, and really everyone, needs to understand the importance of saving yourself for marriage.

Fifty percent of teenage mothers never graduate from high school and while this is inherently important I also want people to understand the psychological implications of having sexual relations with more than one person. For every person that someone does anything sexual with they have an emotional connection. Many people believe that in some cases there is no emotional connection, that the connection is purely physical. However, you have just participated in an experience that is extremely intimate; how could there not be an emotional connection?

Picture yourself at an airport or bus station. Imagine each suitcase, large or small, overnight bag, purse, backpack and even a small clutch represents time and sexual relations spent with someone. As you walk through this room of life a bag is placed in your hand filled with your memories and emotional attachments of your previous relationship. This bag may be as small as a clutch or as big as a large suitcase depending on the amount of time that was spent with this person. These bags never leave you, they are brought into every new relationship. This analogy applies to any sexual relation you have ever had or will ever have. Even if you had only known someone for a night you still have baggage.

How is your baggage fair to the person you are in a relationship with? Even subconsciously it is human nature to judge someone. We do so even to someone we have never talked to before. Being in a sexual relationship is an opening for comparison. The man or woman doesn’t need you to be comparing them to past lovers. A new relationship is difficult as it is without the extra baggage being brought into said relationship.

In high school you hear about abstinence many times in health class and it’s lost on teenagers. Who cares what the teachers think, they’re old. But I’m telling you as someone that is your age, saving yourself for marriage is going to be worth it.