A time will come when you face various options related to sex: intercourse, dating, flirting, and, of course, communicating (or hiding) your feelings. Activities related to sex lead to surprisingly large consequences (both good and bad), so it is important to be loving about sex. Telling you how to be loving about sex is like telling you how to master the viola—you can't learn viola just by reading about it, and even the best violists are still trying to improve their mastery, but it's better to get some advice than to figure it all out on your own.
You are surrounded by sex advice. The magazines in the grocery store are obvious sources, but more often it comes like advertisement, describing goals you should supposedly pursue. For example, you and every other teenager have been humming a chart-topping song that goes, "Let's go all the way tonight, no regrets, just love...I'll be your teenage dream tonight." It describes what to wear ("skin-tight jeans") and what to to do ("take a chance", "runaway" together, get "drunk on the beach", get "a motel", "look at me", "put your hands on me", let your "walls come down", "don't ever look back", "be young forever").
When I talk about being loving about sex, I mean being good to your partner...trying not to hurt him/her. We might call this "moral" love to contrast with fleeting "emotional" love, something one can feel even when being morally unloving. For example, although it is morally loving for a parent to discipline their children, it can be emotionally loving to spoil them instead. When evaluating sex advice, be aware when the kind of love promised is just emotional.
Moral love happens to degrees. For example, it is often considered morally loving to give a hungry person a fish, but even more loving to teach them to fish for themselves. It typically takes years for lovers to reach higher degrees of moral love for each other--they do not achieve it on a vacation. Here's my current list of some things more loving lovers do:
- They build report, so they can discuss sexual things openly (contrary to "don't ever look back").
- To eliminate awkwardness, they foster a sense of humor.
- They discuss plans/expectations about sex, romance and commitment.
- They are patient, not pushing for deeper intimacy when inconvenient for their partner.
- They give both partners opportunity to orgasm (ladies first because they can continue).
- They listen to their partner—trusting words first, body language second—to discover what their partner enjoys.
- Until they know their partner will enjoy something, they are gentle and slow, listening for reaction (not "taking a chance").
- They attend to their partner's physical comfort—food, warmth, relaxation (not late nights and drunkenness)
- Until they know that their partner will not find something "icky", they keep themselves and their environment super-clean.
- To ease their partner's fear of being controlled, they make themselves vulnerable.
- To ease fear of embarrassment, they create privacy.
- To dissolve insecurities, they give their partner sincere compliments.
- They may research sex and relationships, but trust what their partner claims to enjoy over what "experts" say their partner will enjoy.
- They develop their own confidence by building their own independent physical, mental, spiritual, social and financial health—this takes burden off their partner.
It might be a good idea to discuss a list like this with one's fiance before getting married, to make sure you both agree about what should be on it. Provided you agree on the goals, there is no need to practice/test any of these skills before marriage—in fact, some potential spouses would prefer to develop them together. (See "Gathering 3: Personal Relationship" about relationship skills not specifically romantic).
A thousand years ago, "Honor one's father and mother" would also appear on the list because it was parents' job to provide disciplines to control how their children fell in love, to protect them from falling in love with the wrong person or at the wrong time, i.e. to prevent unrequited love.
The problem of unrequited love has two sides: Person A falls in love with person B, builds their dreams around person B, will be extremely depressed if B rejects him/her because he/she is willing to give anything, and, when that isn't enough, he/she becomes depressed. What is the point in living when not equipped to pursue one's dreams? Being rejected by the one you love is like an archer or painter becoming blind—it requires reinventing oneself.
On the flip-side, worrying about breaking A's heart is an unfair guilt-trap for B. If A is not willing to fall in love with C, then it is outrageous for A to expect B to fall in love with him/herself, yet that is precisely what B feels expected to do, to give up his/her own dreaming. Thus, if love is not mutual, it seems that at least one person must endure reinvention. You can see why, a thousand years ago, getting parents' help to prevent unrequited love would have topped the list of ways to morally love potential lovers.
But the apparent need for reinvention may be a deception stemming from the traditions of monogamy and family. In a world without monogamy and family, there is no forced choice between the two disasters of rejection and entrapment. Modern trends towards cohabitation and premarital sex offer a glimpse into a alternate future: B doesn't reject A, yet B is not married to A; B can still pursue C (or other dreams), and A can learn to live with that.
A thousand years ago, to relinquish the traditions of monogamy and family was unthinkable from an economic standpoint. Most businesses were family-owned, and King Solomon had demonstrated how polygamy splits families and kingdoms passed through inheritance. But society might not always rely so much on the stability of families. We count much less on families today for employment, education, welfare, ethics, and spouse-selection.
It is important for you to know that you live in the middle of a cultural war between two different approaches to love: the traditional approach of protecting people from falling in love, and an emerging non-traditional approach of hedging risks by reducing monogamistic expectations. That is important to know because you will inevitably be asked to pick sides in this war, and trying to play both sides can be unloving.
Change is risky for those in power, so choosing the non-traditional approach might mean sacrificing access to the social circles of the powerful. It might also mean sacrificing control over the next generation—the weaker your family, the more you rely on teachers and coaches to shape your children. You would turn to music, TV and the "singles scene" to reinforce your taste for adventure. Romance is like duct-tape, and your goal would be to re-adhere so many times that it stops being sticky—to desensitize yourself. Pornography helps with that too. Effective birth-control is especially important.
In contrast, choosing the traditional approach would mean avoiding certain kinds of adventure—you would want the duct tape to stick, so you would want to avoid falling in love until you're ready to marry. To do that effectively, you would have to avoid any situation in which a potential mate could express romantic feelings to you: coed classes, coed dorms, parties and, of course, dating. This is more difficult than you might expect—it would be wise to seek the social support of a same-gender bible study group. When the time comes to pick a spouse (usually in the late twenties, when you are comfortable in your career), you can use the premarital check-list in one of those marriage preparation books to cover what parents covered a thousand years ago.
You can easily see how the viability of these two strategies creates two cultures that cannot mix. Mom and I model the traditional approach, but I realize it is much easier to do when married and old. At some point, perhaps in your lifetime, government will have to acknowledge that allowing this cultural war to continue hurts our young people. It will need to establish that this issue is not rightly considered religious, but, rather, as an area where economic interests long-ago twisted religions to their own purposes. Then, I expect, my own approach will cease to be viable (at least for young singles).
As your father, I want you to know that I will support you, no matter which side you pick, and I hope you will support each other. It is not your fault that we live in the middle of a cultural war. If you ever find yourself in conflict over love, I'll always take your side. In matters of love, I think it is less important to assign blame and "rightness" than to make sure everyone has an ally--I'll always be yours. At least for now, that's what family is for.
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