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iQuestions Faculty, Michael and AMY Smalley 
 
 
Question: We just started dating. We don't want to have sex, but I'm 
concerned that it might just happen. Do you have some advice for us? 
 
Answer: 
 
AMY SMALLEY: So I hear you’re in a new relationship, and you really 
don’t want to have sex until you get married, but you think that it 
might “just happen.” Well, we’re here to tell you, it probably will, 
unless you do some things to help instill that accountability in your 
relationship. 
 
MICHAEL SMALLEY: I think what you have to understand is that you’ve 
got chemicals flowing that say, “Do it!” and if you don’t want to, then 
there are two really critical things you really have to have in your life.  
 
The first one is accountability. You need to have someone in your life 
that says, “You’re not going to have sex before marriage,” and that 
person needs to hold you up weekly, asking, “How are you doing?” You 
know what, I would really recommend having a group of people—
friends of the same sex—that are saying, “We’re committed to this 
course of action.” 
 
The second thing, as much as this will seem extremely obvious: don’t 
be alone for long periods of time with the guy or girl that you’re 
dating. And here’s why, it’s a natural thing,  you’re going to want to 
have sex biologically. So if you give yourselves opportunity, like 
staying up too late, hanging out in the basement too long, going to the 
lake, spending the night together in a hotel somewhere because you’re 
trying to travel from one town to the next, and you think, “Oh, we’ll be 
fine! We’re committed”—you’re not that committed. 
 
 
 
AMY: Sex is truly the best in a marital relationship, because it has that 
commitment that surrounds it. And for Michael and me, one of the 
things we did to help the accountability was that we told my mom, 
“You know what, if we’re up too late and you go to bed before us,” 
because you came to my house . . .  
 
MICHAEL: “Tell us to go to bed.” 
 
AMY: “. . . split us up and put us in different rooms.” That’s one way 
that we overcame that kind of obstacle. 
 
MICHAEL: Another way, and I’ll be bluntly honest, is that we started 
dating and got engaged in September, and we weren’t supposed to get 
married until May. I came to Amy and said, “We ain’t going to make it! 
This is too intense.” So, we even moved our wedding date to 
December. And that was not just because of the sexual tension that 
we were feeling, there were some friend things, but I tell you, that 
was a big part of it, because we were committed, and we wanted to 
set ourselves up to succeed. And that’s what we want to encourage 
you to do: set yourselves up to succeed. 
 
Here’s another big deal. You want to date someone who has the same 
commitment. I promise you, if you’re with somebody who is trying to 
pressure you to have sex, and you’re saying, “No, no. I want to wait,” 
you will not last very long. 
 
AMY: If that is a goal for the two of you, you have to set the 
environment that is going to help you be successful.  
 
 
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