Sex!!!!! Oh the power and intoxication! It can be absolutely electric! It can be a state completely lost in the emotion of unreasoning desire. Urgency, intensity, sexual desire, anxiety, high-risk choices, reckless abandonment of what was once valued and it can overwhelm our good sense, faith, morality and past experience! And when once in the web of romantic passion we are blind to almost everything else; we forget about looking for warning flags, we just steep and drink in the addictive, intoxicating flood of endorphins! Once we are in this state of mind, what chance is there we will truly look deeply into the person's life, past, or faults? We just want more of the life consuming desire.

We often idolize our partner, put them on a pedestal, profess a rapid and deep connection and push for premature commitments. It can feel like the love of a lifetime! In the book Jane Eyre she describes it this way -- "My future husband was becoming my whole world; and, more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, like an eclipse intervenes between man and the sun. I could not, in those days, see God for this man, of whom I had made an idol."

But all too often the romance fades, the charm diminishes, and we are left with a stranger. And we find this stranger is no longer our passionate lover, but all too often, they are controlling, demanding, and want someone to raise babies and be little more than a modern day slave. After a few years we sometimes find out they were abused and are continuing their model with us, or they had an obsessive porn addiction and become our enemy seeking their pleasure alone without us. Sometimes this doesn't raise its ugly head until we have children, and then getting out is infinitely more difficult. We feel trapped.

So waiting to have sex until we have done deep and vigorous detective work is sooo important! Dating is the most important time we have to find out who they truly are, and sadly, many of us give into the love of pleasure and find ourselves repeating mistakes from the past or making tragic new ones.

What can be done? If we are people of faith we can fall into the breast of Christ and seek His guidance for resolution, reclamation, direction and some redeeming conclusion. Whatever our beliefs we need mature guidance and resolve because the solutions are rarely easy. Prevention is far easier than resolution, which is why I wrote the post for those who have faith and those that do not.