Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby!

May 25, 2017
3 min read

Yeah, I went there. I am not sorry about that. But we are going to talk about it. Sex is difficult to talk to strangers about. As a counseling major, I learned this firsthand. For some reason, we have been conditioned to believe that this is a taboo topic. As we get older, we get to lose our filter a bit. Women are seen poorly for having sex more, and men get praised. But we cannot be afraid to communicate about sex or what we want from sex. We have to be able to say what we like about it, or what we don’t like it.

Christianity and other religions believe that sex is only for procreation, but it is now being exploited as a normal act. That is a damnation according to the scripture. I have read the Bible, studied it in college, and is a proud Christian, I can say that I do not follow all of the rules in the book. There are some things that I do not understand or feel that just don’t make sense in society today.

The preoccupation with sex goes back to the book of Genesis in the Bible. Just go back and read about Sarah, Hagar, and Abraham. There is Samson and Delilah in the book of Judges, or Bathsheba in the book of Samuel. Sex may be the original thought and it remains a need, part of the psyche and procreation purpose. Krasnow (2014) says that the shame associated with these stories is very much disappearing. In the book, she quotes Rabbi Ari Goldstein. He says, “while no person would ever think that sexuality is a recent concept, many might consider the various expressions of sexuality to be more of a modern vintage. This could not be further from the truth”. Yes, the Bible tell stories of a multitude of sexual behaviors, but it is often misunderstood and misrepresented.

There are times in our lives that sex will change for every individual. It may be after the children are here, or after an illness, or after infidelity or divorce. All of these issues will play a role in how sex is done in your life. Life changes, so it will too. That’s okay.

Sex is a good thing. It has emotional and mental connections for some people. They say that it provides the sensation that people crave when they are in love with another. For some, it is just something to do. For some others, it is an addiction or something that they can control when there is nothing else to control. There is a whole science behind it that I find interesting. There is the study of sexual physiology. You had the works of Masters & Johnson, Alfred Kinsey and the Institute, and Robert Dickinson. The father of behaviorism looked into sexual physiology in the early 1900s. He came to the conclusion that behavior was essentially a series of reactions to outside events and an entity easily shaped by reward or punishment. He would end up saying that sex is the one thing that causes the most shipwrecks in the happiness of men and women, yet scientific information is so meager (Roach, 2009). The best part is that his own marriage would end because of an affair with his student Rosalie Rayner.

As we get older, things about us change. Our bodies change, our lives change. We hit this midlife crisis, we deal with menopause, cancers and other illnesses, and becoming senior citizens. Some of us deal with divorce, infidelity, addictions, scandals, and so many other things. You start to question if sex even matters anyone. You start to question if you can ever do it again. We will go through unsurmountable physical, mental, and emotional changes that will force us to change how we succeed in long-term relationships.