The Goal: Every Moment(.) On Purpose

Josh here. My wife, Lydia, typed out her experience with sex. She wrote it with the intention of sharing with women only in a private Facebook group, but she was willing to share it here, too, since the articles here were already talking about sex. I think this helps show our candidness- how serious we are about being open to (especially) teens. After the song and image is Lydia’s story.

Warm regards,
Josh

Julie Doiron - Tonight is No Night (Lyrics)

I’m going to tell you a little about myself. Please tell us your story if you would like to.

My story has a happy ending, an idyllic beginning, and cloudy middle.

I was always taught that sex was meant for married couples. I learned this from my parents, in church, and through societal expectations.

I took on this moral standard of saving sex for marriage very seriously. I used to think that I would curl up and die of shame if I ever had sex before marriage.

But, at the same time, when I was a teenager, I wanted to have sex. There were times where I didn’t know if I could keep my commitment to purity. I did though. I almost gave in during a shady relationship in high school, but I kept my promise to remain pure for my future husband.

When I started a romantic relationship with Josh, who shared my goal of saving sex for marriage, we set boundaries. We led an upright relationship (not just figuratively but literally-*snicker*). I look back today and really feel like we were blameless.

We both entered into our marriage as virgins. On our wedding day I was nervous about starting our sexual relationship. It was something that I had waited for all my life, and here I was about to experience it.

We didn’t expect sex to be perfect at first, but we did expect it to be rewarding on our honeymoon for all of our waiting.

We never thought that sex would be a point of contention in our marriage. We had such chemistry and love for each other, and knew that sex was supposed to be good!

It ended up being one of the most difficult things to deal with in our marriage.

We had read books before we got married, and I had talked to a doctor about it, and a couple of my girlfriends were so kind to volunteer some advice. All of that helped but didn’t quite prepare me for the experience.

I just wanted our first experience with intercourse to be full of love making and passion. It wasn’t. It didn’t feel magical or special. And that was very disappointing. It felt like experimentation. It didn’t feel full of love for months.

Our first night of marriage was actually a really good memory. We didn’t have sex but spent a romantic and fun night together in bed at our apartment.

On the second night we arrived late at our honeymoon beach house. I wanted to have sex that night but Josh told me on the way there that he was too exhausted from the drive and didn’t want to try it that night. I was a little disappointed but fine with it.

Then in the middle of the night he changed his mind. *smirk* By then, I was too tired. I went along with his advances for a little while because I wanted to satisfy him and I didn’t want to deny him. But that was a mistake because soon he could see that I was not into it, and he was deeply hurt that I had been so unresponsive towards his first try to have sex with me.

We were successful at the act the next morning, but it was not pleasurable to me, and it was nothing special.

From Josh’s first attempts at sex he was kind of turned off to the idea of having sex with me. He was still wounded. He remained that way for about a month. We had sex but not as much as I thought we should have. I couldn’t believe that I wanted to have sex more than he did. It was a horrible feeling to be a woman who couldn’t get her sexual desires met by her husband. I felt lonely.

We talked to each other about what was going on with our sex life. Josh eventually got over his bad experience with sex.

Our next difficulty was that when he wanted to have sex, I wasn’t in the mood. And wen I wanted to have sex he wasn’t in the mood. We were constantly missing each other in this way. It took a while to balance out. But meanwhile it was hard to a have patience with each other. I think I had that hardest time accepting it when he didn’t want to have sex with me.

We were also having other difficulties in our relationship. The first year of marriage was full of pain and disappointment. But At the mark of the the first year we felt accomplished. We had overcome many challenges together and we were feeling all the better for it.

[Josh speaking: I wrote the following few paragraphs to include in Lydia's story:]

Whenever sex didn’t work out, it was deeply hurtful to me- more hurtful than what makes sense. There’s something about sex that’s tied to my heart and my manhood, and when I experienced failure it rattled me to the core. It was traumatic, actually, and therefore each sex experience would affect future sex attempts (bad experiences could induce a downward spiral. Lucky for us, good experiences eventually created an upward spiral). Most of our sex failures had to do with missing each other’s moods.

Lydia had a belief that she needed to try to have sex with me when I wanted it, even if she didn’t. So we’d start making love, but I received mixed signals. She’d make advances, but I could sense something was wrong. Her lack of passion would make me nervous and hesitant, dooming our experience. It definitely would have been better if she had turned me down before we tried- it wouldn’t have created as many negative associations. Not that I’m blaming it on her. I was often withdrawn emotionally (more or less in the first year of marriage, but exceedingly so in the first few months) because of the shock of being married. When Lydia wanted sex, I would be withdrawn and incapable of joining with her at any level. In this way I communicated that I didn’t want her (or that I didn’t think she was beautiful, or whatever), and each of those events also affected future experiences.

So that’s a description of us missing each other’s moods. But my main point is that it was traumatic, and each experience affected the next. Even when everything was going smoothly, the memory of failure could turn up and ruin the moment. It was bleak sometimes, and very lonely.

[End Josh, start Lydia:]

We’ve been married for three and a half years now. We are doing better than ever. It’s been an upward all the way. There are always challenges that we have to face together and there always will be.

We enjoy meaningful and pleasurable sex together now. We are still working on it!

Take what you may from my story, but here is one thing that I will point out to you. At times I have looked back on my life of sexual purity and I have doubted whether or not all that waiting was worth it. Was it worth it to wait for a disappointing night and a relational trial? Then I remember how much my husband and I have bonded through learning about sex together. I’m glad that I saved this experience to share with him. In our situation, waiting until marriage helped us to be in a position where we could trust each other to be committed to work out our problems together.

One of the things that I regret is having so much fear to learn about sex. I wish that it wouldn’t have been an embarrassing thing to talk about with my mother. I wish that I would have talked to more friends about it. I wish that I would have known more about my body before I entered into a sexual relationship with my husband.

Also, I didn’t allow myself to learn about sex and contraception until sometime into my engagement due to my embarrassment of the topic and fear that it would fill me full of lust. I wish that I would have known earlier about sex and contraception.

Please take note: My story is not everyone’s story. There are many versions of the “first sex story”. Some people have it more difficult than I did, and for some people it really wasn’t that difficult.

Posted by Lydia

This article is especially written towards teenagers who are committed to abstinence before marriage.

Growing up in the Christian faith, we’re told to not have sex before marriage. We want to honor that, but there are a lot of physical expressions of affection that aren’t sexual intercourse, but cross the “line” of what is acceptable.

I listened to a radio program in Southern California, when I was in high school, called Love Line. I think it came on every night at 10pm. People would call in with their sexual problems and questions to get practical advice from Dr. Drew and Adam Corolla (sp?). Once, a girl called in, asking if it was possible for her to get pregnant if her boyfriend got his semen on her stomach. Adam, perceiving something deeper than the surface question, proceeded to tell a profound story. I’m going to try to reconstruct it best I can:

Once when I was in high school, I showed up for PE class in my normal clothes. My PE teacher demanded that I go back into the locker room and put my PE clothes on, so I went and put on my PE shorts over my jeans, and my PE shirt over my normal shirt. Both me and my PE teacher knew that wasn’t what he had in mind when he asked me to put on my PE clothes, so I got in trouble, even though I had technically do what he told me to do.

If you need me to connect the stories, here it is: the girl’s mother, or religion, or someone, told her to not have sex. Technically she didn’t have sex, but she missed the point of what her mother or religion told her to [not] do.

I bring this up because the girl had a ridiculous, out of touch understanding of what her religion was asking her to do, and so did I, when I was a teenager. I didn’t have sex. Technically. And so, to use a religious phrase, I was abiding by the letter of the law. Please understand, it is not about abiding by the letter of the law. This is a real and important topic, and worth being honest about.

Try to grasp the whys of not having sex before you come to educated decisions about it. My previous article entitled “Why Wait?” probably won’t help you.

Okay, so, how far is too far? French kissing (kissing with your tongue) is a really good line. I got it from Jack Hayford. It helped me a lot. But this article isn’t really about that line. This article isn’t really about lines at all. I was just tricking you with the title.

The truth is, although my wife and I never french kissed before we got married, there were times, for example, that I touched my nose to her neck, that were more physically intimate than french kissing her. The way it made our skin crawl, the way our breathing was affected, the way the sexual energy between us felt as thick as molasses. If you haven’t experienced this magic then you just have to take my word for it. Take me seriously about it.

I guess I’m trying to say that the issue is more complicated than a set of ascending steps of intimacy. It’s more like a tangled spider web. And you’re a fly. Or something.

And because we don’t realize the complexity of romance before we get started, our previously strong resolutions of not going too far get swept out from under us, and we find ourselves doing things we didn’t intend to do.

There’s one major item that makes it complex, and I didn’t have a clue about it when I was a teenager:

We’re told to “take it slow” in our relationships. But to most of us, that phrase means progressing slowly in our physical affections only. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be so taken with your girlfriend than you’ll want to immediately become close friends, be open emotionally, and express sincere commitment. What I didn’t know was that it is natural for the level of physical affection to closely follow the progress of emotional affection. When you’re sold out emotionally, physical affection will follow suit.

I remember being frustrated when Lydia didn’t open up to me like I did to her when we were dating. She seemed withdrawn, aloof, and slow to trust. Looking back, I see that this was relational maturity. It was purposeful. She realized that her commitment to me had to “take it slow”. Because of her, we didn’t make a single marriage plan before I proposed to her. It was awkward to not talk about future plans with each other, but I’m so grateful that she had the sense to make our relational progress so gradual. This greatly helped our physical relationship, because since there was so much space between us emotionally, there was room for space physically.

Years earlier, when I was in High School, I promised my girlfriend that someday we’d get married. Perhaps I didn’t say, “I promise we’ll get married.” But we talked about the future in such distinct ways that I was responsible for the expectations that she had about getting married. Then, when we broke up, it was greatly damaging. I am slow to dissect the relationship with words, but one of the great problems in our relationship was that I over-committed (not just in words, but with all of me), and it blew up later.

If you’re reading this, then you now have the responsibility to not over-commit. If you’re in High School, don’t talk about the long-term future. If your partner brings it up, tell them straightforwardly that you don’t want to talk about it. There’s just too much life-volatility as a 15-20 year old to make long term plans with someone else. You can date, just don’t get in too far. Sorry if this is bad news for you.

Good luck. May God lead you.

If you’re coming in late, here are some other articles in the series:
Introduction
Why Wait?
The Legitimacy of Celibacy
On Masturbation

Zombies - The Way I Feel Inside (Lyrics)

Celibacy is, in a phrase, staying single. And although our culture (even and especially our church culture) assumes that you will get married, both Jesus and Paul encourage followers of God to remain single. Both of them seem to think it’s a lifestyle of piety, of commitment to God. I encourage you to consider remaining single.

From a very young age, I was exposed to Disney movies. I saw that true love was the pinnacle of any exciting plot. I grew up being romantic. When I was 4 or 5, I woke up early one Sunday morning and put on my best clothes because I intended to get married that day to one of my stuffed animals (a unicorn). It’s also of note that my parents were together. I often find that my acquaintances with divorced parents are generally less marriage-minded than I.

I feel brainwashed. I think I would have behaved differently if I was not exposed to such romantic fairy tales. By the way, there’s a Facebook group called “Disney Movies Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations in Relationships“.

Although I think I’d have gotten married even if I had known the validity of celibacy, I still wish someone would have told me it’s okay to remain single. Now that I’m married, it’s easy for me to see the merit of singleness, since I now experience the limits of being married. There are limits in both lifestyles, and there are open fields in both lifestyles. And don’t forget, the grass is always greener on the other side. You should carefully consider (perhaps with an older person) which lifestyle is appropriate for you. It’s better to choose singleness with the option of [falling in love], than to choose a partner with the option of going single. I heard Charles Lee quote someone else who said, “The grass is always greener where you water it.” I guess that means that if you nurture one lifestyle, then the other won’t look so enticing anymore.

If you’re single and want to be in a relationship, you might feel like right now it’s “hard”. It’s hard because you’re lonely, you want to experience the pleasures of relationship, you want to give your love away, you want someone to love you… but you must trust that it’s equally hard (eventually) to be in a committed relationship. Once you commit to someone, the nurturing that the relationship will require is hard work. You will need to give up a significant part of yourself, your individuality, your freedom, your other relationships, your will, your desires, your independence, in order for the relationship to succeed and bloom the benefits that make relationships worth it. It’s hard. Don’t stubbornly pursue romance without being honest with yourself: half of marriages don’t last, and I’m sure not all marriages that do last are good/satisfying marriages. Why will you find yourself in the successful pool? What makes you different? Don’t say it’s because you’re a Christian - the statistics are equal between Christian and non-Christian couples.

We don’t have very much wisdom/guidance for singleness in our culture. If you do consider staying single, I suggest looking to Catholic or Orthodox sources to help you (after all, I’m married. I can’t practice singleness and then let you know about it). However, here are some benefits that come to mind:

- If you’re single, you can pursue your life work whole-heartedly, with as much time and energy as you like. Where a relationship with your spouse would be a higher priority than work/ministry, singleness cuts that out of the picture and moves your work/ministry a rank higher.

- If you’re single, you can allocate your resources however you’d like, without worrying about “taking care of” and “providing for” a spouse. You can live in your car, for instance, in order to put more money into a project or charity.

- If you’re single, your affection and devotion can be directed toward God. You can spend your nights in bed directing your thoughts toward [him], you can more easily seclude yourself for prayer time, and you can more easily stay in a constant state of prayer.

- If you’re single, you will add an amazing dynamic to the Church. Married people need you, to be encouraged by your devotion to God alone. You will not live in tension with married people, but in harmony- learning from each other. I’m sorry I can’t get more specific here, but see Henry Nouwen’s Clowning in Rome for more on the subject.

Good luck, may God lead you.

The Good Life - Don’t Make Love So Hard

One of the most pointed messages that the American Christian Church is sending you is, “You should wait to have sex until you’re married.” Let’s dissect this message a little.

In Bible days, the cultures represented had their own rules and laws about sex before marriage. Basically, if a woman had sex before marriage (and was caught), she was shamed, her family was shamed, and she became “damaged goods” illegible for normal marriage (or available for a fraction of the previous bride price). If a man had sex before marriage, I think nothing usually happened. If I could use the horrid term, this is the “Biblical” presentation of sex before marriage.

Also, in most ancient cultures (read: in “Bible days”), it was normal for a young man and woman to marry in their mid-teens. In many cultures, as soon as a girl had her first menstrual cycle, she was eligible for marriage. For 99% of human history, people have [gotten married] soon after their bodies were sexually capable. This means that in Bible days, they had less time to have sex before they were married.

Now here we are, as Christian Americans, and we’re generally expected to wait until we’re 18-25ish years old to get married (and of course to have sex). That means we have 5-10 more years that we’re expected to sit and wait to have sex, when our bodies are urging us to have sex.

———————–

Remove the glamor of a wedding day for a moment. Remove flowers, gown, colors, and rings, just for a moment. But leave the priest and the vows. According to Christian tradition, it is sin to have sex in the morning, before the priest ushers you to say “I do”. But afterward, have at it. Suddenly, magically, from God’s point of view, you’re now licensed to have sex.

Does this seem as weird to you as it does to me? What has changed in the relationship between the woman and man? Nothing. They’ve attended a magical ritual that filters the sin from the sex from here forward.

What if you (a young man) and a young woman were the only survivors of a nuclear Armageddon (sweet!), and there was no priest to marry you (after all, you have to continue the human race). What do you do? Would it be a sin to have sex with her?

I intend to make you realize that popular culture (in your American Christian world) is dictating many of your views of what’s wrong and right. Jesus and the biblical authors didn’t have much to say concerning premarital sex- partly because their cultures already dealt with the matter sufficiently, and partly because they thought that there were more important things with which to concern yourself. I’m not saying that God doesn’t care about your relationship. But sometimes the message is sent that premarital sex is the worst thing in the world, and that it would be better to “come home in a pine box than to lose [your] chastity” (via Magpie Girl. She has some great posts about premarital sex. I highly recommend reading).

Anyway, the problem is that our American Christian culture’s mandated way of life is not sufficient. It does not allow us to cope well enough with reality. Our culture has made it the norm to get married late, and it has not developed a functional coping system for not having sex until marriage. It says, “Sex before marriage is the most sinful and shameful thing you can do as a Christian, so don’t do it.” It leads its way through threats and fear. In this way, your bred, ingrained, deep taught, inescapable culture is against you.

I wish I had more explanation than this, but here is some of the problem defined: the church expects you to not be sexual until you’re married at 22 years old. And so for 10 years of your life, you’re fighting against your body’s natural instincts. This fight with your body causes a disharmony (between your psyche and your body) that is not appropriate for living as a healthy member of God’s kingdom and story. This disharmony instead breeds shame and confusion.

————————

So what’s the answer?

Unfortunately our culture has such a thick and stubborn sex-before-marriage outlook that it’s far beyond me to deconstruct it and construct something better. Such a project would need the collaboration of many honest, experienced, and compassionate people. That’s why I invite you to make donations of wisdom and ask refining questions in the comments section.

Here are some suggestions and thoughts from me:

- I’m happy I waited to have sex until Lydia and I were married.

Consider when Jacob married Leah before he married her younger sister, Rachel. He and Leah went into the marriage tent to learn about each others’ bodies and the ins and outs of sex (no pun intended) for a solid week, as was the custom. Jacob learned about his own body as he began to have sex for the first times, as well as learned what a woman’s body was like. But he learned with Leah. They interacted (on some level) about these discoveries. They became attached relationally in profound ways because of this experience. Later, Jacob married Rachel, and they went into the marriage tent for a week. Imagine being Jacob or Rachel during that week. Seriously. Imagine it. Imagine how Jacob knew he and Rachel were not equal, sexually. He was the experienced one, and they both knew it. Imagine how Rachel would have felt like an afterthought, like she was second. Imagine how Rachel would have felt compared to her sister.

It was impossible for Jacob and Rachel to have the same sort of experience that Jacob and Leah had. Jacob and Rachel missed out on an incredible relationship-building learning experience.

This means more to me now that I’m married, and I’ve realized how much there is to learn about sex. I was naive to think sex was straightforward and simple. I had so much to learn, and although much of it was difficult, the learning experience has built an incredible bond between Lydia and I. We’ve come to trust each other like we could never have any other way.

- Find an older person you can trust, and if you want to, talk to them about sexuality. Many older folk are too shy to bring up very much conversation about sex. Please forgive them- their generation, and several generations before them, has forgotten the importance of passing on sex wisdom. They just don’t know better. This is one vast shortcoming of our culture.

- Try to be aware of yourself, especially of your body. God has crafted you carefully, and [he] hasn’t botched your body’s sexual system. Because my Christian culture made me feel so guilty for [being, thinking] sexual, I blocked out the voice of my heart. I built a wall between my heart and myself, and I formed a habit of not listening to my heart. This adversely affects my current love life.

Good luck. May God lead you.

Ratatat - Wildcat

This is the first of a series of posts on the subject of sex and romantic relationships.

There is a big problem with sex in American culture. We have little heritage of sex wisdom handed down from generation to generation. I want to start practicing articulating sex wisdom, so that I can be a source to others, who probably won’t have many other sources of wisdom along their path.

Honest discussion of sex is a taboo subject, in general, in Western Christian culture. This may be because we think discussion of sex will lead to promiscuity, akin to how discussion of food will lead to eating… …?

In any case, I was ill-equipped for sex by the time I had sex for the first time, the day or two after my wedding. On one hand, there’s no amount of information that can replace practice. On the other hand, information helps. My wife shares my experience. Lydia has described it this way: it felt like we were the very first humans, figuring things out for the first time. It’s good to figure things out, but it’s not good when my expectations form a rigid environment (sex was not like I see it in the movies). Some couples have good initial sex experiences, and some don’t.

…not that this series is about how to have sex. It’s about sex, but sex is broad and complex. Sexuality is integral to married relationship, and to every-day living with our bodies. Talking about it is worth the discomfort because having a healthy sexuality is wonderful, satisfying, and important.

I, for one, wish that others (my elders) would have breached the subject of sex (more often, and at all) with me. I know it’s awkward and uncomfortable, and I wouldn’t have responded gracefully, but it would have been worth it. My sex education came to me in Middle School, and it was very scientific in presentation. Otherwise my sex education came to me on magazine covers, movies, and jokes from other boys (who didn’t have the slightest clue about sex, let alone healthy sex(uality). I will not let these sources be the only sex teachers for my children.

This series is consciously and unconsciously directed toward an audience of American Christian teenagers, although I think there will be tidbits for everyone who will have a read. This decision is a little silly, since most of my readers are older than teenagers (the truth is that I’m volunteering with high schoolers and we’re on the topic of sex. I want to practice articulating some things here). Also, I’m a male, and I’ll be writing this with only editorial help from Lydia. That means this comes from a male perspective. If you’re a female, by all means read this, but also consider joining Lydia’s Facebook group The Red Tent (link coming soon), which is a female-only discussion environment about sex.

As for discussion here, I humbly request that you be more vocal than you would normally be. Even if you have a passing comment or question, please post it in the comments. This is because I’m trying to collect sex wisdom, for the benefit of future generations. However, you may post anonymously. You must enter an email address (which never is made public), and if you don’t want me to know who you are, enter your email address as anon@anon.com. After I allow the first comment from that email address, all others will automatically be posted. Thanks.

There is so much information to cover… I don’t intend to cover everything, or be able to. And watch out: some of my posts will have discernible endings and main points, while others will leave you in the middle of nowhere. Welcome to love.

As if I’m an expert…

Marcy Playground - Sex And Candy