Tag Archives: sex

Challenge, Children, Encouragement, Issues of the Day, Marriage, Men, Parents, Pornography, Training, Women

Dear Parents (An Open Letter to Parents of Young Children)

                                                         

Dear parents, I recently wrote a booklet about the inordinately high use of pornography within our culture. It was a summarization of a lengthy, thorough and statistically backed (all noted with resources) online article that I wrote. You can access the first of this two part article here.

Part of what provoked the booklet and the article was the story of a friend of mine. He first encountered pornography at age 7. By age 12 he was acting out what he saw in the magazines with female friends in his tree fort. 

It’s startling, but for most boys’ pornography exposure occurs around age 11. By age 17 they are the highest users of porn – 85%. Unfortunately, in recent years young girls are also increasingly using porn. In that same age group, nearly 57% of young girls are viewing pornography. While boys are visual, girls are turning to porn so they can learn what boys desire of them sexually. Pornography is a 12-billion dollar industry in the United Staes. Eleven thousands “adult” films are produced per year. That is twenty times the number of regular media films produced in Hollywood!

Children cannot process what they are seeing and reading. They do not understand the real gift of sexuality and so they are being inundated with false images of something that is not real and not connected to any sense of love, commitment or marriage. Pornography is a counterfeit, a fake, a lie. Its images are addictive and the more one feeds themselves porn, the more they desire. 

When I was a counselor, it was not abnormal for me to see clients whose brothers or father abused them sexually when they were young girls. Pornography was typically a part of that abuse. 

I once worked with a private school where a teacher was touching his students inappropriately. I frequently heard clients’ first sexual encounter was with their cousins in sexual exploratory games. Just last week, one of the leaders I oversee asked me for help. A close friend of his just found out that his fourteen-year-old son has been molesting his younger female cousins for several years.  I had a pastor’s daughter in my counseling care who was date raped on her college campus. I have dealt with multiple leadership failures in which there was adultery. And I am presently serving on a team that is helping to provide care and input to an organization in which the leader was sexually abusing woman for over 40 years. I would guess that in most cases pornography was a part of each of these horrific stories. 

So, I am asking you to be vigilant and protective of your children. Do not leave them with persons who could be unsafe. Do not openly and without caution trust any adult in their life, even their teachers. Do not give them free rein with cousins and friends without warning them of the possibility of abuse, pornography and childhood sexual exploration. 

Sadly, you must even be aware of library books these days. Material that is X-rated, explicit, that promotes unhealthy same sex, opposite sex and deviant relationships is finding its way into our public libraries, public grade schools, middle schools and high schools today. This is an evil, grooming tactic to expose our innocent children to explicit material and to sexual acts which they are not mature enough to engage in or are even capable of understanding. 

Protect your children by telling them and reminding them often of the “bathing suit” rule. No one touches them, asks to see or exposes oneself in these private areas. They will understand that language and you will be equipping them with a vital and useful tool.

Do your best to help your children stay pure and innocent. Today’s phone technology provides easy and immediate access to soft and hardcore pornography. With the push of a few buttons, they can have access to unspeakable images. It’s almost unimaginable, but there are over 400 million pages of pornographic material available on over four million websites. Having a phone without data access is a help as are software programs like Covenant Eyes which allows you to see every website they access.  

In today’s highly sexualized culture, it is possible to help maintain your child’s innocence and not have them exposed to explicit sexual material. They will trust your caution. Remember, sex in and of itself is not a dirty word or act. Within the right context of marriage, it is a wonderful gift from God and your children need to have full knowledge of God’s goodness found within this gift. 

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Challenge, Encouragement, Issues of the Day, Marriage, Men, Parents, Postmarital, Training, Women

The Surprising Changes in the Beliefs and Boundaries of Marriage Today (Part 1)

In my many years of studying, researching, writing, interviewing and counseling in the pre- and postmarital realm, I had little hope I would see secular research come to agree with so many of my findings and beliefs. But the proof just keeps showing up in article after article.

My belief, without waver, is that premarital experiences directly relate to our marriages and that pre-marriage sexual experiences harm the marital experiences of life as a married couple. In the recent past the typical sequence to marriage went something like this: dating, sex, cohabitation, maybe children and then marriage.

Sex and cohabitation before marriage

Psychologist Galena Rhoades PhD and Scott Stanley in an online article titled Before “I Do,” What Do Premarital Experiences Have to Do with Marital Quality Among Today’s Young Adults, now questions this contemporary view of how family life begins in our society. She believes that every serious relationship has certain milestones, like the first kiss to actually coming to a definition of where the relationship is going. She unequivocally states that about 90% of couples are sexual before marriage according to one study (Diner, 2007). She also states that most couples live together before marriage (Copen, Daniels, and Mosher, 2013).

But then she writes this, “Many of them have sex with multiple partners before finding the person they will eventually marry. Do premarital sexual relationships relate to later marital quality? Yes and no. It depends on who you are having sex with. Men and women who only slept with their (future) spouse prior to marriage reported higher marital quality than those who had other sexual partners as well. This doesn’t mean that sex before marriage will doom a marriage, but sex with many different partners may be risky if you’re looking for a high-quality marriage.” 

Dr. Rhoades makes this eye-opening conclusion, “We generally think that having more experience is better [in life] but what we find for relationships is just the opposite.”

Multiple experiences with multiple partners sexually is now actually linked to marriages that are worse off and that having a long history with cohabitating may actually cause you to devalue your spouse. 

Marrying young

Brad Wilcox, a director of the National Marriage Project and Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia wrote an article on how marrying young (by young I mean early 20’s) and without cohabitating “seems merited.” He wrote, “Our analyses indicate that religious men and women who married in their twenties without cohabitating first–have the lowest odds of divorce in America today.” Read that last sentence again, please.

What is it that the author of this study suspected as to why the success rate? “We suspect one advantage the religious singles in their twenties have over the secular peers is that they are more likely to have access to a pool of men and women who are ready to tie the knot and share their vision of a family-focused life.”

It has been believed and practiced for decades that a college education with a lot of dating, partying, fun, one-night stands and living together and then finally career all came first before settling down with a commitment to marriage. The statistic of living together (70%) before marriage is scary high. But Professor Wilcox wrote this, “But the conventional wisdom here is wrong: Americans who cohabit before marriage are less likely to be happily married and more likely to break up.” In fact, he says that couples who do cohabitate have a 15% more likely chance of divorce than those who do not.

Milestones in dating and pre-marriage days in a couple’s life means something because decisions mean something. We can remember when our spouse first spoke the words, “I love you.” We can recall where we were when we became engaged. We either loved or endured premarital counseling, but it was another milestone, a decision we made for us and our success in marriage. 

Fifty years of marriage 

Over 50 years ago my wife and I abstained sexually out of total love, commitment and respect for one another–keeping for marriage what belongs only to marriage. We did not cohabitate because we knew this one act reduces the chances of a healthy lifelong marriage. We had a large wedding because we wanted others to celebrate with us, hold us accountable and enter into our joy of oneness. We went on a two-week honeymoon dropping out of life as we knew it to simply work on becoming one. We did not know one another intimately (sexually) prior to marriage, but we discovered the joy of purity meeting purity night after night.

It was not a college education, financial security, sexual experiences or age that helped to create these milestones, it was love for God and a desire to obey His truth. We were married in our early twenties and we continue to celebrate milestones in our marriage. We are celebrating the milestone of half a century of marriage throughout this year and we are thankful for a godly foundation.

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Challenge, Issues of the Day, Marriage, Men, Parents, Pornography, Postmarital, Premarital, Singles, Training, Women

The Five-Step Conditioning Process of Pornography

The stats are frightening as pornography use creeps down to eleven-year-old kids. Eighty five percent of teenage young men are viewing porn at an alarming rate. There are over 400 million pornographic pages available on over four million websites. Pornography use is said to increase marital infidelity by 300%! And those are only a few of the statistics available today exposing this horrific cancer in our society. 

How does it grow from curiosity to a full-blown addiction? What is the process that takes place? If we can identify that, we stand somewhat of a chance to avoid an addiction. 

Psychologists tell us there are five steps:

  • Introduction/ exposure – There is some form of exposure to porn, typically by a “friend.” This often takes place during the childhood years. 
  • Habit/compulsion – Those who continually and frequently expose themselves to porn find they have to continually return for more – another high. This begins the chemical process or wash over the brain causing sexual stimulation and the need for more. 
  • Intensification – The previous highs are not enough, so the user looks for more exotic forms of sexual behavior for stimulation. 
  • Desensitization – What is abnormal becomes normal sexually. Nothing is too shocking or aberrant. The concern of hurting others gets lost in the pursuit of the next sexual experience or high. 
  • Acting upon one’s fantasy/imagination – Eventually we will enact upon what we have seen and what we find pleasurable. These behaviors will be required from a spouse, a prostitute, a date or a minor. This often results in rape. 

The escalation of use occurs because we tell ourselves we’re simply being entertained with something that is harmless. After all, God created men, women and sex. But the more porn we feed our brain, the more extreme forms of it are necessary to become aroused. 

Have you ever noticed the number of erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs that are advertised on TV? Do you know why? Pornography. Younger and younger men with a porn addiction cannot function normally due to porn use. The addiction is stealing from them. Real life partners become bad porn. No woman or man can compete with the airbrushed perfect images displayed in pornography.

Pornography is killing marriages today. If you want to undermine or destroy your marriage, pornography use is a good way to do it. It will completely diminish any level of trust that you have built over your years of marriage. Pornography use opens doors that you do not want to open. 

Here’s the truth: pornography is fake! Every page, every site, every movie is fake. All of it is built on lies like, “It’s an innocent distraction; it’s harmless.” Meanwhile, it is literally destroying your life, your marriage and it has the potential to destroy your family. 

Is viewing pornography sin? Yes. We are engaging in sexual immorality and dishonoring God’s design for intimacy within the confines of marriage: one man with one woman. Pornography use will never take us where God ultimately desires to take us in our walk with Him. 

Stay tuned to part two of pornography when we look at some answers to help move away from this sin. 

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Challenge, Encouragement, Issues of the Day, Marriage, Men, Pornography, Women

What Makes Sex Intimate?

Sex is often touted as the most intimate act of marriage. So, what makes it so intimate, especially for those married couples out there? 

Here’s a blog about making sure sex is an act of intimacy with your spouse. 

In order for sex to be intimate, there are a number of ingredients. Let’s list ten of them.

  1. Sex is not saying “I want sex;” it’s saying “I want you.”
  2. For sex to be intimate, pornography must be absent in your relationship. 
  3. Sex is knowing the preferred love-receiving, love-giving desires of my wife or husband. 
  4. Sex held within the boundary of our marriage is saying “I choose you, only you.”
  5. Sex is not “getting my needs met,” but rather meeting my spouse’s needs. 
  6. Sex is not just about a man or a woman’s physical release; it’s more about giving love to one another. 
  7. Sex is a physical, emotional and spiritual connection with your spouse.
  8. Sex is about feeling valued by another expressed through love, honor and respect. 
  9. Sex is never forced on another.
  10. Sex that provokes feelings of displeasure, distatefulness or embarrassment is not intimate.

Sheila came to us and shared that sex for her was her husband meeting his needs and then going to sleep. There is no intimacy and no emotional connection in a situation like that. For years she felt like an object. She preferred her marriage to be sexless vs. what she was enduring. 

It doesn’t have to be that way. Make a commitment to take time to evaluate your sexual intimacy. Listen to one another and hear what the other is feeling about your sex lives. Then make a commitment to change or talk to someone you would respect in this area. Do not allow one of the most intimate acts of marriage to be stolen from you. 

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Challenge, Encouragement, Healing, Issues of the Day, Men, Parents, Pornography, Women

View It; Just Don’t Do It?

There is not one alcoholic who ever thought their first drink would lead to alcoholism and yet it can.

When did you first view pornography? Was it with friends or were you by yourself? Was it planned or did it happen inadvertently? Did you then desire to look again and again and again?

Viewing pornography repeatedly causes one to lose control. Control of what?

  • Control of our thought life.
  • Control of our eyes.
  • Control of the spirit of lust.
  • Control of the lies one uses to cover up the practice.
  • For some, the loss of financial control. 
  • Control of our sexual lives.

Do you really want to lose control over your life through an addiction? Do you really want to destroy your marriage? Do you want to open the door to porn use for your children? 

When we allow a perversion into our home, we give the evil one freedom to destroy our home. We will be opening the door to ruined relationships and quite possibly a ruined family. 

Confess your need for help to your pastor or a counselor and receive intervention. Pornography is not something God hands you; it is something the devil himself hands you. 

The ongoing viewing of pornography will not take you where God desires you to go. God treasures your heart; He wants to dwell there and remove the trash the enemy has handed you. Pornography viewing is beneath who you are and Whose you are.

Please see a comprehensive article I wrote on pornography here.

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Challenge, Encouragement, Healing, Issues of the Day, Marriage, Men, Postmarital, Women

Intimacy Anorexia

It’s not my term. Author and speaker Dr. Doug Weiss coined the term and states it’s why some people “actively withhold emotional, spiritual, and sexual intimacy” from their partner. He writes that some of those issues can be identified as:

  • Keeping themselves busy with child care, household tasks, technology or work. Too busy for you, but not others.
  • Blaming you [or others] for the loss of intimacy rather than exploring potential patterns in their own behavior.
  • Withholding love, especially in the way you desire to receive it.
  • They stop complementing you.
  • Have little to no interest in sex.
  • Show little interest in connecting on a spiritual level.
  • Avoid talking about their feelings and not connecting on an emotional level.
  • Treat you more like a roommate and not a romantic partner.
  • Have money control issues or desire to control the money.
  • Have anger outbursts, ignore you or give you the silent treatment.

Wiess states it doesn’t take all these issues, maybe just five of them to experience sexual anorexia. He believes many persons who survive some form of sexual abuse will respond in this way to their marriage partners. 

Further, these relationships can be full of frequent criticism, including criticism of things one cannot change. 

Persons who exhibit these types of behaviors have more than likely experienced something traumatic in their growing up years. In their adult world, however, they are attempting to avoid the pain of their misguided view by avoiding intimacy. 

Intimacy requires trust in a relationship. It requires vulnerability. It requires safety and, of course, that all important ingredient: love.

Sexual intimacy within the boundary of marriage brings glory to God.

Sexual intimacy within the boundary of marriage draws marriages closer to God and one another.

Sexual intimacy within the boundary of marriage is always centered on your spouse.

Sexual intimacy within the boundary of marriage promotes deeper love, commitment and pleasure.

If you find yourself battling with any of the above descriptions of intimacy anorexia, please see a counselor who is familiar with the subject.  

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