Sex is awesome – or so I’ve been told.

I’m a 19-year-old college freshman who’s never had sex. Crazy, right?

I choose not to have sex because I’m not married.

Now, before you write me off as a celibate fanatic or an unappealing Steve Carell type-character, let me share my heart with you.

I’ve had plenty of opportunities to have sex. High school is full of one night stands if you’re not picky. College is even more so if one flirts right or waits for someone to get wasted enough.

But, for my own reasons I’ve chosen to take the road less traveled. It’s not because I’m religious. It’s not because I have been hurt by too many relationships.

It’s because in my opinion, sex is an incredibly awesome gift.

Seriously, sex is so precious, it’s the greatest tool ever used to shape relationships. It’s the greatest way to communicate physical desire. It’s the greatest way of simply saying, “I’m just that into you.” And it’s the greatest way to lose the best asset we have to offer significant others.

Our culture treats it like fast food.

Whether you agree with me or not, just look around you. Sex is the original ‘In-N-Out’ of this instant gratification generation, animal style and all.

Fast food restaurants each have one thing in common. They provide quick, cheap and arguably tasty food that satisfies our hunger and makes us feel good, for a while.

However, what’s deceptive about fast food is that it does this cool trick where it convinces our stomach that it’s full, when really we’ve been given the bare minimum of nutrients our body craved in the first place.

Within an hour, maybe two, we’re hungry again. So we go back, we eat more, and we grow hungry again, therefore returning for another round until an endless cycle of fast food consumption consumes us instead of us consuming it. It demolishes our health.

Once we do that, it’s hard to back out. The more poison we consume, the harder it becomes to digest real material. It’s like we’re trying to fill a diesel engine with regular gasoline. It just doesn’t work.

When some people are attracted to somebody, they want that instant satisfaction in the relationship, and they think sex is the fastest method of reaching it.

They don’t realize that they need all of that other stuff that comes before sex to nurture something that will last longer than a week, a month, a year or a decade.

You see, I’m not avoiding sex because I don’t want it. I desire it as much as any other testosterone-driven college man.

I avoid sex because I know I’m going to embrace it and run with it. I have a lot of passion and a very addictive personality. I don’t know boundaries, and I can’t recognize extremes.

I don’t avoid Taco Bell because I don’t like their food, I love their food. I avoid Taco Bell because I know that if I consume too much I’m going to feel awful.

Like the pressure placed on our heart when the overabundance of greasy fast food begins to clog our arteries, the pressure placed on our heart by unifying ourselves with another person through sex has the exact same effect.

The more I eat fast food, the less heart I get to live with. The more I have sex with multiple individuals, the less heart I have to give.

The die-hard romantic inside of me desires so much to reserve all that I can for the woman I know I’ll be married to one day. Whether she has done the same for me or not doesn’t matter. I’m holding myself accountable for my own actions, and she is getting everything I can possibly manage to offer her.

Everyone handles sex differently. I’ve made it a currency.

I intend to use sex to foster relational intimacy. I choose to remain abstinent to leave my bank account full.