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PROVO — Research indicating people who practice abstinence struggle with intimacy after marriage has led a professor to launch a workshop to counsel couples.

Jeremy Boden, a full-time faculty member of family studies at Utah Valley University, authored a preliminary study that found 56 percent of individuals did not talk about their marriage night before it happened. The study surveyed more than 1,000 married people who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about their sexual lives, Boden said.

Four keys that can help couples transition from sexual abstinence to intimacy emerged from the data, according to the "No to Go" workshop website. Boden and two other UVU faculty members will present those keys during the workshop, which was created for couples who are preparing to be married, engaged, or were married within the past three years.

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Struggles from abstinence to intimacy after marriage common, study says A pilot study about making the transition from abstinence to sexual intimacy after marriage says 56 percent of individuals did not talk about the marriage night beforehand.

“People (in the study) talked about that they just didn’t have enough sexual knowledge going into the relationship. They didn’t know what they were doing. They had this inadequate knowledge,” Boden said. “One person said, it was like two blind people discussing a painting. They didn’t have any knowledge to pull from.”

The four key areas that need to be addressed to ensure a successful transition are "Healthy Sexual Scripts and Beliefs," "Sexual Knowledge," "Emotional Safety" and "Sexual Communication," according to researchers. They said those who attend the workshop will learn how to talk about these topics in an atmosphere that is conducive to an LDS audience.

The workshop will be on May 30 at the Provo City Library. Couples can register online.

“Especially for people who have never had sex before, sex is one of the most vulnerable experiences that we’ll have in our life. … And 56 percent of the (study) sample didn’t talk about it,” Boden said.

“The real key is: does this create a trajectory of, perhaps, dysfunction? We don’t know yet. But we say it might because we’re seeing some of the results. People talk about, ‘our first experience wasn’t that great and it’s really hurt our sexual relationship and our marital relationship. I wish we would have talked about it more. I wish we would have had these conversations.’ ”

Contributing: Celeste Tholen Rosenlof

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