Does true love really wait? A recent study done at Northern Kentucky University found that, most of the time, it doesn’t — pledging abstinence from sex until marriage hasn’t been paying off in the way church leaders originally hoped.

The most widely known abstinence commitment program, “True Love Waits,” was first pushed by the Southern Baptist church in 1987 as the church’s response to rising rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

This program boasts more than a million members from all over the world who have all signed a card that states: “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.” This card they are then supposed to carry with them at all times to remind themselves of their promise.

So when researcher Angela Lipsitz reported that six out of 10 students who had pledged sexual abstinence at some point in their lives have already broken their vows, you would think the supporters of programs like “True Love Waits” would have occasion to rethink their stance. However, supporters say the program is worth it because, as Lipsitz found in her survey, sexual activity was delayed by an average of one year among pledge-takers who broke their vows.

While delaying teenage sexual activity is commendable, even necessary for the healthy mental, emotional and physical development of teens, promoters of an abstinence-only agenda cannot and should not see it as “evidence” that their programs produced this result. Many of those who delayed sex may have been predisposed to wait anyway — I know I was.

I remember the first time I heard about “True Love Waits” at church. I was 15 years old, and at first, it seemed like a pretty good idea. But I waited. I have never made promises lightly, and I certainly don’t like to break them. Promises to God, especially, are a huge deal — if I couldn’t commit to doing the supper dishes every night, how could I commit to being sexually pure until marriage? God is much bigger than my mother. Soon, it turned into a trend. It seemed like all my friends were signing cards and showing them off; everyone was talking it up like it was the most important thing on Earth. I thought, “Why shouldn’t I, I’m going to wait until I’m married to have sex anyway, too, right?”

Thankfully, I had enough sense then to see that it was mainly girls who were being pressured to keep their virginity. I know that some boys signed the cards at the time, but it was to keep their parents off their backs. They had no intention of keeping that commitment, but the physical act of signing was enough to placate their parents and elate church leaders.

A study done in 2001 about abstinence pledges found that once 30 percent or more of students in a school pledged, pledgers were no more likely to delay sex than non-pledgers. Peer pressure can compel you to make promises you don’t intend to keep in order to fit in. I can support that claim, because despite the “seriousness” with which the girls I knew treated their commitment to abstinence until marriage at the time, very few have kept it. My Christian friends were hesitant about sexual activity to begin with, so signing that pledge really didn’t help them. My friends who weren’t religious sort of just forgot about it.

I never signed that card, and I don’t regret it one bit. I have always believed that sex is a very personal act to be shared between two people who love one another — my beliefs led me to remain abstinent throughout high school because I knew that I didn’t really know what love was, and I shouldn’t have sex because of that. Sex was worth waiting for, because when I decided to do it, I knew I was mentally and emotionally ready for it, and that I loved the person I shared it with.

If I were to have made a pledge to abstinence, I would have felt guilty had I broken it. The church may desire to instill that sort of guilt about sex outside of marriage, but it ends up reaching out to all sorts of sexual guilt that I don’t agree with. Sex is a beautiful thing, but people are living their entire lives feeling that talking about sex is taboo — that it’s dirty, which it certainly isn’t. Sex is only dirty when you exploit it and don’t treat it like the wonderful, special act it is.

If churches want to protect their youth from being corrupted early on by sex, they should promote a more open discussion of it between leaders, parents and teens — it’s the only way they will be able to truly say they’ve had an effect on teens. Getting them to sign a card is essentially meaningless.