This one is a long one.
Anyone who has looked through the some fifty-odd blogs to which I link will notice that it's an eclectic mix, reflecting my interests in everything from Anabaptism to feminism. I read 'em all regularly.
One person I read regularly is Corianne, at Glamour Girl. Yesterday, she put up a nakedly candid post to which I responded. With her permission, I am reposting some of it here, because it ties into themes that have come up on this blog. Here's what she wrote:
Let's Talk About Sex
I have so many questions. I think this is the one and only area in my life that I am completely uncomfortable, afraid and insecure about.
And I’m not sure why.
I cried and cried and cried over the agonizing decision to lose my virginity. My mom thinks it’s her fault; she thinks the old fashioned manner in which I was raised was impossible to follow when times and beliefs were changing so rapidly… the body is no longer sacred to the masses as it was to me.
I was always afraid of sex. Afraid it would hurt, afraid it would change the way people thought of me, afraid that it would change the way I thought of myself. I didn’t want to be dirty; I wanted to be perfect. Sex didn’t make me perfect; sex made me easy and I always prided myself on my complexity and my version of perfection. Sex just complicated my views, so I wanted to stay away. Far, far away.
I remember learning about sex from a video my parents rented for my sister and I when we were around nine years old. I was horrified. I vowed never to have sex again, and couldn’t imagine a day when that could possibly feel good.
I earned the label of a tease early on. My first “real kiss” was in the late eighth grade. He broke up with me in the skating rink parking lot and the boy I would end up losing my virginity beat him up for me. I guess he captured my heart at the same time he defended it.
I felt like I held out for so long. My parents were so proud of me. When I finally did make the leap, I really thought this was the person whom I was really meant to be with, forever and ever. When we broke up, I was devastated. Suicidal, even. I’ve always let people control my emotions, and when I felt like someone didn’t “want” me, it was nearly impossible to pick myself up off the floor.
I am twenty years old, and I have been with 3 people. The first two I was in 2+ year relationships with each (at separate times, don’t worry) and the third…
…well, the third was last weekend.
Don’t ask.
It’s a long story and I don’t know how I feel about it yet. Bottom line, he is my best guy friend and I hope our decision isn’t going to ruin this. I love him a lot, and I’m not sure why I felt like it was ok.
I want to talk about sex. How do you view it? Is it meant to be sacred or casual? Fun or sentimental? Is three people a lot for a twenty year old girl?? How many people is too many? Have the times changed drastically within the past ten years, or am I just incredibly old fashioned in this department?
Why is sex such a scary idea to me?
Here's some of what I posted in reply:
First of all, Corianne, you are to be commended for being so honest. That's tremendously impressive.
What has changed in recent years is the intensity of the mixed message given to girls/women your age. You are expected to be both intensely sexual and intensely virtuous. Both your "yes" and your "no" will disappoint others, and you are probably keenly aware of that.
Sex can be scary for many different reasons. One obvious reason is that it leaves us so vulnerable. To put it bluntly, few things should be more intimate than taking a part of another human being inside of yourself. The fact that our culture treats that casually doesn't lessen the enormity and the wonder of it, or the perfectly natural fear attached to it.
Look, I've been married three times and am engaged for the fourth time. I have a long, long history -- some aspects of which were pleasurable and others regrettable. What I regret most were the friendships compromised and often ruined by sex. "Friends with benefits" sounds great, but I know few young women indeed who really, really, find that fulfilling in anything more than a superficial way.
For me, I have had to rebuild my life sexually. I now see it as something sacred and special. When I want to show my friends I love them, I hug them. I don't sexualize my loneliness or my feelings of affection anymore, and that is one thing I used to do all the time.
As far as three being a lot for twenty, I think the whole number thing is a waste of breath. I've got friends who are virgins in their 30s, and friends of both sexes whose numbers are well into the triple digits (I kid you not). If you are asking, "Can I be a good person and have slept with three guys?", the answer is, of course, "yes." The real question is, what does Corianne want sex to be in her life NOW -- and what does she want it to mean when, SOMEDAY, she does choose to make a lifelong commitment to someone.
That's what I wrote yesterday. Because I'm a professor and 37 years old, I'm not prepared to offer the same degree of radical openness on my blog that Corianne does on hers. Oblique references to a complicated and tumultuous history are as good as it gets here, folks. But I'm grateful for what Corianne wrote because she articulates so well the angst, the uncertainty, and the internal contradictions that surround young folks' sexual decision-making in this era.
Yeah, advice is cheap --particularly when it is dispensed to folks in cyberspace. At the same time, the blogosphere gives us new opportunities for cross-generational sharing about topics that are difficult to discuss "face-to-face." The two phrases that Corianne repeats over and over again in her post are "I'm not sure" and "I don't know why". Those were two phrases I used repeatedly in my journals when I was her age, writing about very similar topics. In that sense, not much has changed between my generation and hers.
But one thing we who are a bit older than today's teens and college students don't do well is listen, really listen, to young people. Part of this is the fault of the young -- they are reluctant to disclose anything that can result in condemnation, and they often imagine that their trials and anxieties are unique to their age cohort. But much of it is our fault, we who are a wee bit older; we allow television and other elements of popular culture to inform us as to what young people today are really like. That liberates us from the task of taking a genuine interest in the lives of those to whom we have a responsibility.
Obviously, I feel both a professional and avocational responsibility to work with young adults in high school and college. Not everyone has that same calling. But when someone like Corianne asks the right questions, the kind she asks at the end of her post, we who have lived a bit longer and been where she is have an obligation to answer her as best we can.
Of course, we need to answer from something beyond our experience. We need to provide ethical and moral guidance. For some of us, our sexual morality is fairly absolute: no sex outside of heterosexual marriage, period. There is much to be said, theologically and psychologically, for that position. Others of us feel compelled to offer a more nuanced and relativistic stance. Regardless, we must articulate a standard that we ourselves have had some success in living up to, and we must be willing to disclose those times when we have (in action or in thought) fallen short of whatever ideal it is that we embrace. The fact that we have fallen short of God's best does not mean that we can't continue to struggle towards it, nor does it mean that we shouldn't advocate that others seek it. But we must be realistic about just how difficult it is for most of us to "practice what we preach" over the course of our transition from adolescence to adulthood, and we must be candid about those difficulties when the young ask us tough questions.
I'll close this long entry with a quotation from a fine old Pasadenan, the late Fuller professor Lewis Smedes, whose Sex for Christians remains a classic:
In any case, what single people are looking for -- whether they are adolescent or far beyond -- is not, in the first place, a chance to get their hormones satisfied. They are looking for a chance to experience the reality of a personal, trusting, and complete communion. And they have been led to think that sexual intercourse has the most intense promise of providing it...
... sexual intercourse opens trapdoors to the inner cells of our conscience, and legions of little angels (or demons) can fly out to haunt us. There is such abandon, such explosive self-giving, such personal exposure that few people can feel the same toward each other afterward...
It's still in print, still worth a read.
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