The issue of sex was brought up to me over the weekend, mainly curious as to what I think of it because I am conservative. My answer: I am in favor of it. Was that what you expected me to say? Well of course, I'll need to clarify my answer. :-D
Sex is awesome/wonderful/rattle your teeth/blow your mind/ delightful - but even better in the proper context. Ah, of course, you knew there'd be a "catch", right? And that catch, of course, is the answer to the question, "what, to you, is 'proper context' ?" Should my answer surprise you? Proper context is sex within marriage.
Yes, I know some of you say that sex outside of marriage is wonderful, too (and no doubt some of you will bring up a certain Carolinian governor). However, to better explain "my view" of sex, let's first look at two very extreme views of sex.
One view is the prudish view that views all sexual acts as base, carnal, and offensive. To such a person, all sex is bad, because you are giving in to your animal urges and causing problems such as what a previously mentioned certain Carolinian governor found out.
The other view, of course, is the hedonistic view that all sex is good. Such people feel that it is unhealthy to hold back on satisfying your sexual urges, because then you'll go around uptight and frustrated and paying thousands of dollars for some psychiatrist to tell you that you hate your mother.
Let's look at the prudish side first. Imagine such a person, who views sex as something dirty and disgusting. What a life that must be. They can't watch television or movies or probably even view ads for women's underwear without getting all worked up over the messages of sex. Hell, they can't even look at me and not accuse me of being some sex-crazed harlot who is showing off her boobs. And to make a blog with a reference to breasts in its title! Oh, the horrors!
What drives a person to such thinking? What makes them view sex with such negativity? Possibly, something that happened to them in life to bring about this unhealthy attitude - but the more negative their attitude towards sex, the more likely they are to live up to the stereotype of the uptight person that I just described above.
Trust me, folks, I am not such a person. Again, I think sex is wonderful, especially in its proper context. And if I were a prude, would I go around dressed as I do? My co-worker Lucky Shot calls me an exhibitionist, and how many exhibitionists do you know that are prudes? (by the way, I don't think I am an exhibitionist).
Okay, let's look at the flip side; that is, the hedonist. Now, I'm not talking about someone who has had 2-3 sexual partners in their entire life - I'm talking about someone who has many, many partners. Imagine such a person, so obsessed with getting their sexual "fix" however they can get it! And of course, they don't always - ahem - need a partner to get it. Sometimes they don't always need someone human - and sometimes they don't even have to have a partner that is alive!
How does such a person have a normal life? How do they get along without their sexual eccentricities eventually catching up to them? Many of them don't. Prisons are filled with people who couldn't control their sexual urges, and it's because of people like them that we have such things as rape laws. If you truly believed that all sex is good, then you would be opposed to rape laws, because you would view rape as simply another form of sex.
So I hope you can see that someone sexually obsessed would be just as bad as someone who is sexually prudish - and perhaps even worse than the sexual prude. C'mon, think about it: whom would you trust your daughter to be around more - the sexual prude or the guy who had no qualms about rape?
Either extreme is not healthy - the prude is too controlled while the hedonist has not control at all, and neither one of them would do your sanity any favors. And while the prude might damage your sanity, at least he or she would be much less likely to also damage your physical health like the hedonist would.
So where do I fit in? "In the middle" doesn't quite cover it. I don't believe in some magical boundary that somehow is a balance between prudery and hedonism. For example, there is no "middle ground" for the crime of rape. Either all rape is bad or it is not - you can't hold on to a "favorite type" of rape and still be considered a normal, contributing member of society. So no middle ground. Sex's role in our lives and in society as a whole has to be more specific than a mere median between two points of view.
Sex needs to be viewed with a sense of its purpose. What is sex for? From a biological/evolutionary standpoint, it's for reproduction, for if we don't reproduce, we die out as a race. This is a utilitarian view of sex, basically suggesting that we are like the animals, and in a sense I guess we are.
But we are more than animals. Granted, some people act like animals and there are those who say that we are really nothing more than glorified animals, but people with such views are usually looking for excuses to bail out of sexual, social, or other types of responsibility. For us humans, there has to be another role for sex in our lives- and fortunately, there is.
Sex has a second purpose, and that's to help solidify a married couple's love for each other. I think that you'll find that every happily married couple also has a healthy attitude towards sex. This is because each spouse is working more towards the satisfaction of their lover instead of their own personal satisfaction - but amazingly, in the process of attending to their lover's satisfaction, they're also satisfying their own desires. And not only that, the trust that goes along with it - that you will honor your marital vows - only enhances the pleasure that comes from marital sex.
Sex outside of marriage ultimately has no such promises. It's simply "You'll do until someone better comes along". The sex is good only so long as that comfort zone is there, and once the comfort zone is gone, then so is the pleasure that comes from sex. Would you feel comfortable to continue having sex with someone if you felt that they are betraying your trust, or if you felt that they believed that they could get better "action" from someone else?
No doubt some of you are going to give me the stat that more than 50% of marriages end in divorce. C'mon, admit it - that's the first thing that popped in your head as a refutation when I began talking about marital sex. So does that one stat completely undo my argument as I laid out above? Not in the least. Note that I said happy marriages, and of course there are numerous examples of unhappy marriages (which accounts for the high divorce rate).
Having said all that, that's my answer: The best sex is the sex of a happily married couple. It's the best sex, because they alone have the maturity to understand that there are other factors involved in order to make a marriage work, and the sex is not the highest priority. When all other factors of a happy marriage are taken care of, then the sex takes care of itself.
Ha! See? A conservative CAN talk about sex!
4 comments:
Are you a parody? Sort of like "American Dad"?
Wow! Is that what you think of me - some sort of parody? Why is that?
I don't know. When I read your writings that's the feeling I get. I know you are being honest. I hope you are OK with that.
i dont think there has to be mairrage per-say. I myself am a virgin still by choice but i wouldnt consider myself a conservative. I just remember people in high school disgusting me with their lack of reverance for intimacy. they turned it into a drug.
i think there has to be love before sex for sure. but i dont think its really the vows that matter. there are many relationships stronger than some mairrages. so in short i think its the feeling that matters more than the title of the relationship.
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