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AnonymousI have run across these blog posts lately and they have been instrumental in my healing process about sex. Until recently, I didn’t even know that I was living so sexually repressed, I didn’t even have the ability to enjoy sex like I should with my husband.
I have also recently admitted that I am bi-sexual. Still not sure what to do with this one, but there have been hours and hours of conversations with my amazing husband and some therapy sessions to help me sort all this spiritual abuse and the issues that have come from it.
If you had to endure the “True Love Waits” theology growing up in church and the “you are a dirty whore if you have sex before marriage” crap like I did, you might find these links helpful as well. And read the comments, that’s where I realized I wasn’t alone anymore and found so much healing for my soul. <3
http://www.elizabethesther.com/2013/01/virginity-new-improved.html
http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/christians-idolize-virginity
http://deeperstory.com/i-am-damaged-goods/
My first wife and I were both brought up with these ideas… We were both very sexually repressed… And I think this was very instrumental to the downfall of our marriage…
But that is a very long and different story altogether… =)
In my experience… I have found this is an area where the church really has done a terrible amount of damage… Sexuality is both a large and a integral part of who we are as a person… And what much of the church is peddling is just as harmful, in my opinion, as the lack of any morals or restraint…
I think the first step is to stop treating the concept of sex or all things sexual as taboo… We are human… We are supposed to have sex… It is what humans do… Just like the rest of the animal kingdom… lol I was just thinking… how come we are the only creatures on this planet that need counseling for issues of sexuality… Maybe we were just supposed to do what comes naturally… And our ancestors had it down for millions of years… lol…
We are at our base a species that tends to choose a mate for life… and both the male and female of the species helps to provide and care for the offspring… But we are not all wired exactly the same as it is in many other species… Hence there are totally normal variations to these patterns… Things make so much more sense to me when viewed through logic and science…But that is another topic all together.
Thanx for sharing!! I will check out the links.
It seems like the blogging world has been exploding with this subject lately. There is a lot of great stuff out there. Here’s a post by Slacktivist (Fred Clark) with a bunch of links: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/02/07/the-revolution-will-be-blogged-evangelical-women-challenging-purity-culture/. And there are more forthcoming!
The contemporary purity movement started after I was already married (including the “courting” phenomenon). But I remember getting the precursor to it. I grew up non-religious, but joined a church at age 14. By the time I’d been at that church for a few months, I knew two things: I was supposed to wait until marriage, but I was also going to lie to my mother about how I was supposed to wait. I knew she would think it was sort of ridiculous. So I told her we just weren’t supposed to have sex until college. I eventually told her I was going to wait until I was married, and I recall telling my youth leaders that she had been disappointed in me for becoming too religious. Of course I got props at church for my vow to be a properly virginal bride.
Let me tell you, it took 10 years of marriage before I could let go of the guilt that my husband and I had fooled around before we tied the knot–and we hadn’t even had intercourse. I remember my husband telling me that he would not want to marry a woman who wasn’t a virgin, and I think that all of that guilt combined with the fact that sex was not magically awesome just because we waited factored into my own inability to enjoy sex.
We got married far too young, mostly for the sake of “hold it in til marriage.” We were damn lucky that we already truly did love and trust each other and that we ended up growing in the same direction. I plan to advise my own kids very differently on the subject and pray that they don’t get sucked into believing the stuff I did. Unfortunately, as much as I love my husband, he doesn’t agree with me and still says he would be “disappointed” if our kids didn’t wait. It’s one of the few things that I just can’t make him budge on, so I told him he should probably leave the sex talks up to me. Frankly, I don’t think it’s any of his business whatsoever if our kids wait or don’t wait. Good thing they’re not obligated to tell him. (And I really don’t mean to bash my husband, but this is a really sore point for us and we haven’t been able to resolve it.)
Great topic. “True love waits” can result in unhappy couples with unfulfilled sexual desires, resulting from a lack of knowledge on how to communicate sexual needs to your partner. And it’s yet another tool in the arsenal of control used by patriarchal groups to repress and demonize women. Those evil vaginas and clitorises must be kept in check, lest they upset the God-established order of things!
Fortunately, I married a minister who had explored her sexuality before we got together. As a sexually repressed Catholic boy, I had a lot of make-up work to do that didn’t involve masturbation (which I was quite proficient in by the time we met). But I never really bought into the whole purity business, especially when it was being taught by supposedly sexually inactive priests and nuns, so the guilt factor didn’t really take hold.
Yes, it’s absolutely important to communicate that intercourse is powerful and unplanned pregnancies can result if you don’t take precautions. But it’s much more important from a mental and physical well-being standpoint to fully understand the functioning of our bodies, to discover what you like and don’t like from a sexual pleasure standpoint, and to learn how to share that intimacy with the partner of your choice, rather than be consumed with fear of sexual knowledge.
BTW @Amy, the period at the end of your link munged the url. Oh, and nice link to a blog that links to your blog! :p
We attended a church very big into the whole “True Love Waits” nonsense while our daughter was growing up. She made the pledge. We were very proud. sigh
I will never forget the night she came to us hysterical because she had been having sex with a boy for about a week with no protection (the far too often result of such teaching) and felt like she was a piece of trash no longer acceptable to us or to God. We embraced her and told her we loved her no matter what, but she still has not managed to get past the emotional scars of this horrible teaching. The feeling that she needs to prove her super spirituality to this day has turned her into one of the worst Pharisees we have ever known. In fact we are estranged from her because she judges us so harshly. (We are not even allowed contact with our only 2 grandchildren though they live a mere 10 blocks away) I am not suggesting that this one teaching caused all this. But I am suggesting that it is a part of the religious culture that destroys so many people and breaks relationships.
What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back and shield her from the damage that institution has inflicted upon her.
AnonymousI have found that the magic word for magic sex is TRUST. For me, that also includes love and being heard and seen and respected and understood. It has nothing to do with religion or even marriage. So yeah, trust. And lube. Trust and lube. That’s the ticket.
Anonymous@thejadedfool — Thanks for sharing your story. I can agree now (finally, after being married 2x for a sum total of 22 years) that science and logic need to rule the day on this subject.
@Amy – thanks for the link, I will take a look. I am so sorry the disagreement exists with your husband. My husband and I have had these discussions as well. I am the one who is scared to think differently with my kids. I know I have to, but it’s hard to break from all those chains and want to protect your kids. Its such a tug of war for me internally.
@Vinny – a married minister who explored sex? They exist??? You are a lucky man my friend!
@Gary – I really feel for you. I know it must be so painful to not see your grandbabies.
I only wish I could hear from my parents & old church your words of acceptance and love you have for your daughter. I was also a great pharisee-there is hope that we can change. <3@Rosyaire – YES, Trust and more trust and more trust and lots of lube. lol
Thanks Kim. Yes we have shed many tears over the situation. In fact this is the 2nd time she has taken this stance of using our grandkids as a weapon against us. We sort of reconciled once (though with no apology or remorse from her of any kind, we simply chose to love them anyway) but it didn’t last. They told us they had problems with us based on “many biblical principles” and that we did not know how to “show Christlike love”. Not that we need to justify ourselves against such a baseless attack but, for the sake of context, our closest friends and family repeatedly tell us we are the most loving and giving people they have ever known. But…we no longer believe the bible to be inerrant nor do we take our cues on morality from the church. Love is our only guide and we believe what is done with a pure heart is ok with God. This is one of the reasons why the TLW teaching is so damaging. The focus is on keeping rules regardless of the heart or context. For my daughter (and her husband) that has resulted in rule keeping over love, (or even common decency). Yes we still grieve often. And though it is our daughter who has acted out so hurtfully against us, our anger is just as much (perhaps more) directed at the institution which so corrupts her thinking.
This topic caught my eye because its a Radiohead song xD
*ahem* but yes.. This topic as Amy already said has definitely been springing up a lot recently, particularly on this forum, and its about time too. The whole chastity concept of the church is just so hopelessly out-dated and flawed. I always wonder what exactly the church are basing these ludicrous ideas on… It seems to me to be a hang-over from Roman Catholicism, the obsession with the virginity of Mary and the expectation put on Catholic women to emulate her. From this tiny detail, the purity of a female was seen as a holy order from God but that is, from what I have observed, how a lot of the most flawed concepts of the church are created, minor details taken out of context, sometimes such details are just lost in a chasm of traditions and no one really knows why they are doing it anymore!
As people have already pointed out, sexuality is very much a natural human area, sex is a natural instinct for us, perhaps even a God-given instinct. For the church to repress this is very damaging to any human being (if they are not asexual) I’d imagine.
Thanks for the links Kim. As I’ve slowly moved away from my religious upbringing I’ve become less and less satisfied the standard church version of sexual ethics (?, not sure that’s the word I’m looking for). In my experience the message was pretty short, NO! Until married then screw like rabbits *cough, mumble, so the husband won’t be tempted to stray, oh and to have lots of babies to raise to be little christians to take over the world for God, cough*. Talk about whiplash. And lack of nuance. And usually featuring a side helping of guilt, shame, blame. Plus, any problems are the women’s fault. And that’s just the beginning. Pretty impressive actually how much harm the church has managed to package into it’s stance on sex. I not sure what the healthier alternative would look like, working on that, but I’m very sure its not going to be found in or approved by the typical evangelical/fundy/conservative church anytime soon. In fact the only people I’ve found having a sustained conversation about what healthy sexuality would look like are decidedly in the non-church category, often the proverbial evangelical church boogyman trifecta-atheist, feminist, LGBQT.
Boogeyman trifecta. I LOVE IT.
Kim…we could talk about this for hours. Let’s! Over coffee or margaritas
my 2 cents now is that I think that sexuality is a spectrum. We all fall on the spectrum at various places.
as someone who took the pledge and then broke it, it did me no favors. What I have told C is that it would be great if you CHOSE to wait, but if (when) you don’t, you must be educated and informed and make healthy choices for your body. I would be grieved if she ended up pregnant from a douchebag becausè I did not give her all the information. I also would weep if I saw her marry young because I had burdened her with shame or the marry or bUrn bit.
xoxo
Rosieaire – oh yeah!
Sad that sex has become such a taboo subject when it shouldn’t be.
1) I have a friend who raised her daughter to wait till marriage. Now, she (the mother) has realized that she was wrong because she waited and is in a marriage where she and her husband are totally opposite on beliefs and desires sexually. Now she is wanting her daughter to NOT wait till marriage because she knows it is a disastrous decision. She wants her daughter to know she needs to explore BEFORE she marries a man. But her daughter won’t even talk to her about it and thinks her Mom is crazy. The daughter is 25 and waiting……….
2) Another friends daughter was married to a pastor who suddenly decided he wasn’t a christian and wanted nothing to do with the church, or his wife and three children and one on the way. So she is now divorced with four children and in her late 30’s. AND now she is WAITING for marriage AGAIN!!!
None of this makes sense. Church sure has screwed up a lot of people, in more ways than one… or not….
It is sad Ang. And I have come to believe through extensive scriptural studies of this issue that the typical church ethic concerning sexuality is not biblical in the least.
AnonymousGary, if you ever want to share what you have studied, I would be very interested in hearing it.
Pam, we have told Jade roughly the same thing– at least what we think is appropriate for a 12 year old. There will be a lot more conversations in the future. The biggest thing I want my kids to know is that they can come talk to us about ANYTHING and not feel ashamed for thinking or feeling any certain way. More than abstinence, I want them to talk to us so we can help guide and offer advice. But ultimately it is their life to live and we have told the older ones that.
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