Fool’s gold is plentiful and looks real to the untrained eye, but real gold is hard to obtain and compares to nothing else once experienced.
Todd Beal
♦
We often times focus so much on the “jackpot” act of sex that we sacrifice the relationship for which the act was intended. Sex means nothing apart from the lifetime commitment between a man and a woman to share their souls with each other. Sex is the most intimate communication between husband and wife; it is their means to cement their bond at the deepest level. Sex outside of a mutually-committed marriage inhibits lasting love, denies our longing for a deep soul-merging relationship, and inevitably becomes a power game to feed the ego, not each other.
Unfortunately, our human desire is to go for the gold while avoiding the necessary work and commitment for obtaining and maintaining that gold. Even in marriage, we refuse to wholly give our self to our spouse. So, when we try to merge at the deepest and most intimate level through sex, we never get what we truly desire, our spouse, receiving instead only an emotional and/or physical release that’s all about me, not us. What a shame. Whenever “taking” is the focus, we cannot receive what we truly need.
I was engaged to be married in my early twenties and I fully expected to spend the rest of my life with my fiancé. I have changed my moral stance on sex before marriage in the past few years, but at that time the meaning of sex was the last of my concerns. One particular time when we were having sex, I felt my soul merge with hers. I immediately thought, “So this is what sex is about.” I have never forgotten that. I literally felt myself become a part of her, and felt her also become a part of me. That moment changed me. When she broke off our engagement, I felt my soul being ripped out of me and I immediately felt dead inside. That part of me that was once alive has never returned, despite my efforts to revive it.
Sex is not entertainment; it is not simply a pleasurable experience between two consenting individuals. It is serious business that literally involves the souls of two people. We need to remember that fool’s gold is plentiful and looks real to the untrained eye, but real gold is hard to obtain and compares to nothing else once experienced.
Truth Behind Reality 
I’m with you here, Todd. I’m a one-woman man, not by nature but by choice, and it has made all the difference. Of course there were times when I was younger when I would wonder what I’ve missed with my total commitment to monogamy at the tender age of twenty-one, but at this point in life (nearly twenty-four years later), I thank God every day that I stuck with that commitment and did the work necessary for our relationship to mature. Prevalent attitudes in the world would have encouraged me to give in to base urges to make myself “happy” or gratify my pride with anger when things were tough, and even bail out of the marriage, but we held together (I give her most of the credit for extremes in patience and forgiveness). From the standpoint of today, I have no greater blessing than the companionship of my divinely-sanctioned life partner.
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Well said Michael, and thanks for committing yourself to your wife. Our society needs men who are committed to not only carrying out their promise “until death do we part”, but also who are committed to giving their whole self to their wife. Without this there is no deep intimacy, no powerful bond, only a legal piece of paper that says “married”.
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And the purpose is to procreate, the one thing we can do which is most like what God did. To create family and raise children – just what God did.
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Lance,
At a certain level I agree with you, but most people (and I do mean most) have no clue to what deep sexual intimacy means. They certainly might feel emotionally and physically fulfilled, but they have never given their whole self to their spouse, and so have never experienced a union that goes far beyond the physical and emotional, truly reaching the inner being. Women naturally understand this at some level, but I have met less than five men who even slightly grasp this non-physical aspect. The rest either give a blank stare when I talk to them about it, or start trash talking as if I had just told them the most pathetically useless garbage they ever heard. And in the mean time, they can’t figure out why their wife is frigid and distant in bed. Whether she consciously knows it or not, every woman wants to meet with her man at this level, she longs for it.
Sure, procreation is awesomely significant when considering it is our means to make another human being in God’s image and our own. But the richer significance of sex precedes the making of another human being. It is first meant to unify a man and his wife, soul with soul, spirit with spirit, mind with mind, and body with body, allowing them to become truly one, but this can only happen if they each fully give their self to the other in mind, body, and soul. Regardless of how close a man and his wife become, intimacy remains shallow until they truly meet within each other soul to soul and merge.
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Todd, I wasn’t going to respond to this one. It seems like a ‘men only’ place but maybe it needs a woman’s view.
I have only ever known one man so no personal comparison is possible. However, as one who conducted marriage counselling for many years, I have spoken to very many women and many men on the subject.
Almost invariably the women had the same type of ‘complaint’. Their husbands ‘went for the kill; bang, bang, and that was it’. There was little intimacy or sharing, but only self-seeking from the husband. Almost invariably the men thought they were doing a good job but complained their women had become frigid and were no longer interested.
I agree with what you have said. Sex is not just an act of passion and release. It is a combining of two people, their love, their very beings. Sex isn’t an act that takes place before sleep. It is something that starts in the morning, continues and grows throughout the day: linked thoughts; many smiles; an arm round the waist, on the shoulder; shared moments; a look across the room; a uniting of core values . . . . . something that quite naturally continues and explodes into the most intimate sharing of two people joined as one . . . . . just as God intended.
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Angela,
| Sex isn’t an act that takes place before sleep. It is something that starts in the morning, continues and grows throughout the day: linked thoughts; many smiles; an arm round the waist, on the shoulder; shared moments; a look across the room; a uniting of core values… something that quite naturally continues and explodes into the most intimate sharing of two people joined as one… just as God intended. |
Very well said. Your statement here is the whole point of this post and I am in full agreement with your entire comment. No man would consider planting a flower in the earth and then tell it “Now grow and give me your beauty”, yet subsequently go about his life without caring for it; stopping by now and then just long enough to catch a glimpse and then off again to something else. Without his direct care, it wouldn’t take long for his flower to die. The problem is that most men don’t understand that their wife needs more personalized care than even a flower. Women don’t do well with a man’s “on again-off again, hit the target and move on” approach to life. Women need an ever-deepening always-on connection between their man and their self, morning until night until morning. If a man would choose to make his wife’s personal well being – inside and out – his constant and first priority, she would truly blossom into the woman who exceeds his previous unrealistic expectations.
Angela, I apologize for taking so long to respond to your comment. This entire month has been crazy busy.
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You said “That part of me that was once alive has never returned, despite my efforts to revive it.” Are you saying, then, that God truly isn’t The God of Second Chances and New Beginnings? Are you saying God cannot or will not heal your injury and make you “one flesh” with a subsequent wife? Or are you merely reporting that He has not yet done that particular work in you?
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Jerry,
My point with this post was that sex is serious business, the literal uniting of two souls. When my fiancé broke off our engagement, she ripped us out of each other. That wound is still there. I don’t grieve over her any more but the hole inside still exists, making me feel hollow and dead in that area of my life. The problem is that the part of me that died was at one time the very thing that allowed me to flourish in all matters of heart, not just intimate love. I have changed for the better in most every area of life since that time, both spiritually and personally, but despite all my progress, despite working intensely through every area of my grief, that hole – that emptiness – is still there.
With God all things are possible, including the healing and subsequent fulfillment of my heart. However, God could have personally fulfilled Adam’s need for a wife but he didn’t. He instead created Eve so that Adam would have a helpmate and not feel lonely. God created me with the need for a wife also, and though I do know God is fully able to fill up this hole and erase my desire for intimate love with a woman, I do not believe that will happen. I believe that either the hole will always be there or God will give me a wife to restore what was lost.
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Thoughts from a grandmother, married (happily) for 49 years: Do you realize that your capacity to love that deeply and fully is the measure of YOUR being. As much as we try to be in the other’s soul, and I think my husband and I do; there is always something new to learn, something you didn’t pick up on, about that person. In the end, we have to be good at being ourselves, so that we can offer the best to our mate. You loved with all your heart; your fiancé was not as capable, for whatever reason, unable to accept that love, or maybe the intrusion into her space. It seems we all ask for a certain size vessel when we are born. That vessel will hold the amount of love given to us. Some of us are lucky to get a bigger vessel, thereby a capacity to accept a large amount of love. I guess what I’m trying to say is, you were not equal in your capacity to give and receive love. Perhaps her family members were introverts and did not express feelings to each other. My parents were much older when I came along, and both came from German parents who were very stoic and did not express feelings. My husband came from a family that never held back emotions. You said it and got it out in the open and got over it. And love and affection were plentiful. Thank God I found this man; I don’t think many men would be as patient as my husband, in expressing love. You have a huge capacity to love and accept love. You did not lose that capacity because you loved deeply. It has not been diminished, only put away for safe keeping until you meet someone who is willing to love and be loved. Don’t give up hope; and don’t go looking for it. When you can trust again, the right woman will appear. Best wishes.
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Mary,
I really don’t know what to say except thanks. The rest of this comment is me thinking out loud.
Each of us by default thinks that, inside, others are essentially just like our self, except somewhat varied – including our capacity to love. Fifteen years have passed since my fiancé and I separated. I have learned a great deal about personality and relationships since that time, but I never thought about what you said concerning one’s capacity to give and receive love. I spent all these years thinking I could solve the issue if I learn to love my future wife the way she needs to receive love. Interestingly, you implied that love given does not necessarily guarantee love returned, for one reason or another. That tells me that even in those cases where someone is given authentic love, he or she may choose not to accept that love, let alone return it.
Thanks a lot for that. This reminds me of God’s love for me. He loves me completely – the way I need love – but my capacity to return that love to him depends on my willingness to first accept his love. Once I willingly receive it, I immediately want to love him back with all that I am. I believe this is what marriage is all about; open-heartedly sharing love with our spouse, completely – mind, body, soul, and spirit. God says in the Bible that he made us in his own image: that must be why we long to intimately, completely, share love with our spouse. God loves us completely and desires our intimate love in return. Likewise, we want to completely love our spouse, but then also desire that love’s complete return.
This brings me to your final statement, “You did not lose that capacity because you loved deeply. It has not been diminished, only put away for safe keeping until you meet someone who is willing to love and be loved. Don’t give up hope; and don’t go looking for it. When you can trust again, the right woman will appear.” The capacity to love and receive love is dependant on one’s willingness to love and be loved, which entirely depends on one’s ability/willingness to trust. If I won’t trust, not only will I never find my lady and receive her love in return for mine, but also I will not receive the love God gives to me all day every day, the very love he created me to receive, and return.
I will regain that trust, and thanks to you I now know what I have been missing. I will learn to trust again.
Thank you, Mary. Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me. I really appreciate it.
Todd
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You are welcome! I wish you much happiness. Think of each person as a vessel. You can either have a small container in which to receive love (or any other attribute, i.e. friendship, health, grace, forgiveness, etc., or a large vessel. And, we know, a vacuum attracts. So, get rid of doubt, fear, anxiety, self-loathing, or whatever it may be that you do not want, and then there will be room for the attributes you DO want. I have a poster on my wall that I found recently: “you can’t reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday’s junk.” by Laura Smith (no relation) LOL. So good luck and God speed!
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Well said. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving weekend.
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Desire in and of itself is not “sinful”. Where would we be if we didn’t have a desire to breathe, to eat, to warm ourselves when we are cold or to cool ourselves when we are hot. The list of human desires are too numerous to mention here but I do hope that you get my drift in all this. One very important thing about desire that most of us fail to comprehend is that it exists independently from our mind, or even what we may consider to be sound reason, or even common sense for that matter. The very life of all who we are of our “natural selves” is in the seeking of, and ultimately the fulfillment of, all that we are as God created human beings (even in our original before sin condition, human beings had an inbuilt “automatic” desire to love God). It was only after the “fall of man into sin” that this Divine innocence of man was now corrupted, and this is evident where God asked Adam “who told you that you are naked”—–before the fall, “man” did not even know he was naked, let alone to now have this newfound mental ability to “do his own thing” so far as sinfully perverting every good thing about him that God had originally created him to be.
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Robert,
Rarely can I give a “two thumbs up” reply to someone’s comment. Yours is one of those comments. I have given a lot of thought about the concept of desire over the years – specifically, ‘Need versus Desire’. You are so right: desire all by itself is neither good nor bad; it is what we do with it that either builds us up or tears us down.
My conclusion is that if we desire what we truly need, we will likewise truly need what we most desire. The two go hand in hand, to which you alluded in your ‘Adam and Eve-pre/post fall’ example. It is only when these two elements fall out of sync with Truth that problems arise.
Just because I feel I need a particular something, that doesn’t mean I truly need it. It might instead be my object of misplaced desire. And also, just because I truly need a particular something, that doesn’t by default mean I consciously desire it. Learning to both recognize and understand the difference between these two (need and desire), in each area of my life, has really showed me the difference between ‘what I naturally think of as personally good and beneficial’ versus ‘what is good and beneficial according to how God designed me’. The bottom line is, we never change for the better without desiring our true needs: God being the first need, the Living Truth; and the second, inviting Truth to reveal which of our life-areas contradicts truth.
That leads me to my final thought, the definition of Truth: “Truth is the wellspring of life, the source of all non-contradiction – Todd Beal.” Where truth is not welcome there exists only contradiction, which is oppression, angst, and death. Truth is the source of Life – contradiction is the source of death. Without Truth, contradiction dies – it would have nothing to contradict. With or without contradiction, Truth lives on and on forever as it always has and always will.
Praise God forever!
Robert, thank you for leaving that excellent comment – well said!
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Sex is for pleasure and creating life, period. This is fact, yours is based on faith.
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