Love, sex and Marriage

The topic of this blog is about love, sex and marriage. Whereas I feel it is more clinical than salacious, I can respect the fact that someone who knows me might not want to hear my opinion on topics of a sexual nature. So, daughters, nieces, siblings and those with taste, consider yourself warned.
We all have a drive toward physical attraction but sex should not be confused with love. Sex is this great gift from the Creator. Its purpose was not only to attract us to each other’s but also and more importantly to bind us together after marriage. There are two distinct joys that are derived from the naked embrace. First there is the satisfaction of the hunger and secondly there is the shared intimacy.
In general, men’s primary desire is to satisfy the first joy, hunger. Women in general seek intimacy more than hunger satisfaction. Whenever you talk in generalities of the population you can be generally right about the group but wrong with individuals. The confusion over the difference between males and females can be heard by women who are greeted by snoring when they seek to cuddle after sex. Men have also had a hard time understanding why women need atmosphere and connection before engaging in sex. They often do not see past, I’m hungry let’s eat. This is not a big practical joke by our Creator. We were designed to compliment each others and learn from each others.
It seams like so many couples who split up do not understand the fundamentals of sex and love. How else can it be explained comments like “we fell out of love”. Why else would divorce and adultery be so common in this Christian nation, even among us Christians. I don’t want to misrepresent this biblical wisdom as my own. In fact I had to learn these truths the hard way. I am a divorce’ and my first child was born 4 month after my second marriage. I can appreciate now that if you have sex before you are committed in marriage you are biased in the decision to choose a life mate. Lust obscures the ability to make the commitment required by love.
Love should be viewed as a commitment or even an obligation. It is immature to view love as a feeling yet romance is America’s idea of love. We are marketed Valentine’s day by candy companies and Hallmark. We are taught love ideals by Harlequin romance novels and Turner Classic movies. These are the ideas of being swept away by love and succumbing to love. We scoff at old world ideas of arranged marriage while we search for the soul mate to make us whole.

It is not a wonder that couples split up because they find themselves sexually incompatible. When psychologist look at the statistics of sexual desire they have found a huge variation of how often people desire sex. There is a wide range of frequency in sexual desire among the population. This means that when the majority of the population is included in the statistical bell curve you have a frequency from twice a day to twice a month. Given any random two people, they will not be compatible. Add to this equation that over time each individual’s sexual desire will change. It is the norm that men’s desire will decrease with time and women’s will increase. Yes God has a sense of humor, you can see that in the duck billed platypus but sexual incompatibility is not a cosmic joke. God wishes us to learn and grow thru this experience.
So what does God want us to learn? There are two pleasures deeper than the two joys of sex. First is the feeling of being loved so much, that someone else is willing to sacrifice their own self desires for you. This is a parallel to the love that God has for us. Being loved sounds nice and easy but it does require something from us that is difficult to give up, trust. Often it is difficult to put trust into someone other than ourselves. Next is the simple joy of putting someone else over our own needs. This is more than a parallel to God’s call for us to be like Him. To love and be loved, what greater life lesson could we have? If you shrank back at my earlier term of calling love an obligation I hope you now understand the depth that I believe is required of love and the benefits of striving for a love for life.