"When sex avoids commitment and intimacy, it tends to leave us lonely"

SlaveToRighteousness

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Hi everyone -

The title of this thread is from this post (http://xxxchurch.com/men/50-shades-grey-sex-spiritual-experience.html) about the spiritual nature of sex. It's a good read.
 

LTE

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I really enjoyed that. I have lived that very moment myself, when I was living separately from a woman (from whom I was later divorced) and having conjugal visits at her request. I came back to my apartment after one such visit and felt a profound sense of loneliness and emptiness that I find chilling to recall, even three decades later. I stopped the "conjugal visits" shortly thereafter feeling that if we couldn't get along well enough to share our living arrangements we certainly should not be sharing sex. Ever since, I have realized that a great night of sex is pretty meaningless if you don't share the same breakfast table.

Thanks for posting this, STR.
 

Berens

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Because of growing watching porn and learning about sex from that i was thinking that sex with a women is a masturbation using a female body. I have read some book about "sexual integration". What does it mean?  It means that sex is an integration of physical, emotional and spiritual connection between man and woman. And without being growing in a religious family, the spiritual meaning of sex and its relation with a god makes sense to me.  Understanding that is a big mindset change and it definitely helps with reboot. Now i know what i want, what i need, why i reboot. By the way, i write from a perspective of 20 virgin guy. Cheers
 

SlaveToRighteousness

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Young people today seem obsessed with figuring out how to have sex without becoming emotionally-attached to the person you're having sex with. It's amazing and sad to think about how everything in our culture today is telling people that the key to happiness is to "hook up" and have as much sex as possible without having all of the "baggage" of a committed long-term relationship or any "strings" attached.

The incredible irony is that the very things that get labeled "baggage" and "strings" are the things that actually make sex fulfilling and life-giving in the first place...
 

LTE

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STR said:
Young people today seem obsessed with figuring out how to have sex without becoming emotionally-attached to the person you're having sex with. It's amazing and sad to think about how everything in our culture today is telling people that the key to happiness is to "hook up" and have as much sex as possible without having all of the "baggage" of a committed long-term relationship or any "strings" attached.

The incredible irony is that the very things that get labeled "baggage" and "strings" are the things that actually make sex fulfilling and life-giving in the first place...
I agree completely.
 

Gracie

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STR I agree.  What binds us together is helping each other through all the times of our lives.  But when we feel rotten about ourselves, there is nothing more comforting than our lifemate that has our back.  Especially when they tell us all the good things they see in us and hold us while we figure it out.    I used to tell my boys you can have recreational sex or committed love sex, but I can tell you from experience the committed love sex is thousands of times better.
 

LTE

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Gracie said:
STR I agree.  What binds us together is helping each other through all the times of our lives.  But when we feel rotten about ourselves, there is nothing more comforting than our lifemate that has our back.  Especially when they tell us all the good things they see in us and hold us while we figure it out.    I used to tell my boys you can have recreational sex or committed love sex, but I can tell you from experience the committed love sex is thousands of times better.
You said a mouthful there.
 

Gabe Deem

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STR said:
Young people today seem obsessed with figuring out how to have sex without becoming emotionally-attached to the person you're having sex with. It's amazing and sad to think about how everything in our culture today is telling people that the key to happiness is to "hook up" and have as much sex as possible without having all of the "baggage" of a committed long-term relationship or any "strings" attached.

The incredible irony is that the very things that get labeled "baggage" and "strings" are the things that actually make sex fulfilling and life-giving in the first place...

Spot on.... wise words STR.
 

jkkk

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Absolutely correct.

Yet absolutely untenable for an addict. A great view on what is going on in our addicted selves has been just posted here:

http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=3805.0

And, honestly, to me that kind of information should be like contained in step-by-step reboot anthology. I acknowledge not every guy in this forum experienced that kind of problems, but this is in my view 100% spot on for those, who, unluckily, had almost all their childhood/adolescent/youth sexual experiences with PMO only and without contact with any women. Myself included. I really try not to pity myself, and I guess I would get even less pity from women around here, but just to state the obvious: none of us enjoyed even a second of being in that state of total disconnection from real women. If I could go back in a time-machine and help that poor guy of me, talk to him and explain just how wrong he is, I would. Not even to my benefit, but to the benefit of my wife.
 

LTE

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jkkk said:
Absolutely correct.

Yet absolutely untenable for an addict. A great view on what is going on in our addicted selves has been just posted here:

http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=3805.0

And, honestly, to me that kind of information should be like contained in step-by-step reboot anthology. I acknowledge not every guy in this forum experienced that kind of problems, but this is in my view 100% spot on for those, who, unluckily, had almost all their childhood/adolescent/youth sexual experiences with PMO only and without contact with any women. Myself included. I really try not to pity myself, and I guess I would get even less pity from women around here, but just to state the obvious: none of us enjoyed even a second of being in that state of total disconnection from real women. If I could go back in a time-machine and help that poor guy of me, talk to him and explain just how wrong he is, I would. Not even to my benefit, but to the benefit of my wife.
I am convinced that our current culture has altered the social relationship between the genders, and not for the good. Sex is spoken of in terms more suited to describing sports or gambling. Since when has having intercourse been a form of "scoring" or "getting lucky"? Intercourse, the very word, means:

1: connection or dealings between persons or groups
2: exchange especially of thoughts or feelings :  communion
3: physical sexual contact between individuals that involves the genitalia of at least one person

Think about that, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, as quoted above, sexual contact is the tertiary definition of the word intercourse. The definition references the word communion which is an act or instance of sharing. Do terms like scoring sound congruous with an act or instance of sharing?

I am fortunate to have figured this out, roughly 8 months into my reboot. I was frustrated and lonely. I felt very isolated and wanted female companionship badly. I gave thought to casual sex or even traveling to Nevada to a legal brothel but then I asked myself an important question; what did I really want? The answer surprised me; in a good way. I was horny, shaking with desire and ready to do something foolhardy but what I really wished for was to have a cup of coffee with a lady friend. That was it! No feeling up someone, no sexual escapades, simply the calming and socializing effect of spending time with a friendly woman; the word "friendly" is not a euphemism for anything sexual in this case. Simply stated, what I craved at that moment was not sexual intercourse but social intercourse.

Women provide an emotional counterbalance to our masculine personalities. We can see it all the time if we just take time to look. Even in our libertine era, men tend to be better behaved when women are around. Our language is usually a bit more refined and we control our behavior. It's not simply a matter of hoping for sex, we tend to be better behaved when we are around women that are off limits to us sexually, such as relatives, wives of friends, etc. Rowdy little boys have been known to become civilized in the presence of little girls, even when both are at an age where sexual desire is not normally present. The fact is, I, as a male, want to be approved of by females and I suspect that most females want to be approved of by males. I want to be approved of by women that are married and completely out of the dating market. I want to be approved of by females because that lets me know that there's hope for me to find the kind of long-term companionship that I need in my life . . . the kind of long-term companionship that we all need in our lives, because isolation is poison to the soul.

In every culture, marriage occurs. It exists in the bible belt, it exists in atheistic societies. It seems to be a barometer of the health of a civilization. In places where things are very bad, marriage and family seem to be in trouble. Boomtowns and mining camps are famed for prostitution and these places tend to be very short-lived, rarely developing into stable communities. OTOH, marriage and prosperity seem to coexist very well. I think it goes a lot deeper than just having a built-in sex partner. It's the moderating, civilizing effect that women have on us which is more important. Likewise, women benefit from a stable and loving partnership. The genders, when operating in an atmosphere of cooperation and love, tend to really help one another.

The "anything goes" morality of our day in age has gone a long way to erode trust between the genders. Many women feel that they must be on guard because they are the targets of guys just hoping to put another notch in the bedpost. A lot of men fear marriage because they know that divorce is very costly and, frequently, the male ends up moving out of the family home and starting over from scratch. It can be financially devastating. I speak from experience.

Sadly, the effect is estrangement and great social cost.
 

Gracie

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LTE you are right relationships appear to be reduced to co-habiting sexual partners.  This lends to the belief then that if this one does not work out then either person can move out and move on.  I was in a violent first marriage and I am glad that divorce was an option, but I also think that divorce is often the first answer as opposed to the last answer.  Viewing marriage in that way takes out the commitment necessary to make a marriage work.  I can say that the last 3 years of our marriage my husband have worked harder than ever before to work through and past the porn addiction. 

I am saddened when I see the married women that have come here and have ended up with divorce as their option.  That is not meant to be construed to mean they did not work hard enough or long enough.  It just means that porn and our porn culture have made casualties of another relationship.  Sex without emotion or commitment or a human, other than oneself, that is being touched.  No reaching outside of yourself, no sharing of yourself with another.  No gift of yourself.  And that is the beauty of marriage, the gifting to one another of a self. 

And to get through and work through porn addiction, the addict must find himself once again.  He must find his self.
 

LTE

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Gracie said:
LTE you are right relationships appear to be reduced to co-habiting sexual partners.  This lends to the belief then that if this one does not work out then either person can move out and move on.  I was in a violent first marriage and I am glad that divorce was an option, but I also think that divorce is often the first answer as opposed to the last answer.  Viewing marriage in that way takes out the commitment necessary to make a marriage work.  I can say that the last 3 years of our marriage my husband have worked harder than ever before to work through and past the porn addiction. 

I am saddened when I see the married women that have come here and have ended up with divorce as their option.  That is not meant to be construed to mean they did not work hard enough or long enough.  It just means that porn and our porn culture have made casualties of another relationship.  Sex without emotion or commitment or a human, other than oneself, that is being touched.  No reaching outside of yourself, no sharing of yourself with another.  No gift of yourself.  And that is the beauty of marriage, the gifting to one another of a self. 

And to get through and work through porn addiction, the addict must find himself once again.  He must find his self.
As I mentioned above, the watershed moment for me was realizing that I wanted companionship, not sex. I grew up in a religious environment, no premarital sex allowed. I never even viewed it as a possibility. When I reached a point of despair and was ready to cast the rules aside I saw what was in my psyche, and it was a desire for companionship. Find a companion, someone you enjoy spending a lot of time with, and sex becomes a lovely, private, intimate thing that you uniquely share. Start off looking for sex and you will be trying to force fit someone into your life just because you like the sex. Its a bass-ackwards approach on its best day.

It takes work to make someone a life partner. It takes patience, because no matter how wonderful that person is, there's a lot to be tolerated anytime two people with two separate free wills try to live together; but it can be worth it.
 

jkkk

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lte said:
Find a companion, someone you enjoy spending a lot of time with, and sex becomes a lovely, private, intimate thing that you uniquely share. Start off looking for sex and you will be trying to force fit someone into your life just because you like the sex. Its a bass-ackwards approach on its best day.

It takes work to make someone a life partner. It takes patience, because no matter how wonderful that person is, there's a lot to be tolerated anytime two people with two separate free wills try to live together; but it can be worth it.

So true.

I found myself in this point in a somewhat awkward manner - as the one questioning, because of all the addictive points of view, the sense of being with a person who is just the most fantastic companion. Not without her vices (show me someone without any ;) ) but a great great companion.

Thanks, lte, for your insight and your view. It is a well-digested and wise thought for me to read, grasp, hold on to and remind myself while battling some addiction-induced thoughts and statements swamping my mind at times.
 

LTE

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You have a good track record built up, jkkk. Stick with it, improvement keeps happening over time. I'm better now than I was 100 days ago and worlds better than I was 400 days ago.
 
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