 |
| A pile of books. Image source. |
Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
---
Here's the last chapter of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], chapter 13.
This chapter is basically a summary of how they decided to do the survey about the effect of Christian teaching on people's marriages, and some general advice moving forward.
I want to talk about this quote from page 233:
The problems we have discussed in this book can be summarized in this woman's comment:
In our first months of marriage I would beg my husband to slow down, and he never would because he was afraid sex would stop and he would be left hanging. Several years ago, in tearful post-sex frustration, I explained to him that he left me feeling that way every time we had sex. I saw a light bulb go off, but he quickly put it out, saying, "We'll just have to work on catching you up," rolled over, and went to sleep. Nothing ever changed. My husband had multiple partners before marriage and I was a virgin. So he really thinks he's a great lover and I just don't appreciate him. I tried to explain his attitude is killing our sex life, but he thinks my lack of interest is killing it. I love my husband and sometimes I do want sex, but when I think about how he's going to jump straight to intercourse and I'm going to be left disappointed, why put myself through it? How different would my marriage be if the marriage classes we took taught him he's responsible for making sex feel good for me? Instead he has learned that I owe him sex, our sex life is bad because we don't have sex every three days, and if he chooses to to have an affair, it's my fault for not giving him enough sex. Oh, and it's my job to make him believe I enjoy sex even if I don't. How can a wife even begin to combat all this bad teaching and be heard?Our call to the evangelical church is that our resources should lead women like this commenter to feel protected, not dismissed, and should lead men like her husband to feel convicted, not validated.
This comment is SPOT ON.
The thing that strikes me about this is, her husband feels like he's good at sex, and the problem is with her. This way of thinking is incomprehensible- there's no such thing as being "good at sex"/ "a good lover" in a general sense- it's a concept that's inherently connected to the specifics of what your partner wants and how your partner feels. ie, being "a good lover" is mostly about listening to your partner and doing what feels good for them.
But, I mean, Christian marriage teaching says you are supposed to have sex in marriage, and sex is PIV [penis in vagina], so then the couple goes ahead and does PIV, and the man likes it and the woman doesn't... Like, of course they're going to conclude the problem is with her. How could it be a problem with her husband? He is indeed doing PIV, therefore he is doing sex correctly, but she is not reacting with positive emotions, therefore she is doing sex incorrectly. Right?
The problem is this overly-simplistic idea that sex is PIV (and that men don't have to put in any more effort beyond that). We should actually be teaching people that sex is something you and your partner design together, and the point is to be a good experience for both of you. And it doesn't have to be PIV. And you should masturbate to figure out what feels good physically for you, and then incorporate that into your sex life with your partner. I believe the masturbating part is very important because it's *just* physical without any relationship aspect; I think it's important for women to know that sex is supposed to feel good *physically* for them- it's not just "it feels good for my male partner and I like seeing him happy."
(Okay because I'm asexual I have to put a caveat on that- some asexuals choose to have sex mainly because it feels good for their partner. Which is fine, if it's an informed choice. What's not fine is if you've convinced yourself you're happy with sex that doesn't feel good physically because you've been taught your whole life that the wife is required to give her husband sex, and women don't really like sex, and you've never even heard of female orgasms. Not cool! At least read up on masturbation and orgasms before deciding you're fine having sex that only feels good for your partner.)
And another thing about this comment from the book- this woman was taught that she is required to have sex with her husband even if she hates it. Here's a thought: How about we tell people to just completely refuse to have bad sex? Imagine if everyone thought that yes of course it's a totally normal and reasonable reaction for her to just refuse to have sex because her husband isn't listening to her or caring about how it feels for her. But instead the church is teaching that yeah women should expect sex to be unpleasant but they have to do it anyway.
It's so wrong, and the farther I get from that ideology, the more I'm astounded at how wrong it is. Like, sex can be such a good thing, but this ideology ruins it by saying it has to be PIV, and if you don't like the way your husband does PIV, well too bad, you have to do it anyway, that's what it means to be a wife.
So I'm really glad that this book, "The Great Sex Rescue," exists. So much Christian teaching about sex and marriage is very harmful, and we need to fight against it.
Moving along, this chapter of "The Great Sex Rescue" tells us that we don't need to believe things just because they're in a Christian book. We should use discernment- if something sounds wrong, maybe it IS wrong. You don't have to believe it.
I love that they said this- this is really important. When I was a kid, I really did believe that there was one correct "Christian view" of every issue, and that good Christian leaders all knew the correct beliefs, and if a Christian book said something, then it must be right. (And I read A LOT of Christian books back then.) It was interesting for me, in college, reading some atheist books and having the mindset that "I don't agree that this book is correct"- reading much more carefully and critically than I had ever read a "Christian" book... And before that, I had been afraid to read atheist books because I was warned that I might be "led astray"- ie, our minds are weak and we might be deceived into believing thing that aren't true, so we must totally avoid listening to anyone who doesn't agree with our beliefs. Unlike Christian books, which (I believed) you can just simply read and accept because the authors are trustworthy and have the correct Christian beliefs.
The advice that this chapter gives to pastors and ministry leaders is similar: Take a look at what marriage resources your church is promoting, because many of the popular Christian marriage books are bad. What books do you have in your church library? What books does your church use in small group meetings? Some pastors recommend books without having read them, just assuming that they must be good because they're bestsellers written by Christians. Don't do that! Some of those books are really harmful!
And also this:
Finally, free people up to say no to harmful resources. Nobody can review every book, blog post, or radio program, but you can empower your congregation to exercise discernment. Say clearly and often from the pulpit, "Not all advice or 'Christian' instruction is actually Christ-centered. We're trying to point you in the right direction, but we can't monitor everything. If you ever read or hear something that doesn't sound right to you, use your discernment. It's okay to reject it. Talk to us if you want to, but know that we do not endorse everything just because it claims to be Christian, and it's okay if you don't either."
Two things to say about this:
First of all, YES!!!!! YES, this is absolutely right, and I wish I had known this when I was a kid. Use your own brain, rather than just accepting everything that Christian leaders say. Question it!
Second: Ah, well, I can think of a very big reason why Christian leaders are not saying this. If people start questioning Christian teaching on marriage, what if they start questioning other Christian teaching? What if they start questioning you, the pastor?
Some pastors genuinely do want to help people. Some pastors want to control people. So. That's the problem.
Anyway, that's the end of the book. I have a bunch of concluding thoughts about it, so I'll write one last post in this blog series. Stay tuned for that~
---
Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
Related:
No comments:
Post a Comment