Read Part 1: Let’s Talk About Sex: Beginning the Conversation Anew
ex is super awesome! It is like the most awesome thing in the world. I know that most of you begin thinking about it from a very early age, which is completely natural, and there are a lot of resources out there that show you about all kinds of sex. You hear about it from fellow boys before you hear about it in the classroom. You see your female classmates blossoming as your grow older and, as your curiosity grows, most of you will find porn. You may discover magazines or movies or online porn with your friends as a “joke” or by yourself one night alone in your room. You realize that THIS is what sex is like. This is what the boys were talking about on the playground and in the locker room. This is what your parents and teachers told you about in cold, awkward, clinical terms. Oh, but this is so much better than you could have pictured in your own naive mind! You might only see it once or you might grow to partake in the world of porn every day. For this letter, I am going to assume that you have used porn occasionally, but not to the amount where it becomes obsessive. You only use it when you “need it”. This habit has continued on for many years — through your dating, possibly even your subsequent engagement and marriage. You were told in church that “porn is wrong”, but it was no more than a verbal slap on the wrist and a wink while the men around you looked the other way, as they themselves had gone through what you were going through.
I would like to take this moment to apologize as a member of both the church and the female sex as a whole. We have done a horrible job educating you about sex. We have left it up to your peers and the porn industry to do what we could not. There are so many things that you need to know before you continue on with your lives and, while I am not equipped to tell everything, I do hope I can give you some wisdom and insight.
I will speak first in my role as a woman. Porn is a lie. I’m sorry, guys, I know you didn’t want to think like that, but it really truly is a huge lie. (So is what most of the boys told you in the locker room) There are few situations in which you will find yourself that one might consider as “perfect conditions for sex”. Women are rarely that bendy or vocal and more than likely will not do half of the things you see in those movies. Most of your initial sexual encounters will be awkward, hesitant, and unsure, whether pre- or post-marital. You may even find yourself in a relationship with a woman who does not crave sex nearly as much as you do. This is relatively typical. We may enjoy sex just as much as you do when the time comes, but it is not constantly on our minds. The best way to approach your significant other in a sexual manner is through mutual exploration. She will not mind-read your porn thoughts and do exactly what you have seen on screen. You can tell her and show her what you would like, but please respect the fact that she has wants and desires of her own. Your relationship’s sexual preferences should be discovered as a couple. Please, men, do not be disappointed when she does not act, sound, or look like the women you have watched in sexual situations. Her body will be imperfect when viewed through that light. Her sexual skills will be lacking and her mannerisms will be less than adequate.
If you continue to view your women through the filter of porn, one of two things will happen. One, you will end each sexual encounter unsatisfied and turn to porn (or potentially other women) even more than you did in the first place, furthering your vicious cycle of high expectations and crashing let-downs. Two, your woman will want to make you happy, so she will extend herself far outside her sexual comfort zone and resent herself or you for making her feel that she needed to do this to keep you happy. Men, I know you are not constantly horny. I realize that is a horrible stereotype that we have placed on you because you think about it more than we do. I know you are intelligent, funny, and a contributing member of society. I know that you genuinely care about the person you are with and want the best for her. I am not joining the league of “man-haters” who believes that you only think with your penis. But this is a problem I have seen time and time again in teenage boys, college males, even middle-aged and elderly men. Sex is on your mind and I’m just trying to help clear the air.
As a member of the collective church, I’m sorry we’ve dropped the ball. We taught you how to pray, how to read your Bible, and how to work with those in need. And sometime in middle- to high- school, IF you are lucky, we mentioned sex. We separated you from the girls in the youth group and gave you a good “talking-to” about sex. We did all the talking about what the scriptures sex about not having sex before marriage and keeping yourselves pure (in both mind and body) and then asked if you guys had any questions. Oh, there might have been a brave soul in the room who raised his hand and asked something. There might have even been little slips of paper for you to write your questions on and hand them in so you could remain anonymous. After that day (or days, if you were really lucky), we were done. We failed to realize that you would probably not be comfortable in a group setting, even “anonymously”. We didn’t say, or didn’t emphasize the fact that you could come talk to us, ANY of us, about sex. Or maybe we did tell you that we would listen and talk to you, but rarely did we have the follow through. We didn’t form good enough bonds to make you feel comfortable talking to us about something so personal.
On behalf of the church, I am sorry.
There is nothing I can do to change what has happened to you. I want to beg of you, men of the churches, please change this. Please pray and be in communication with God as well as our boys. Please form relationships with the youth even if you are not one of those called to “work with the youth”, because you never know when one of them might need to talk to you. Please listen to them openly without interrupting, judging, or “teaching them”. This will be tough, as you have probably already been through what they are currently going through and have come out the other side. Talk to them, though. Listen and discuss their feelings. Teach them about women and how to love them as both sisters in Christ and potential spouses. Lead them not just by your words, but also by your actions and thoughts. I know you’re not perfect, so don’t try to be. This will close you off from the young men who are blatantly imperfect and you will be unable to connect with them. Be yourselves. This horrible epidemic that is spreading through our churches regarding ignoring sex can be stopped if we work at it. These younger men need you, please be there for them.
Males as a whole, thank you for reading. I hope you were of the mindset to read and absorb what I had to say. Even if you already knew all of what I said, I hope it brought a new perspective that helped you see women in a different (read: better) light. If anything, I pray for a renewed dedication to the women around you.
Thank you.
I see, by the lack of comments, that I’m not the only man who’s learned to keep my mouth shut about this around women, especially church women.
When I wrote my first Aramis Black mystery, I mentioned that he kept a New Testament by his computer, to help him keep his thoughts pure. My female editor with a Christian publisher made me take it out because it would make him “unsympathetic for any female reader.” To this day, it torques me that she did that, not only because of the lack of understanding of God’s grace, but because of the lack of honesty for men. I ended up struggling with porn myself after that, frustrated and feeling judged, when I’d been trying to bring it out into the light.
The funny thing is that women react to food much the same way men react to sex. If I come into a room of women watching the Food Channel, their reactions verbally aren’t much different than men to porn. But if we, as men, ever bring THAT up, we might as well kiss it all goodbye.
In other words, there isn’t much room for us to be heard, open, or understood in the church (aside from secretive meetings in the basement on Tuesday nights).
Thank you, Adrienne, for at least being a woman willing to address the subject with grace and understanding.
By the way, I have an incredible wife who has been so understanding and honest and open and godly. She is gold!
Eric,
Thank you for not keeping your mouth shut on this topic. It hurts me to hear that your editor had you take the New Testament away from your computer table. I feel like that simple thing, just even stating that it was there, would have been a small victory. The world that we see — television, movies, etc — portrays porn for men in a positive light. Even for younger teen boys, it’s always with a wink and a nod that the father now views his son as “becoming a man”. As if watching strangers in degrading sexual encounters is what makes a boy a man. But I digress. It is the media after all, and short of a few television shows here and there as well as some movies over the years, when do we ever see Christian ideals concerning sex in popular media? When it comes to sex in Christian media, however, I see a dark void. It’s just not discussed. I vote we bring it out of the basement!
It does my heart good to hear, as well, that your wife is open and honest and that you can discuss this with her. I know a lot of men who struggle when it comes to discussing their bad habits (be it porn, drinking, drugs, anything really) with their wives.
Thank you so much for sharing, Eric. It means a lot.
-Adrienne
hi Adrienne.
I’m happily married and here’s something that adds to the mix of our relationship and makes it more interesting. My wife and I both have Asperger’s. The odd thing is that I’m not the one who struggled with porn in the past. She did. That does still affect us today and one message I give to young men especially is to not do this because it WILL affect your sex life when you get married.
Since we’re both Aspies, it can make communication quite interesting. Note also that we all respond to touch differently. I love to be touched. My wife hates it. It can also be difficult to draw each of us out of our own worlds, but I think when we do, it’s really worthwhile. We often pray together at night before we go to bed, provided I don’t have to work my night shift job, and if we do have sex on one of those days, I will always thank God for that when we pray at night. It’s nothing I ever want to take for granted.
Right now, I just don’t want to take sex for granted. It’s just a great gift. I look forward to my fellow male friends getting married some day as well so they can just get to realize how awesome this gift is.
Finally, my wife would like me to mention to you that as I said she struggled with porn, that several women do as well. Pornography is not just a male problem. Women can have that issue too and if we think that all men think about nothing but sex, that is a mistake, but if we say women never think about sex, that is also a problem.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
Hello Nick,
First, I would like to thank you so much for your responses, both here and on the first installment. It takes a lot of courage for both you and your wife to talk about what you said today. Thank you for your courage (and thank her for me as well).
Second, my letters were meant as generalities, covering a lot of the “stereotypical” issues that arise in both men and women as well as in the church as a whole. I do understand that it’s not just men that struggle with porn, as I am a woman who has struggled with a porn addiction as well. However, when I discussed the issue of sex with women around me, porn was not one of the issues I felt needed to be addressed in that section. Thank you, though, for pointing out that porn is not just a man’s struggle. You’re correct in stating that sex is not the only thing on a man’s mind and that women think about it more than we give them credit for.
Thank you again for sharing. Sex is an amazing gift and I am glad that you thank God for it. I don’t think enough of us do that.
-Adrienne