The Sex Talk Part II

(On becoming a sexpert)

In which I go into full on teacher mode and everyone is bored out of their minds. Also, a reminder: this is just what I think and what worked for us. It is not the only or even the best way to talk about sex. Ignore me completely and do whatever works for your family.

For Part One, go here.

I was telling my husband that this post really needs some cool images to break things up - but I couldn't think of any that would go with the topic (and I'm not about to do an internet search)

Before you set out to teach someone else, you should become an expert on sex yourself. No, I don't mean you need to perfect your technique (though that might be helpful for other reasons).  I mean you need to understand what your own values and beliefs about sex are and be able to talk about them.  I know everyone has different degrees of comfort in talking about intimacy and that is OK.  I actually find it fascinating that there is such a variety in how comfortable people are talking about sex, but everyone seems to think that they have found the perfect balance.  "My comfort level is the RIGHT place to be.  People who are less comfortable talking about sex are prudes; people who are more comfortable talking about sex are too racy."  Honestly, the only people you need to be comfortable talking about sex to are: God, your spouse, your doctor, and your children - in that order.  (Yes, I pray about sex.) If you don't think you can talk to your kid about sex, I suggest you practice.  Sit in front of the mirror if you have to.  There is no situation I can think of where avoiding this topic is in any way helpful. If you are capable of having children, you better make yourself capable of talking about how they got here.  Or, to quote Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "If you're doing it, I'm pretty sure you can say it."

The tricky part was in being able to explain things in vocabulary that he understands. So I'll tell you what we talked about, but for me, it is easier to explain the way I would to a grown-up. If you want to repeat some form of this with your own kids, I'm going to leave the translating-to-kid-talk bit up to you. Just bear in mind that kids can understand a lot, but you will need to define a lot of words. And here is a great comic, explaining the space shuttle using only the ten hundred words people use the most often. I kind of felt we were talking like this much of the time. (follow the link here to see it closer.)

Here is my short list of the topics I wanted to cover on his birthday:  Sex, Chastity, Masturbation, Pornography, Personal Safety, Homosexuality.  Obviously we've talked about some of these things before in Family Home Evening and things, but I wanted to go over them again in our formal talk.

First, I asked him if he knew what sex was.  He said no. Again, he is a kid.  Even though he read a book about where babies come from and we've talked about it before, this is really not on his mind.  No hormones, remember? (this is actually probably the biggest reason to talk to him about it now, before it gets all complicated).  So we told him that sex is the word for how babies are made, and we wanted to talk a little more about that now that he is old enough. The details of what happens during sex are pretty straight forward and we spent the bulk of our time talking about what sex is for.

Sex is kind of like eating, in that you have a desire for it and it serves several functions.  One function of sex is to make babies.  Another is to deepen the love between partners.  Another is to foster communication between partners.  Another is to have physical pleasure for yourself.  Another is to give physical pleasure to someone else.  Another is to build self-control, and to show our willingness to obey the commandments of God.  All of these things influence each other and can work together to help individuals, and couples, and families. And that is why we believe that sex should only happen between married couples. Sex is about making a family stronger (and sometimes bigger). The reasons we have sex, the reasons we wanted to talk to him about sex, are all about being a happy family.

Even though so much of this happens only with a husband and wife, I don't believe it is possible to be dysfunctional in this area and not have it show up in other areas of your life.  You just can't separate yourself into pieces like that - and trying only makes things more complicated.  And it definitely affects the kids, even if they never know the details.  I have had the unfortunate experience of seeing in certain friends some family dynamics that were very wrong, but not really being able to put my finger on why.  I found out later that the problem was with the parents and their sex lives.  To this day, it affects those children, even though I believe that I know more of the explicit details than they all do.

Most of the problems that arise from sexual dysfunction stem from the fact that people try to pull the functions of sex apart and only get them one at a time.  You have to have the communication and the pleasure and the love all at the same time for it to be healthy.  I'm not saying that people should have sex only to have babies, or that birth control is wrong, but if having a baby is the worst possible scenario in your life right now - you're better off taking a cold shower.  I know I've joked here before about our inability to prevent our children, but the fact is that the real reason that I wanted the timing to be different was because being pregnant is a hassle, and I didn't want to make the time for it.  In much the same way I get upset when I have to wait in traffic for an extra 20 minutes.  We are happily married with good family and neighborhood support, so we can handle the possibility of a child.  If you can't even handle the possibility. . . like I said: cold shower.

But there are lots of ways that people try to separate sex into it's parts and only get one at a time.  I believe that any time a couple has sex or doesn't have sex based solely on one person's pleasure is wrong.  It is enjoyable to bring pleasure to someone you love, and to feel pleasure in return.  I think a lot of couples get into trouble by simply being selfish in their approach to sex.  When you truly love someone and care about them, sex is a expression of how you feel and how you want them to feel - selfishness has no place in that kind of love.

Back to the food metaphor:  If you were to try and get only the pleasure of chewing and tasting without the benefits of digestion and nutrient absorption you would start to see some serious effects on the body.  Taking  the functions of sex apart works in much the same way.  I think the most obvious form of this is masturbation.  Masturbation is to sex what bulimia is to eating.  You are only trying to get one form of pleasure out of something that is meant to serve many purposes.  And just like bulimia, you aren't going to see any damaging affects right away, but it is a symptom of deeper issues.  And most likely, those deeper issues are the same kinds of things: low self-worth, need for control and a misunderstanding of your own value as a human being as well as the value of the people surrounding you.

And yeah, you won't read this in any child rearing book.  The most they say on masturbation is to tell the kids to do it in private, and to recognize that it is normal.  I think this is because child-rearing books used to warn parents that masturbation could lead to insanity and to shame and punish their children if they were ever caught curiously touching their own bodies. The books seemed to have skipped over (my understanding of) the middle ground: where masturbation should be discouraged because it (coupled with pornography) can be addictive and stunts your ability to communicate with, be excited by, and enjoy your partner. It doesn't make anyone evil, it is just a bad coping mechanism and defeats the purpose of sex. And that is as far as we went explaining that. But, now we've opened the door, and can talk about it again as it comes up.

The only thing we said about homosexuality was to define it and some slang terms associated with it (gay, fag) explain that we do not believe that it is right (another of those things that goes against what we believe sex is for in the first place) but some other people do - and that is OK. And to tell him that there is no reason to EVER use any of these terms to tease anyone, and that that is very VERY wrong.

Whew. I'm not done yet, but we'll break for now. Safety and abuse are a whole other blog post. Stay tuned.......