Other Harmful Results of Petting Besides Adultery

Though petting often leads to adultery and brings great danger to all who indulge in it, there are other very harmful results. If you, by God's mercy, are not led into the scarlet sin by petting, these other results may cost you much in the future.

First, promiscuous petting and fondling of others now may lose much of the sweetness of marriage later on. Much of the beauty of marriage is that it is new and fresh, enjoyed by two alone. What man, after he has examined the bodies of other girls or women, has fondled them, handled them, hugged them and kissed them, can come to his wife with the same holy awe and reverence and joy as if he had lived pure and clean and had saved his body and his sex interest wholly for her? On the other hand, do you think any man will enjoy the charms of his wife as well if he knows that she has been handled, fondled, caressed and had her passions aroused by the petting of a number of other men? No doubt petting before marriage tends to make marriage insecure. No doubt, many are divorced because there was no sweetness, no holy soul-union in. marriage. The early experiences of married life ought to bind husband and wife together forever in mutual love and respect and delight. They ought to grow to feel that they were each made for the other and for no one else, and that each holds a place in the other's heart and life and experience that no one else ever has held or could hold. If marriage does not mean certain exclusive rights, then why should men and women feel themselves bound by marriage? Petting before marriage certainly sometimes leads to divorce alter marriage.

Second, petting often loses a girl a good chance to marry hap­pily.   Even though men may be tempted and may tempt girls to pet. often men of high ideals are then disgusted with the girls who allow themselves to be pawed over.  Women and girls who have no respect for their own bodies often lose the respect of the men with whom they pet.  From long association with men apd young men   I know, and hundreds of cases prove, that men will some­times go with a girl whom they would not marry and will pet with girls whom they would not marry under any circumstances.  Any sensible man is bound to feel that if the principal attraction a girl has is her body, she would not make a steadfast and desirable wife. And men often feel that a girl who will pet would go further. What man wants to marry the girl that he feels might have com­mitted adultery with any man she allowed to fondle her body? Again, petting leads to many hasty and unhappy marriages. Sometimes after petting has led to adultery, young people who do not really love each other feel forced to marry.   Recently a woman told me how she had hated her husband for many years. They went too far in their petting. Aroused desire led to adultery, and she felt bound to marry him, though after their sin she did not respect him and always blamed him for it.  How many unhappy homes are so caused!   Or petting may lead to such strong sex desire that it is mistaken for love. Many times people seem madly in love.  Yet when the honeymoon is over they find they have al­most nothing in common.  They do not enjoy each other's com­pany.   Sex appeal alone is the poorest basis in the world for a happy marriage. Even the European plan where parents plan the marriages of young people who do not yet love each other, but who learn love after marriage, in the long run proves much hap­pier than marriages based on sex passion only. A mate chosen for good family, beauty of character and personality is much more apt to make a happy home than one chosen for temporary sex appeal. Of course, the ideal way is that people should learn to love each other before marriage, but that this love should be based princi­pally on character, On real admiration and unity of interests and plans and be sanctified by a clear sense of God's leading and bless­ing. When a marriage is based simply on the sex passion which is aroused in petting, then when beauty wanes, or the mate seems to become common, that which bound the marriage together is gone and either party may be attracted to an outsider, as happens in many, many cases, and a broken home results. Marriages which simply follow sex passion are not likely to be happy nor successful marriages.

Besides, there is great bodily harm in the stimulation of petting which arouses sex passion but does not satisfy it. Often inflamma­tion results in both men and women. The constant arousing of desire may result in self-abuse, causing guilty consciences or even nervous breakdowns sometimes. With men there is often a serious loss in semen which depletes the physical strength and sometimes affects the mind. In middle life many men suffer from prostate gland trouble, requiring a serious operation, because of prolonged sex stimulation in youth such as petting brings.

One of the most lamentable results of petting is that sex matters come to absorb the mind, to draw it away from wholesome pleas­ures and work and duties. Ordinary pleasures lose their attraction to people who give themselves to petting. I have known men who developed a state of mind in which every look at a woman was a lustful one, and who all through the day talked of sex matters among their friends. Evil thoughts and a habit of dwelling upon obscene matters may last for years. Many, many Christian men have told me that an improper stirring of sex passions and dwell­ing on sex matters in youth had left them with a recurring of evil thoughts long later which took much praying and often much sorrow to overcome.

Sex, when properly used, is blessed of God and results in happi­ness and health and usefulness for both men and women. But when perverted, and when sex desires are aroused by illegitimate fondling and petting of the opposite sex, great harm may result.