Saturday, June 11, 2022

Intimacy or Sex

 “Today’s people struggle in a world without informing them that sex, marriage, and childbearing should be sequenced.”  There should also be intimacy throughout all this sex, marriage, and childbearing.     

What is intimacy, Wikipedia states “intimacy is an interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy?  Although an intimate relationship is commonly a sexual relationship, it may also be a non-sexual relationship involving family friends, or acquaintances.”

Honestly, this subject was hard for me to discuss.  I realized having a relationship with men I had never experienced intimacy.  My experience of intimacy was fear of being alone and not being loved, which I think most women experience.  Women fear that if they do not satisfy their partner’s needs, they will break up with them, and they also have sex to avoid conflict with their partner.  We are taught if we do not have a man in our lives, we are nothing without one.  I was already insecure about my body and the love I was not receiving from my family, but I was nothing without a man.  I tried to pay attention to what church taught me but most of my life was with the outside world.   Love was more important than God so that meant sex. 

We have agency over our bodies and have a right to say no if we do not want to have sex with the opposite sex.  The article “Raising the Bar on Intimate Relationships” states we have an equal vice regarding bedroom activities and need to feel able to genuinely choose to engage sexually or not.  Sometimes the less expressive partner needs to be able to speak first so that both can be heard.

The book “Marriage and Family in America” (pg. 83) states, “some people have sex simply for the sake of sex, but several experts have argued that sex without intimacy, like the casual sex of the on-nightstand, is of little or no value.  At best casual sex fails to fulfill our intimacy needs.  At worst. It leaves us feeling emptier and lonelier than we were before the experience.  Instead of enhancing the quality of our intimate lives.

I agree with this statement, I have felt empty inside not knowing what I needed.  Intimacy should have been a part of my life.  I did have intimacy once in my life and was the greatest feeling in the world knowing that someone loved me and wanted to protect me.   Intimacy does not have to come from a partner it can come from family.  My Aunt was my non-sexual intimate partner.  I never felt love like that before.  Safety was there for me each day.  The joy I felt knowing that she was waiting for me to come home and greet me and tell me she loves me was overwhelming. Six months after living with her, I was taken from her, and it broke my heart. When I was with her it did enhance my life.   I didn’t tell anyone how I felt but I know that her intimate love was true.

Lauer and Lauer state “on the average, Americans have sexual relations from two to four times a month.  More married people have better sex than do singles.”  Elder Jeffrey R. Holland states, “Human intimacy is reserved for a married couple because it is the ultimate symbol of total union, a totality and a union ordained and defined by God.”

Single people may have more sex, but they are never satisfied.  Sex is just like a drug, it’s like that first high of heroin, it’s the best high, and then where is the next hit, so that same high can come again, again, again but it doesn’t.  The body takes more and more, but it gets to be too much and now you are hooked.

Intimacy and sex are two different parts of a relationship, which one do you/me/people want?  Sex comes and goes but intimacy brings love and satisfaction. 

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