"Good Sex"
Someone just before the service today said, “I thought the title of your sermon today was redundant.” Someone said to me after the first service about the sermon on sex, “The only thing you did not talk about was headaches.”
So I thought I should repeat the story here at the beginning to take care of that. A man brought his wife two aspirins and she said, “I did not ask for aspirin. I don’t have a headache!” And he said, “Gotcha!”
A colleague of mine recalls having seen these words on someone’s cap in a Boston subway: “Take my advice, I’m not using it.”
Those words came immediately to mind when I pulled out of my files a reading with which to begin this sermon on the topic of “Good Sex.”
The reading is a portion of one of those Time magazine columns on the sexes by John Leo from the July 1, 1985 issue on good sex. His little dialogue might have been titled, “Take my Advice, I’m Not Using It.”
This is the gist of it: Ralph and Wanda are talking about the Dr. Ruth Westhemier's sex information talk show and Wanda says, “It’s 10 o’clock, Ralph. Do you want to watch the news or the Ruth Westheimer show on good sex? It’s a big hit, you know, on cable TV. Every night about 3,000 callers try to get through and she’s got a book out, Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex. She’s a great success.”
Ralph replies, “And no wonder my pet. Chicken soup and voyeurism are a dynamic combination. You could spend a decade peering into the neighbor’s bedroom windows and not get half the kick of a Westheimer show. You sit mesmerized as Ruth soothingly points out, ‘normalcy is hard to define,’ and ‘there is no one right size for the sex organs.’ Furthermore, the show reveals that ‘everything’s such a mess out there, it makes your own sex life seem pretty good. Ours is superb, by the way.’”
“Give her a little credit, Ralph,” admonishes Wanda, “she’s funny and she has a knack for relaxing all those troubled people out there.”
Says Ralph, “A cynic might say she is using a marketable shtick, Wanda. Your dowager aunt can be counted on to ask about the children, but Ruth—looking so tiny and wholesome and middle-aged—leans forward sweetly and asks you, ‘Why don’t you do it in the kitchen?’”
“Somehow, Ralph,” Wanda comes back, “I get the impression that no program on sex could ever meet your standards. I think it’s time to go to bed, Ralph.” And Ralph answers, “Right, dearest, you get the lights. I’ll get the projector.”
This year he might have said, “I’ll put the skin-flick on the VCR.”
Good sex?
Let me say that the history of Christianity notwithstanding, sex is good in itself. If it is bad, we cannot help but be bad too, because sex is the life manufacturing system without which we would not be or do anything including our sexuality.
Sex is good in itself. And sex is beautiful. Only it can be used in ugly ways, like so many things. Sex has to be guided by values.
Ethos is important. A young woman reported to one of her professors at Princeton that she would not engage in heavy petting as a normal part of campus dating. Asked what the basis of her resistance was, she said, “It’s too silly but I suppose it’s because my mother told me not to.” That was the ethos out of which she behaved—the community of her first loyalty.
I recall when the curriculum was first being proposed for children in our churches, “About Your Sexuality,” it troubled me that there were no values in the curriculum.
Actually, they are there. They are in the teachers. Values are important. And we know that education about sexuality is important.
My friend and colleague at our Germantown church, The Rev. William J. Gardiner, revealed something from his own life in a sermon. He said I might quote him:
“I grew up in a home,” said Gardiner, “where sex was not discussed. I can still remember the one and only time my father talked with me about sex. I was a sophomore in high school and I was dating a young woman. Well, Christmas time came and I wanted to take her a present on Christmas Eve and stay for a while and do those things that normal healthy teenagers do. But, I wasn’t old enough to drive so I needed my father to take me there. Well, we’re driving along and I’m talking with my father about the upcoming game between the Celtics and the Sixers since we are rabid Celtic fans. There’s a lull in the conversation and my father says to me, ‘Don’t to do it.’”
“I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. I mean I didn’t even know what ‘it’ was. So I turned to him and I said, ‘What do you mean, don’t do it?’ And he looked back at me and said, ‘Don’t do it.’
That was it! Sex education 101 summed up in three powerful words, “Don’t do it!”
Generations of people—and this is still true for many today—discover that sexual repression makes it difficult to find meaning in sex. One has to learn so as not to be ignorant; plus one learns new warmth and discovers the freedom that commitment can bring when it is time to do it.
By the way, adults can choose not to be sexually active and live perfectly meaningful lives too. But that has nothing to do with whether or not sex per se is good.
Sexual intercourse can be wondrous and wonderful. Henry Miler wrote of it, “If you enter deeply enough, remain long enough, you will find what you seek. But you’ve got to enter with heart and soul and check your belongings outside.”
And a woman might have written, “If you receive trustingly enough, embrace long enough, you will find what you seek, but you’ve got to receive, heart and soul, and check your reservations somewhere else.”
Love and touch, staying and risk and trust, that is good sex in a good relationship, where the symbols of the world’s power and material wealth are checked for a time. But a person cannot do all that unless one learns something about hidden agendas—our own.
For you see, the big sex organ is the human brain—in positive or in negative ways.
Let me recommend to your careful reading the long articles in the November and December 1986 issues of Atlantic Monthly magazine by Maggie Scarf under the titles, “Intimate Partners" and "Intimate Partners (Part Two).” These writings comprise as sophisticated and ‘ring true’ an exposition of intimacy, its helps and its obstacles, as I have seen in some time.
Let me convey some of Maggie Scarf’s ideas, albeit in my own way and language. What our relationship to our parents was, and our internalization in our heads, especially unconsciously, of those relationships is more important to good sex than sexual activity itself is. That experiential history determines (unless we learn and change the old tapes, old computer memories and printouts) how we “do” or do not “do” intimacy.
The big sex organ, the big relational organ is the brain and the extent to which, in its recesses, the individual remains plugged in to the “we” of his or her family of origin (controlled by the family’s emotional relational program)—to that extent will be determined the ease or the difficulty, the flexibility or the inflexibility, the gratification or lack thereof in a marriage that person may achieve.
Here’s an example. We choose our partners for unconscious emotional reasons generally. Otherwise, people might never get together for long. But suppose a man is depressed—out of a family where there was insufficient nurture—and he chooses a woman to act out his depression for him so he doesn’t have to.
She, also unconsciously, obliges, becoming vulnerable, dependent, moody, and despairing. It relieves his anxiety for her to be that way so that he doesn’t have to look at the degree to which he is, himself, the depressed one. Thus, he denies his own condition and feelings as she takes the emotional rap and role.
So, not consciously, mind you, he wants her to stay down there in the pits, yet he begins to believe that “her” depression is getting him down too; after a while, its going to pull him into the ditch of despondency, driving him to the edge. And, he feels unbearably vulnerable and trapped. The truth now is, he wants a depressed wife and he doesn’t want one, which all at once is like wanting her to be talkative and quiet, fat and thin, short and tall, all at the same time.
Impossible!
And, of course, with this dynamic going on, should one be surprised that sex is not often good? In truth it is the two of them who create the ongoing reticence, because she has “bought into” the dynamic unconsciously to meet her own needs: the two of them collude to prohibit intimacy yet they do not know why.
What is intimacy? Intimacy is not moonlight and roses. Intimacy is a couple’s ability to share, to talk about who they are, to say what she needs, to speak of what he desires honestly, and know that each is being heard by the intimate partner.
People cannot be intimate if they do not trust, if they do not feel good about their partner or if they do not feel good about themselves.
The major sex organ is the brain and the history of the experience of love and esteem is brought there early on. What’s the old song? “Love and Marriage…” remember that one. No, it’s:
Love and esteem,
Love and esteem,
Go together
like the milk
and cream!
So we want that good stuff—we wish to quaff down the rich cream but we cannot take the cholesterol. Individual esteem is heavy with history and some of the history is likely to be self-destructive of the very love in which it is emulsified.
Feelings from the past control sexual expression. One of the things some people do, emotionally, and do not even know they are doing, is called projection. They learned it early. It is unconscious. And projection is bad for sex, for intimacy, for relationships in general.
An example in quite another context: lately I’ve been thinking I’ve just got to purchase a snow-blower. I mean that stuff gets heavy; shoveling snow is risky. My neighbor has a snow-blower, let’s say. He’s in his mid-seventies. Never has a problem.
ZR-R-R-R-R-R! Blows the snow right away.
Now suppose I am one of those people who projects my feelings onto others. I start to think, “God this snow is a pain! Besides, I’ve really got to get out of here. I have appointments today.” Well, I’ll just go across the street and borrow Sam’s snow-blower. I mean, Sam is a good guy. And, after all, I loaned him my lawnmower once when his was on the blink.
So I start across the street to Sam’s house, thinking on the way, “But Sam is so darned fussy about his tools. I remember one time I borrowed his hammer for just two days and he thought I let it get rusty. Yet, well, he’s okay.”
I’m still on the way to Sam’s house and I think, “But Holy Moses, if I borrow that snow blower he’ll be over, wanting to borrow my wife’s car for something. Just because he’s retired they have only one car. Why don’t they get a second jalopy?”
I’m almost at Sam’s door by now. I think to myself, “If I borrow that snow blower you can just bet the darned thing will break down and then he’s going to want me to get it fixed.”
I get to Sam’s front door and ring the bell. He comes to the door and I shout in his face, “You can keep your blasted snow blower!”
Well, that’s what people do in relationships with their partners and lovers if they have a projection problem. Some people grow up disavowing parts of themselves and their personalities, while projecting those rejected parts of themselves onto the lover; then condemning them there which, of course, leads to a poor relationship—no intimacy, bad sex, conflict and self-entrapment (while not knowing any better).
One person can be off-the-wall; angry, explosive, tempestuous; or helpless, anxiety ridden, and project these things onto the spouse.
Hey Sam, or Sandra, you can keep your blasted “sexuality.” That’s what happens. How the devil can we change some of these things? With help? Yes. Some go that route and are helped.
Also, read Maggie Scarf’s December Atlantic article on “Intimacy.” There are some simple (to describe), serious suggestions as to how to break up polarization and create greater intimacy (better sex can follow).
I will mention them very, very briefly, but you should read them yourself if you’re going to see how they work and what things to look out for.
The first is Talking and Listening. Once a week the couple agrees to talk for one hour. Each one has a half hour. She or he must talk in that half hour only about the self, with no comments from the other and no remarks about the partner. The partner agrees to listen carefully, attentively. Then they switch. The partner talks for half an hour with the other one listening carefully with no interruptions, no comment about the other person. Then they do not discuss this at all. Just go about their business. Three days later they may, if they wish, to talk about what they learned.
It is amazing what can happen. The breakaway from projecting and provoking patterns, from collusion, from the hurtful tradeoffs they did not know they were into just by this kind of talking and listening, is amazing.
The second exercise is Odd Day-Even Day. Say she takes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He takes Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday they can play their old tapes and mess up their lives as usual.
But on one’s odd day or even day that person is in charge of that day’s intimacy and may make one intimate request which the other agrees to do.
There are rules. No requests about sex or money for now. These subjects are too hot! There are other rules. Go to the library and read the article – December ′86 Atlantic.
Number three is adding requests. The couple moves up to two, three or four intimate requests on their odd and even days as they may mutually agree.
Finally, number four, Control and Meta Control: They move towards sharing control simultaneously. Each may make as many intimate requests as he/she wishes on his/her day, but the receiver of the request, if thrown into overload by it, may call the exercise off for that day and refuse any request that is felt to be too much.
All sounds very easy. Try it. Not so easy. And be careful. The head you’re messing with may be your own, as well as your partner’s! The game you will be winning may lose you your crutches.
Good sex. What do people do about it – experiment, read about it, sex therapy, and on and on. Some swear by what they have learned about ancient Taoism and sexuality; reading Jolan Chang’s The Tao of Love and Sex and the Tao of the Loving Couple: Sexual engagement should slow, but slow and easy, without worrying about orgasm for either one. But all in all, the sex-experimentation not withstanding, what people are looking for is love, and needing intimacy, even if it scares them.
Many people are more afraid of intimacy than they are of anger. That’s why they keep setting themselves up for angry exchanges. A fight a day keeps the intimacy away, sad to say.
The best result of ethical, non-exploitative work on loving relationships would be to arrive at the place where each person is autonomous, independent, “and” intimate (unthreatened by closeness) at the same time.
Then, as Scarf suggests,
“If one member of a couple wanted to finish watching a television program and the other wanted to go to bed and make love, they could work it out. The one watching TV (let’s say the man) would not feel that his wife was crowding him, trying to take away his autonomy, his choice about the way in which he wants to spend his time. He might indicate to his wife that he wants to complete the autonomous piece of behavior in which he is engaged and can’t do that and make love to her at the same time. So, could she wait until he is feeling a bit more interested? A couple at this level of security in themselves and with each other will easily work out some kind of mutually acceptable quid pro quo, because the fact that one feels different from the other and is a fundamentally different person is not experienced as a threat or a betrayal.”
My Germantown colleague reminded his congregation in his sermon that sex is a lifelong opportunity for the experience of meaning and it is not news that sexual feelings are important to all of us—all our lives—in the later years, too. My friend said he liked the scene in the movie, “Cocoon,” in which an earthman wants to make love with an extraterrestrial woman in a swimming pool. She agrees and he steps into the pool ready for action. He is flabbergasted when she says, “Don’t touch me!” Then she proceeds to generate an orgasmic mental force field that nearly knocks him over without a single touch. Dazed by that power, he stammers, “If this is foreplay, I’m a dead man!”
I’ve written a little poem to end:
Sex is great
And sex is good,
And we’d thank “IT:
If we could.
No?
Then symbol faith a word to use
That God is great
And God is good
And we thank God for this “food.”
The Good Book says,
You ought to know,
That sex from little apples grow.
But, mark my word
And mark it right,
Be careful folks
Before you bite.
God bless us all!
