Fear of Rejection

The following young woman wrote to tell me how fear had affected her view of sex:

The basic human emotion involved in my sexual explorations was fear--fear of not knowing something (or anything), fear of missing out on the “fun,” fear of getting old, and fear of commitment. I was afraid--afraid that all the excitement in life was passing by my door, afraid that, should I get married, I would end up getting divorced because I wouldn’t know what I was doing in bed. I surely didn’t want a divorce! And there was a desire to go along with the crowd so I wouldn’t feel left out and strange when the conversation turned to sex.

But most of all, at the gut level, there was a desire for intimacy, a desire for marriage, a desire for commitment, a desire for fulfillment, and a desire to hear the words “I accept you.” But the fears arose. What if none of these needs was met? Frustration set in. In an attempt to find fulfillment and acceptance, “rolling into and out of bed” became a common pattern for me, a balm to cover my fears. Fulfillment took the scope of a few hours instead of what I had imagined—a lifetime.

Those who “give sex” out of fear of rejection are trying to buy security with their bodies and self-esteem, a price God never intended anyone to pay. They need to turn to Christ and to His truth to find where real security lies. They need to begin seeing themselves through God’s eyes.

God Created Needs

God created a number of needs in human beings; one of them being our need for companionship. In fact, one of the first things God said about us was, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18 NIV). A teenager looking for companionship through sex is legitimately lonely. It is a real condition, not something he cooked up in his head. Loneliness was not part of God’s design for us.

When God gives us a need, He also gives a way for that need to be met. To deny the need, mask it, or run away from it is to avoid God’s plan for fulfilling it. Such responses are self-defeating, and can only be unfulfilling. When we admit we are lonely and have a relational need that must be fulfilled, we are on the way to fulfilling it. Our next move must be in the direction of God, though, because a God-given desire can be met only in God’s way.

I Wanted to be Loved

Usually, adolescent sex is a quest for a steady relationship, not sex. Steady relationships can remove aloneness for months. Yet the fear of losing that person and being lonely again prompts one to have sex to keep that person. But what they are really looking for is affection and companionship. After I returned from a speaking tour in England, a student wrote me a letter in which she said, “I just want someone to love me (not physically).” Then she made a statement which I think communicates where most young people are today, not just in our Western culture, but around the world: “I want someone who cares. I want to love and I want to be loved, but I don’t know how to do either.”

Some girls want to have a baby in hopes that their boyfriend will marry them, and then he and the child will take away her loneliness. Even in the case of teenage pregnancies where marriage does not follow, approximately 96 percent of teenage unwed mothers who do not have an abortion end up keeping their children. This is generally done in order to meet their own emotional need for companionship—that is, to have a child to love and to return love to them. Babies should be loved and nurtured, not born with the role of filling the unmet needs of an adolescent mother.

Searching for Companionship and Affection

The search for intimacy is a search for companionship. People are desperate to escape the loneliness that plagues our culture. And adolescents are among the most vulnerable to the pain of loneliness. It’s another reason kids get involved in premarital sex. A sexual encounter is at least a momentary escape from loneliness.

Girls are most vulnerable to loneliness. The following student got an up-close look at loneliness and how her friend tried unsuccessfully to escape it through sex.

I used to think it would be OK to have sex with a steady boyfriend; at least then you would be doing it with someone who really did care about you. I thought that until I lived with my roommate, Liz. Liz dated Chris for two years. They went to high school homecomings and proms together, they drank beer and ate Oreos together, and they made love together in the back of Chris’ car. And afterward, Chris would drive Liz back home. Then Liz found out she was pregnant. Chris said he couldn’t marry her because he had a good football scholarship. So Liz went to a clinic to have an abortion. She went by herself. Once again, she was alone.

True Intimacy

Real intimacy is the result of letting another person see who you are. But if you don’t feel good about yourself and your identity, you will keep yourself hidden and never achieve intimacy. Only a person with a relatively good sense of security and identity can fully enter into the experience of intimacy.

We can never enjoy the full potential richness of a meaningful relationship—for which we were created—without becoming intimate with at least one other person. Again, I am speaking primarily about psychological and spiritual intimacy, which is the result of being open and transparent. It is more a matter of communication and sharing than of any kind of grand passion. When two people confide in each other about their innermost dreams, hopes and thoughts, they are “being intimate.” True intimacy involves being able to remove all the masks and disguises we hide behind, without fear of rejection, and be known and loved for ourselves.

The Fear of Intimacy

Today we see people getting involved in sexual activity, often promiscuous sexual activity, for the simple reason that they don’t understand what true intimacy is. Sexual experience becomes a substitute for intimacy. We use phrases like “making love” and “being intimate” in talking about sexual intercourse. Yet most sexual involvements, outside the loving commitment of marriage, express very little genuine love or closeness.

Not only do many people misunderstand what real intimacy is, but they are afraid of it. Why do people fear intimacy? Because intimacy inevitably brings vulnerability. Emotional sharing requires self-disclosure, and for many of us the idea of opening up our innermost selves is a scary prospect. Many young people repeatedly share their bodies because they are afraid to share themselves. They participate in countless “one-night stands” because they are afraid to be vulnerable. Most teens and adults mistake the ecstasy of an orgasm for the intimacy of love.

Seeking Acceptance

When young people seek acceptance, they will do what other people do in order to be like them. They have to perform, to do the right things, to live up to the standards of those whose acceptance they seek. Some may do it through joining gangs, others by being top athletes and keeping up with the crowd and others by fulfilling the sexual desires of a boyfriend/girlfriend or date.

Suffering from a poor self-image brought about by lack of acceptance of them as unique individuals, teenagers may grab for the first thing that resembles security. Often this means sex. Kids so desperately want love, acceptance and care that they will violate their moral values to get it. And when a young person discovers acceptance brought about by pleasing another person, regardless of how shallow and fickle that acceptance may be, it leads to a cycle of seeking security in performance and trying to impress others.

Searching for Security

Our needs are compounded by the breakdown of the family. God intends for our inner needs to be met by Him first, then by other people. In times past, even without a relationship with God, people could find relative security and significance within the family. They had at least one place where they could be themselves and not have to perform.

But that is not true in most cases today. Rather than being a haven from the world, for many teens the family setting is a place of discord and unrest, a place where spouses are put on a performance basis, knowing they will be discarded if they do not continually please the other. Any element of security the family may have held is removed, since people within the family are not loved for who they are, but rather for how they perform. Kids growing up in that kind of environment lack acceptance and security which leaves them with an unhealthy sense of worthlessness. They don’t feel free to be themselves. They believe that if they were, no one would like them.

People feel vulnerable because of poor self-images: they feel they’re not pretty, too short, too tall or not fully developed. They feel there is something wrong with them if their parents are divorced or because they are adopted. Some adolescents even feel vulnerable because they haven’t had intercourse or because they think it’s wrong to feel sexual. Their security is gone and their firm foundation is gone, because the safe haven of their family has been corrupted with performance-based love.

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

People throughout time have tried to understand love, define it and experience it. If our young people can’t adequately define love, how in the world can they know whether they are in love? They can’t. If they can’t define love, how can they know whether they are being loved? They can’t. If they can’t define love, how can they even know whether they are in a loving relationship? They can’t. The confusion about love weakens a young person’s resolve to wait for sex.

Our society, to a great extent, has stopped passing biblical morality on to its kids. Without clear standards of right and wrong, teenagers are left to find their own standards. Many come up with “love" as the justification for sex. But they don’t know what love is. I took a survey of 4,000 college students at Campus Crusade for Christ conferences, asking them to write their definition of love in two minutes. When I examined all the cards they turned in, I found that only seven of these Christian students were able to give a definition. No wonder so many Christian kids are getting involved sexually in the name of “true love.” They have no idea what they’re getting into.

If You Love Me

The pressure line is: “If you love me, you will have sex with me,” or “If you love me, you’ll prove it.” Sex is never a test of love. The true nature of love is seen in how we treat people (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). The result of this pressure is that the person pressured begins to feel that his or her willingness to take the next step into sexual involvement becomes a test of true affection or love for the other—not trust, respect, caring and sensitivity.

Usually the two discover later that what they thought were feelings of love were only charged up sexual sensations and now they must live with the consequences. The “I love you” of one person can be significantly different for another. Sex is often given in the name of love with the anticipation of marriage and commitment. But for the partner, sex might simply be saying, “You’re someone very special,” with no anticipation whatsoever to marry.

That pressure line, “If you love me, you’ll have sex with me,” should be considered in the light of the following replies by teens:

“OK, prove how much you love me by understanding and respecting my feelings.”
“Love or no love, anyway you slice it, it can result in a baby and that does matter.”
“I love you. But I’d feel better showing you in another way.”

Love and Sex are Confusing

It is no wonder teenagers become confused about love. Teenagers are in the process of maturing, contending with hormone changes and establishing their own identities. And at the same time they are trying to figure out this force called “love” that baffles and defies definition even by adults.

So what they think is love then becomes a justifiable cause for premarital sex, perhaps more so than any other reason. Even Christian teenagers, lacking a solid understanding of love, may be firmly convinced that unmarried people who are “in love” can engage in sex to express their intense emotions. They look at love and sex as being synonymous. Much of this confusion is encouraged by television, videos, movies and peer pressure. It can cause a young adolescent to feel acute pressure to have sex when he feels he loves someone. The confusion is compounded when the other person says “I love you.” The sad conclusion many teens reach is, “If you don’t have sex with me, you don’t really love me.”

Searching for Love

Maybe some kids don’t know much about being in love. But they still reach out for it in ways that bring them heartache. The following story, shared with me by a heartbroken teenager, painfully illustrates this point:

It was near Thanksgiving and I was babysitting. My boyfriend said, “Mind if I come over?” Well, one thing led to another, and in a strange house on an old beat-up sofa, I was no longer a virgin. Virginity gone, innocence gone, the floodgates of immorality were now open. In poured masturbation, promiscuity, marijuana, speed, a couple of acid trips, crabs and a few bouts with gonorrhea. Love and acceptance were all I was looking for. How could the world be so rotten? I hadn’t found love. I’d found casual sex with all kinds of strings attached. Acceptance? No one really cared. They were too worried about getting burned themselves.

All she was looking for was real love, not a cheap imitation with all kinds of consequences

Why Don’t Kids Wait to Have Sex?

One reason kids don’t wait until marriage for sex is that, without knowing the difference, they are trying to meet several different needs with only one solution. Kids don’t realize that they are attempting to meet emotional needs through sexual activity. They don’t realize that they are substituting sex for relational needs—and usually at a high price. Like the rest of us, adolescents are created with the need for love, security, intimacy, companionship, affection, spirituality, etc. When these needs go unmet—as they do occasionally for everyone—some kids turn to sex. They are hoping to fill the void they feel with sex.

Quite often they lack the skills to even recognize the true deficit in their well-being. Without being taught to understand God’s ordained role for sex in a committed marital relationship, they use it as a cheap substitute for a variety of different needs. And they may go from relationship to relationship trying to fill the void, never realizing that the answer can’t be found in someone else.

It’s “Simple”-- Just Listen

Parents need to focus on their kids and listen to them. One of the most powerful ways to build a relationship is to listen. You have to know what is going on in their heads. In some ways it is no different from establishing a friendship. When you listen to someone, you are telling that person that he or she is important to you. As you and your teenager become more important to each other, you will want to spend more time together. When you feel you are reaching this point, begin working on some activities together.

As the relationship and trust are gradually (or sometimes quickly) reestablished, the rebellion will become less of an issue. Your kids don’t have to hurt you now because they like you, and may even love you. They don’t have to rebel against what appears to them as your stupid rules any more because now they know you love them and have their best interest at heart. They don’t have to have sex with someone now just to be rebellious—they trust your judgment more—even if they don’t understand it perfectly.

Sex as a Form of Rebellion

Sex as a form of rebellion signifies faulty relationships within the student’s family. However, concerned parents can take some initial steps to reestablish the relationship. First, there is one basic principle a parent needs to remember: Rules without relationships lead to rebellion. If you are not nurturing a relationship of love, acceptance, and affirmation with your child, he or she will throw your rules back in your face in some form of rebellion!

Second, back off on as many rules as possible, especially grounding. Let the kids know you want to rebuild mutual trust. You are still in charge, but you can’t show your kids you trust them if they have no opportunity to prove themselves trustworthy. You need to exercise caution, however, because a sudden switch from rules can lead to anarchy and could confuse the situation. Relationships that have eroded over the course of years won’t instantly change and kids won’t respond just because you expect them to do so.

Sex is Not the Unforgivable Sin

Along with the necessary information about sex, parents must convey that premarital sex is not the unforgivable sin. Even kids from Christian homes make wrong choices about sex. These kids need to know they can turn to their parents. They need to hear their parents say, “No matter what you’ve done or what you do, we love you and will never turn our backs on you. Nothing you have done wrong is beyond repair. We will help you through any trouble. We are here for you to turn to. Talk to us.”

As the influence of Christianity diminishes in our society and families, the devastating results will continue to show up in our kids. Without direction, they clutch at false securities. Without the solid self-image of a child of God, they grab at anything to make them feel a little better about themselves. Without knowledge of God and His love, they settle for anything that resembles love, even if they are exploited and hurt by it. Without the Word of God taught in the family and the love of God shown in the family, kids are adrift. They have no basis on which to make decisions. They have no security.

Modeling Love

The biblical picture of love is one of giving without expecting anything in return, accepting another person without conditions, and experiencing a security in the relationship that is not dependent on performance. This is a far cry from the shallow and self-centered type on the market today. And it is in the home where this love must be modeled. One of the greatest heritages I can leave for my children is to love their mother—to give my children a model of what it means for a man to love a woman. God intended that children learn this from their mother and father.

For example, when a young man says to one of my daughters, “I love you,” how is she supposed to know what that means? By watching television? By watching a movie or a video? No! God intended for my daughter to know what it means for a man to love her because she has seen me model that love toward her mother. That is the heritage I want to leave my children.

Performance-Based Sex

Children can grow up desiring to love their parents, but still not feel secure in the relationship. Often in order to get the love of their parents, they fall into the “flight syndrome.” That is, they put themselves on a performance basis for their parents’ love, and when they do something they think won’t be pleasing, they cover it up. They run from honesty. They are afraid that their shortcoming will lead to rejection.

This can happen when well-meaning children try to please Mom and Dad, but it has a stifling effect. Open communication is blocked when the children think that honesty will lead to parental disappointment. They may cease trying new things for fear of failure. They may stop taking risks to stretch their horizons. These kids then enter their teenage years equating love and performance. When they say, “If you love me, you’ll have sex with me,” they are only keeping in line with their own distorted definition of performance-based love.

Learning to Love

Since love is learned from role models, the family is the most important influence on how a child perceives love (followed by peers and society in general). When parents are to an appreciable degree acting out the imagery of God, displaying to a perceptible extent the attributes of Christian love, children will grow up learning that love.

Children in such homes grow up learning to be accepted and appreciated, which leads them to a feeling of security and significance. These children, in turn, will respond to that love in obedience to the parents’ authority, and will begin internalizing the principles taught by the parents.

This is why the destruction of the family is so devastating. Children grow up learning from their parents that love means “Get what you can from the other person, and when that person doesn’t perform properly, get out of the relationship.” Such is the feeling of “love” that many kids today are confusing with sex.

Start Talking about Premarital Sex

Kids don’t want to discuss something they feel guilty about, because they don’t want to let their parents down. Nor do they want their parents to add to their guilt. They want their parents to be happy with them, yet the actions that led to the guilt may have resulted in part from a lack of instruction from Mom and Dad. But the objective here is not to find someone to blame. The objective is to bring about understanding, and thereby, change. It’s a change that must overcome the traditional inhibitions most of us in the older generation have about discussing sex.

Kids really want to find the answers they need—at home. What often turns them off is that parents jump to conclusions or over-lecture instead of really listening to what their teens are trying to say or ask. If parents show an interest in their children when they are young, the kids will show an interest in their parents later. Good communication with teenagers and younger children requires a lot of time and thought, but it is the start of a lifelong family relationship. The right time to start talking to your children is now—it’s never too late to start.