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Touch, hold, embrace, contact, but do not have intercourse. Do not use intercourse as the ultimate negotiable item, the key criterion in the relationship. Be sexual, have sex, but don’t mistake coitus for intimacy and closeness, or use it as some type of substitute or shortcut.

“I swear they have a chart pinned inside their door. Each man’s name is written in over this type of body chart. They mark where the man left off. . . like, Fred at the knee, Al at the breast, Steve at the nipple. They give it a little at a time.” This report from a husband recalling his courtship shows clearly the immaturity of the whole situation, the bartering instead of bonding.

There are people you will want to touch right away, to hold, to be close to. There are other people with whom handholding is a major sacrifice. Let the person and your feelings be your guide, not some sex chart of cultural or gender expectations. Once we learn that sex is more decision than impulse, start teaching that in the family, in church, and at school, then we will be free to touch instead of have “foreplay,” to experience sex as a process instead of a goal.

“I didn’t want to be a tease. I loved making out, but I stopped at that. The boys thought I was terrible. I would love to just kiss all night, and they would complain that they could die from this, perhaps from some type of internal genital explosion. One night I told a boy to go ahead and masturbate, and that when he was finished, we could go back to kissing up a storm. He thought I was nuts. He called me one of the ultimate names of the day, a ‘prick tease.’ I guess he felt I was only teasing that part of him, as if it had a mind of its own. It’s strange that you never hear much about a clit tease.” This report from one of the wives about her early courtship shows the degree to which we have genitalized our lovemaking.

As it is in courtship, so it may be in marriage. If we cling to the “time bomb” theory of sex, that once the fuse is set, there must be an ultimate explosion, we miss out on some of the most exciting and intimate experiences of human interaction: the freedom to touch and kiss and hold just for the sake of doing only that.

One of the wives reported, “Now that our therapy is finished, do you know what we like to do? I know this sounds strange, but we go out in the car at night and neck. Just neck. We get so turned on that the windows steam over like the old days. That’s all, we just do that. It’s great.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 10:47 am and is filed under General health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.