Chris.Gould.Is

Category: Sex

  • Dating 101 – Gird Your Loins

    Dating 101 – Gird Your Loins

    [Author’s Note: Originally published on BlogOfManly.com on 6/3/2013]

    This entry is the hardest for me to write, but also the one about which I feel most passionately – sexual purity in dating. Let me be very very clear before I walk any further – sexual purity in dating was NEVER a goal of mine. I would have laughed at you had you suggested it. Before I met my wife, I was in a place where I was pretty certain that the PURPOSE of dating was my own sexual gratification. However, with distance and clarity from that deep walk with sin, I can now promise you that that path holds nothing but pain and embarrassment.

    Please feel free to call me a hypocrite for this entry. As long as you keep reading, I can handle that. Do not believe the irony that *I* am writing about this is lost on me. If you had known me in high school or especially college, seeing my name on this might cause you to spit out your drink. Regardless, consider my pock-marked, bruised, and beaten spirit to be a warning sign that this path is not one you want to tread.

    So here is what I see now that I wish I had believed then: you need to keep yourself sexually pure. You already know this. It isn’t shocking to you. It isn’t even news. But our society loves to question the boundary of “sex” such that you can engage in many sexual acts and still consider yourself a “virgin.” As a father to a little girl, here is the litmus test I now find myself using – if I’d want to dismember the little boy for doing “that” with my little girl, it runs against sexual purity. As you might imagine, there is NO gray area in *my* definition.

    For clarity, I define sexual purity as doing nothing consciously to engage or arouse your own sexual desires, which includes not only physical sexual acts, but even the very TV shows, video games, and movies you choose to watch, if you are choosing to watch them because of the arousal potential.

    Yes, it is easy for me to say this now that I have a wife and regular sex partner. No, this challenge is not easy, and most of the men in our society would call it quixotic. But I would counter by saying that this is the level of sexual purity I believe God desires for all men, single, dating, engaged, married, widowed – ALL men.

    Let me speak to the area I am most familiar with, porn. If you are using porn and masturbation to meet your own “needs,” you have to stop. And I don’t mean just stop looking at porn. I mean stop masturbating. And looking at porn.

    If you are having sex, in a relationship or not, stop. Yes, stop.

    Draw a personal boundary, make the choice to take the high road, and stop. This step is by far the most painful for me to talk about. But I am firmly convinced that it is the most critical to being successful in dating.

    Let me share with you two facts about sex and orgasm that shape this conversation. First, sex and orgasm are not needs, but desires that create needs. Let me explain. Your body does not NEED to orgasm.

    I’ll wait while you let that sink in. To orgasm is NOT a need.

    To orgasm is an appetite. And like any other appetite, it can be sated for a period, but never once and for all. However, unlike hunger and thirst, an orgasm is not required for your body to live (despite what you may be feeling right this second!). The more you orgasm, the more your body desires to orgasm, much like your response to a good steak or delicious ice cream. And the more you feed that desire, it begins the transition from a desire to a craving, then to a need. That’s right, what you once knew to be a desire has become a need you feel legitimate in fulfilling by any means.

    If you are actively engaged in masturbation or sex, I’m confident you won’t believe me on this. But as someone who was fought the porn demon and won, I assure you it is the truth.

    The other fact? The quest for orgasm clouds your mind. A shocker, right? I’m glad you were sitting down. But when coupled with the first fact, what happens is that a man who is dating and masturbating or having sex is blinded to facts and reason. As is the stereotype, he thinks with his cock instead of his mind. In that state, you are, as I was, completely incapable of evaluating the woman you are dating rationally. Especially if she is already your sex partner. Thankfully my wife was not my sex partner before we were married – although I sure tried!

    So you have to put a stop to it. And you have to have stopped for quite a period (read: a year) before you are mentally clear enough to evaluate a potential mate. Yes, it will be incredibly difficult. Satan will throw everything imaginable at you in order to get you to slip up. You will wake up with wet underwear. You will be incredibly tempted by stupid things. But you *can* go without, and the clarity the abstinence provides will be well worth the pain.

    Based on my experience, if you are already deep in the chase for orgasms, you will not be able to overcome the temptation alone – you need God’s strength and grace. You will need to pray a lot. In fact, think of this period as a fast from orgasm, and like a fast, any time you are tempted, pray for strength and thank God for a healthy sex drive.

    Bottom line, in order for you to be in the right place mentally and physically to find a mate, you need to make your own sexual purity a primary objective now.

  • My War With Porn

    [Author’s Note: This entry was originally published on 7/16/2012 on BlogOfManly.com]

     

    I want to tell you a story about my war with addiction to pornography, the battle I finally won, and the ongoing skirmishes I still fight to this day. At the height of the war, I was absolutely convinced that I was not addicted – I didn’t even know I was fighting! But it was so bad that I would be sitting at the kitchen table next to my beautiful and sexy wife, while we were both doing homework, and I’d have a browser window up looking at porn! NEXT TO MY WIFE. Sadly, I was even convinced that she had no idea.

    And to be clear, I was sexually pleasuring myself at the same pace – A LOT.

    I had a lot of different ways to rationalize my addiction.

    I told myself that meeting my own sexual needs was okay because Maria and I had different levels of sex drive. I convinced myself that I was saving Maria from having to have more sex than she needed by using pornography!

    I told myself that no one was getting hurt. The women performing were not doing so against their wills, and would be performing even if I wasn’t looking. By the very end, I had started to believe that the women performing would want me to watch them perform!

    I was, as with all addictions, convinced I had control over the pornography. I honestly thought I was choosing to look at porn.

    As I read these things now, I am both ashamed and thankful. Ashamed because of how blind and foolish I was. Thankful because I hope that at least one man will see himself and the lies he tells himself in this, and recognize the war that he is in.

    So what was the truth?

    Clearly, porn controlled me – I looked at porn sitting next to my wife! Maria has told me since that I was very defensive and “in her face” about my “habit.” I never looked at porn at work, but I looked at porn daily. In retrospect, I was also looking for harder core and raunchier imagery to reach the same level of excitement.

    Regardless of why the women are performing, their bodies were built by God for the pleasure of their husbands, and no other man – not even a voyeur. I’m not here to rail against women wearing flattering clothing, but posing nude or performing sexual acts for a camera is clearly not in line with God’s design or desires. Looking at any porn on the web encourages an industry which degrades and abuses both women and men.

    Now the most interesting aspect of sex drive that I have come to understand is that sex is not a need. Men, listen closely: SEX IS NOT A NEED. To be clear, physical touch is a valid need many men have, which can be filled effectively by sex, but the sex itself is not a need. Here is how I know. The more you have sexual pleasure, with or without a partner, the more you want to have sex. Conversely, the longer you abstain, the easier it becomes. Don’t believe me, try it!

    So the most painful truth is that I was artificially increasing my sex drive, basically insuring that Maria couldn’t keep up! As I came to understand at the end of the war, a large driver for Maria and I not having a fulfilling sex drive was because she knew about my addiction, and felt like she couldn’t possibly compete with those women and was incredibly self-conscious in bed.

    The bottom line? The addiction I wouldn’t acknowledge was preventing me from having the fulfilling sex life with my wife that I so craved – and it was the very lack of a fulfilling sex life that I used to support my addiction!

    Now how did I win the war? God brought me to a place where I finally saw the addiction for what it was, and for the pain I was causing Maria. I recognized that I was buried too deep. I finally cried out to God to take the demon from me. And nothing happened. But God showed me that He doesn’t always operate by fixing the problem for us, but that He would empower me to overcome it. So I prayed for the strength to walk away from porn, and God granted me that power. In one fell swoop I trashed all of the magazines and videos and deleted all of the pictures, videos, and links.

    Virtually overnight my sex life with Maria improved! Talk about reinforcing positive behavior!

    Cue the triumphant music and the credits!

    Only it isn’t that simple. I am still tempted to look at porn on a fairly regular basis. The strength of the temptation varies greatly based on what else I allow myself to see and how Maria and I are doing in terms of sex. I have a strict personal rule that Maria is my only source of sexual pleasure. I try to avoid looking too closely at sexual images, but I am still a man, and very visual in my attraction.

    The other amazing lesson I have learned is that I now have the choice as to how much sexual material I am exposed to. I can choose not to click on that sexual picture on Facebook. I can choose not to take a second look at that scantily clad woman in the mall. I fail as much as I choose well, but I always have the choice, if not the strength.

    Men, if you are looking at porn you are hurting yourself. If you are dating or married, you are hurting her. If you aren’t, you are hurting the future women in your life. No amount of excitement or satisfaction from imagery can hold a candle to the amazing intimacy of sex with a loving and devoted partner. More importantly, looking at pornography is not what God wants for you. You are worth more than that, and you should not do anything to detract from the incredible satisfaction and fulfillment from the sex life God has designed for you!