Essay

Why Intimacy Waits for the Covenant

You may be wondering, If two people genuinely love each other, are committed to each other, and hope to get married eventually, why does God ask them to wait to have sex? If love is good, why would expressing that love physically be wrong before marriage?

That’s a great question. It becomes easier to understand when you first understand what Heavenly Father designed sexual intimacy to mean.

Sexual intimacy is more than a physical experience between two people who care about each other. God designed it to be part of the complete joining of a husband and wife—their bodies, hearts, lives, future, family, and covenant with each other and with Him. It also carries the sacred power through which His spirit children can receive mortal bodies. That is why God places sexual intimacy within marriage: the physical union belongs with the covenant union it expresses.

Why Did God Connect Sex with Marriage?

The pattern begins at Creation. After God created Adam and Eve, Genesis explains that a man would leave his father and mother, cleave to his wife, and they would become “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Becoming “one” involved far more than physical closeness. Adam and Eve were beginning a shared life as husband and wife, with responsibilities to each other, to God, and eventually to the children who would come through their union.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World places sexual intimacy within that same larger purpose. It teaches that “the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife” and that the means by which mortal life is created are “divinely appointed.”

That helps explain why marriage matters. Sexual intimacy can unite husband and wife, but it also belongs to the power through which a new generation can begin. God therefore connects sexual desire with covenant, fidelity, responsibility, motherhood, fatherhood, and children.

Your Body Is Part of Your Soul

Restored truth adds another important part of the answer.

In a revelation that teaches about resurrection and our eternal destiny, Christ explains that “the spirit and the body are the soul of man” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:15). Your body is not simply something your spirit happens to occupy. Receiving a body is part of why you came to mortality, and what you learn to do with that body is connected to your eternal development.

Paul taught something similar to Church members living in Corinth, where sexual immorality was common. He reminded them that their bodies belonged to Christ because they had been “bought with a price,” and then taught them to “glorify God” in both body and spirit (1 Corinthians 6:18–20). This is because the body and spirit together form the soul, and why sexual intimacy reaches more deeply into us than a merely physical act.

That is part of why God cares about when and how we use this power.

Why Does Love Need a Covenant?

Sexual intimacy is meant to symbolize the complete union of a husband and wife. Marriage joins far more than two bodies. It joins lives, responsibilities, hopes, families, sacrifices, possessions, and futures.

That is why Elder Holland explained:

“You must wait until you can give everything, and you cannot give everything until you are legally and lawfully married.”

He was not teaching that sexual desire is shameful. His point was almost the opposite. Something this powerful deserves to be within marriage. It provides sacred commitment in which husband and wife promise that the physical giving of themselves will be accompanied by the giving of their whole lives.

So when God asks you to wait, He is teaching you something about love itself. Love does not only ask, How strongly do I feel about this person right now? It also learns to ask, What am I prepared to give, promise, protect, and become for this person?

Sadie and Christian’s Experience with Waiting

Sadie Huff and her husband, Christian, have spoken openly about their decision to wait for marriage. In their conversation about dating, boundaries, and waiting, they talk about choosing physical boundaries together, what to do when boundaries become difficult, and how their desire to follow God shaped the way they dated.

Their experience is helpful because waiting was not simply an individual rule Sadie tried to impose on a relationship. They decided together what kind of relationship they wanted to build and then made choices that supported it. Their attraction did not disappear, and boundaries still required effort. Waiting became one way they practiced putting their commitment to God and their future marriage ahead of what they wanted in a particular moment.

Why Can “If We Love Each Other, Why Wait?” Sound So Reasonable?

Part of what makes this question difficult is that there is something true underneath it. Love matters. Attraction matters. Affection, trust, and consent matter. A healthy marriage should include all of them.

The confusion comes when those good things are treated as the only things sexual intimacy requires. Much of the culture around you treats sex primarily as an expression of attraction, affection, personal choice, or compatibility. When that message is repeated often enough, marriage can begin to seem like an arbitrary line God placed around something that already belongs to two people who love each other.

Once you understand God’s purposes, you can see what that view leaves out: the eternal meaning of the body, the possibility of creating life, the union of male and female, covenant, complete fidelity, and the responsibilities that belong to marriage and family.

Satan can work through partial truths because they do not initially sound like rebellion against God. We love each other may be completely sincere. The distortion comes when sincere love is used to conclude that God’s revealed purposes for sexuality no longer matter.

What Research Adds

Research cannot prove revelation, but it can help us notice how some of these principles work in ordinary relationships.

Dean Busby, Jason Carroll, and Brian Willoughby studied 2,035 married individuals around the United States and asked whether couples benefit from becoming sexually involved early or from allowing other parts of the relationship to develop first. They found that waiting before marriage was associated with better marriages, better communication, relationship satisfaction, stability, and sexual quality, even after accounting for factors such as religiosity, relationship length, and education. (Read the study, “Compatibility or Restraint?”)

The study does not mean that waiting automatically creates a perfect marriage. It does suggest that sexual intimacy is not necessary to discover whether a relationship can become strong. Giving friendship, communication, trust, and commitment time to develop can strengthen the foundation on which marital intimacy will later rest.

What If Waiting Has Been Hard—or I Haven’t Waited?

If you have been single for a long time, the commandment can sometimes feel especially difficult. You may be watching friends marry while you continue being asked to govern powerful desires without knowing when marriage will come. Your faithfulness during that uncertainty matters to Heavenly Father.

And if you have already crossed sexual boundaries, you can repent and start new through the cleansing and healing power of Jesus Christ. He taught that the Savior will walk the path of repentance with you.

The law of chastity is not only about protecting something before sin occurs. Because of Jesus Christ, it also includes repentance, forgiveness, healing, and learning to live differently when mistakes have already been made.

A Few Questions Worth Thinking About

• When I think about sex before marriage, who or what has most influenced what I believe makes it appropriate—God, people I trust, entertainment, social media, dating culture, or my own experiences?
• Have I started assuming that strong feelings or sincere love are the same thing as the complete covenant commitment God intends sexual intimacy to express?
• How does knowing that my body and spirit together form my soul change the way I think about physical intimacy?
• If I am dating someone seriously, are our physical choices helping us become more capable of covenant marriage, self-control, sacrifice, and faithfulness?

What Can You Do This Week?

• If you are dating, talk about boundaries before you are in a situation where keeping them becomes difficult. Decide together what will help both of you honor God and protect the kind of marriage you hope to build.
• If you have crossed boundaries and are carrying regret, begin turning toward Christ now. Pray honestly, make whatever changes are needed, and talk with your bishop when priesthood help is appropriate. Repentance is part of God’s plan for your future, not the end of it.

Heavenly Father asks you to wait because He understands sexuality more completely than any culture does. He knows what your body is, what marriage can become, what it means to create life, and how deeply one person can give himself or herself to another. Through Jesus Christ, you can learn to govern these sacred powers rather than be governed by them, repent when needed, and prepare to offer a future husband or wife not simply your affection, but the faithful gift of your whole life within covenant marriage.