Stuck Between Erotic and a Hard Place

Processing Sexual Conundrums Between Two Extremes

“Is the ‘Hoe Phase’ Really Empowering?”

I spend a lot of time questioning why I think the way I do. When I hear people talk about most any subject where I find myself having an inner reaction of some kind—emotional, uncomfortable, judgmental, shock, disdain, fear, or even resistance—I think, hmmm, I wonder what happened to make me have that kind of response? These inner contractions or defenses feel like triggers or unresolved traumas that need attention.

Sex is one of those subjects. It elicits many a noticeable reaction or contraction from my deep insides. At least half of my complicated sexual worldview is attributed to my upbringing and early programming. The other half? I am still trying to figure it out.

On the one hand, I observe the ways many regular, everyday people talk about, think about, or engage in sex out there in the modern world, and it seems like we are from different planets. Sex is almost like an impersonal currency exchanged on the game board of life as entertainment or a distraction in place of love, connection, and authenticity.

From the epidemic of porn, to hookup culture and apps, to platforms like Only Fans…my head spins with all the ways people do and regard sex. I’m quite certain some degree of a casual sex culture is as old as time, expressing itself in whatever methods are socially or technologically available. But it’s still a very uncomfortable concept for me.

I was in my early twenties when I first encountered porn films. My first husband and I were housesitting for a middle-aged couple when he popped in a video from their bookshelf. We were in for a surprise! To this day, I can still call up the images I saw nearly forty years ago—probably because it was so shocking to my innocent mind. I was mostly appalled but also a little baffled by the idea of couples watching porn films together to get off. It was perplexing to think that this is what people were using to create their inner narratives around “normal sex.”

Aside from circumventing or diminishing authentic sexual experience and human connection, I think the most difficult thing for me about porn was seeing women exploited and subjugated in ways that so many other women are revolting against. Even temple prostitutes were associated with “sacred prostitution,” a practice that venerated women surrounding worship, fertility, and the opportunity they offered temple visitors for symbolic, divine union.

As I moved through the years and was aware that my significant others watched porn at times, I think I was also very aware of being compared to a fiction—both the scripted actors and the contrived acts. It was painful as a woman to be aware that my man was looking at and forming mental and energetic attachments to impossible and unrealistic standards. I felt that these illusions harmed our ability to cultivate a healthy, unique, authentic sex life together.

One-night stands have obviously always been a thing, but the prolific increase in modern hookups via apps make me shudder with discomfort. What do people—especially most women—possibly enjoy about having frequent sex with complete strangers, only to say an awkward goodbye in the morning after merging body parts and fluids?

And now there’s the exponentially advancing area of hookups for married couples. A friend recently described how he and his wife go to specific bars for these encounters (in the recent past it was “key parties”) where couples go to pick up another couple. They go home together where they might swap partners for the night, or they might have a foursome. I really don’t judge them in any kind of old religious or “moral” way, I just can’t fathom anyone feeling safe enough or open enough to do these kinds of things with strangers. It seems to be about boredom and entertainment. It also might possibly be a way that couples refrain from cultivating true naked vulnerability with each other, which takes a lot of courage and work.

For me, the modern sex scene as described above feels shallow, frightening, and dehumanizing. To me, it strips sex of any spiritual or soulful context.

On the other hand, I remember how I was programmed during my formative years by conservative Christianity to think about sex and sexuality. The only kind of sex permitted or exonerated was within the confines of a sixty-year marriage to a person of the opposite sex, even more approved of if performed only in the missionary position.

I remember as a young adult in these circles, there being question if oral sex was regarded as sinful within a “godly” marriage because it did not lead to procreation and was therefore based in carnal, selfish, base desires. That view was obviously contested by Christian leaders who weren’t willing to stop practicing oral sex (if they were willing to admit doing it). But when unsure, better to err on the side of caution and avoid it all together, lest we displease God.

There was so much peer pressure in Evangelical Christianity around such a private, intimate act. It almost felt like everyone in church had eyes in your bedroom and would know if you did something you weren’t supposed to. As a backup plan, there were accountability groups for “spiritual transparency” where you were pressured to confess all your hidden or habitual sins to the group.

It’s an understatement to say that my regard for Christianity’s influence on sexual expression is equally negative. For humans who are intended to embody and express healthy, natural, flowing (God-given) sexual attraction, desires, and pleasure, Christianity is like a death sentence. To love God and avoid punishment, they say, one must toe the line and relinquish all fleshly (bodily) desires, because desire is the root of all moral failure. Moral failure is at the crux of displeasing God, resulting in death and separation. Anything wild or free about sex (or people) must be vilified, contained, tamed, and even exorcised until any signs of desire are completely eradicated (which really means suppressed).

But ask any psychotherapist. The desires are still in there, like a personal Pandora’s Box waiting for the lid to be cracked opened. In the Greek myth, Pandora’s box is filled with all the evils and miseries of the world. When the box is opened, all the hardships and miseries are unleashed. That’s what happens when Christianity creates a problem or a darkness around an innate human urge, telling us to stuff it. The more you suppress the contents of the box, the more likely they are to explode to the surface and destroy your ego-empire. Just ask iconic Christian leaders like Ted Haggard, a Colorado mega-church pastor caught making regular visits to a male prostitute and using illicit drugs. But the sad part of it is there was no need for suppression in the first place. We create a pretend problem through detrimental, unfounded beliefs imposed on us that later elicit devastating, real after-effects (and here).

Had Ted Haggard grown up with a generous acceptance of his natural urges with an appropriate and gracious avenue of expression—if he had been authentic to himself—he would not have sabotaged an entire career, marriage, and church over them.

As I look back over my experiences, I remember young Christians in the prime of our youth, beauty, and sexual urges walking around like dejected and domesticated wild cats in captivity. We all felt the wonder and ecstasy of sexual desire and fulfillment get wrung out of us by externally imposed guilt and shame. So yeah, when I see or hear of that kind of approach to sex and sexuality through religious indoctrination, I experience equally a lot of negative disdain, resistance, and discomfort toward those impositions.

Neither of these extremes on the spectrum of sexual integration and expression are palatable to me, yet where does that leave me? This is another one of those areas of post-religious life where I am not sure who I am, or who I’m becoming. I still contain remnants of the old wounds and shame from early programming, yet I’m pretty sure that I’m never going to fully shed my Christian girl ethos on sex.

Don’t get me wrong, I love sex. But I know that I have baggage around it that has inhibited my full surrender within it throughout my life. And while sex should be pleasurable, liberating, and inviting, I do think it matters why and with whom we experience those things in a greater context of connection and safety.

Where is the balance between wild liberation and safe connection? I desire to experience the fullness of authentic and meaningful intimacy, vulnerability, and pleasure with another without the extremes of shame, fear and distrust.

I recently heard from a very successful Only Fans “businesswoman,” and blogger who was raised in a conservative Christian environment who conducts deep, personal research into sex culture—that the world is basically split into two kinds of people. About half regard sex as sacred, and the other half regard it like eating a sandwich. She obviously falls into the sandwich category, even after intense formative indoctrination.

Which begs the question. What makes us fit into either camp? Family values and upbringing? Formative positive or negative experiences? Religious programming? Parental wounds? Personalities? Astrology natal charts? Past lives?

My Back Story
I grew up in an 80’s-style typical, small town teenage experience in most ways. Purity culture was newly on the rise, thanks to the efforts by James Dobson and his Focus on the Family moral police agency, but it hadn’t quite taken hold as the predominant concern. In those days, we were slightly more preoccupied with trying not to go to hell, which was a daily threat according to the denominational doctrines of the Nazarene Church I was raised in. Surely, we were taught that sex outside of marriage was wrong “according to the Bible,” but I don’t really recall it being the holy grail of religious mandates like it became in the following decades. With the later onset of purity culture, sexual abstinence before marriage practically became its own religion. But still, even in the 80s, “sexual immorality” scored at the top of the list of sins worthy of damnation—or at least worthy of shunning.

I do remember that, in the predominant Christian worldview, women were exemplified as carrying the greater burden of guilt on behalf of humanity for sexual impropriety and weakness of character. Women were the seductive temptresses who caused poor, vulnerable, naïve men to stumble into sin in thought and deed. I remember specific situations where women were publicly shamed for causing men in the congregation to lust because their skirt was too short, or their blouse was too low cut (or not buttoned high enough), or they were too friendly and flirtatious. The men had no responsibility here. It was the women who incited lust in the men through their calculated sexual overtures and were the only ones tasked for amending their behaviors! I remember experiencing anxiety about what I wore to church, in case someone thought it was too much, and I was leading men astray. I would often have to ask the men in my life to approve of my attire choices before church.

Afterall, it was Eve who was deceived and seduced by the Serpent, and therefore who ultimately brought sin and death upon humanity. This mythology is actually paralleled in Pandora’s story that I linked above. I didn’t know the story before today but it’s worth telling:

“When Pandora opened the jar, she unleashed all manner of evils and miseries into the world—sickness, death, sorrow, strife, and many others. She closed the jar (box) quickly, but it was too late. The damage had been done. …In this way, Pandora, the first woman, was seen as responsible for bringing suffering into the world. [She was] created as a punishment for humanity.

“This aspect of the myth reflects a view that women were a source of trouble for men. The ancient Greeks lived in a strongly patriarchal society, and many of their myths depict women as dangerous temptations or conniving deceivers. Pandora, crafted as an ‘ideal woman,’ ends up unleashing all manner of evils upon humanity – a clear warning about the perils of female allure.” GreekMythology.com

According to Greek—and later Christian—lore, some sadistic Deity placed untold blame on one iconic person—and one gender by association—as the sole responsible party for messing up an entire Perfect Cosmos! And then there were all the subsequent women in the Bible who led men astray and who made for many a topic of sermon for the same—Delilah, Jezebel, Bathsheba, the woman of ill repute who washed Jesus’ feet, and the woman at the well. They all reinforced repeatedly the same message through many a male pastor: women are weak-willed, deceptive, seductive creatures who cannot be trusted; they must be controlled, suppressed, and kept silent at home by holy, consecrated men!

Yes, thanks to my Christian foundation, I knew as a teenager that sex (or dancing up to the line) before marriage was wrong. And even then in the context of marriage, sex felt like a gray area of risk for unholiness and disgrace. I also learned, one fateful night, that masturbation was a terrible sin when our church herded all the confused teens into a big room with the adults and forced everyone to watch, without prior consent, a James Dobson film called “About Masturbation.” In those days I couldn’t even say the word masturbation. Imagine being sat down with a bunch of adults and peers to be in utter shock and horror for twenty minutes! (I had a similar reaction in college when my psychology professor showed a Freudian film to our class that included a scene where the patient was masturbating on Freud’s couch).

Throughout my early teen years, it was not difficult to avoid falling into moral failure because I had more fear of sex than curiosity about it. I had many a date where high school guys tried their damndest to get in my pants, to no avail. It was like Fort Knox over here.

I did have a few encounters where I thought I was in real trouble—which only made me more resistant to sex. One guy I met at a track meet came to my hometown for a baseball tournament and asked me out on a date. I was so naïve and trusting at that time in my small town life where everyone knew everyone else and no one ever even locked their doors. I barely knew this guy and yet I got into a car with him. He drove me about forty miles from my house to a deserted road out in the absolute boonies, without saying a word to me the whole way. I could feel something emanating from him, like anger, or hatred. Every bone in my body could feel that he had the worst intentions, and I sat silent, paralyzed with fear. This was in the day long before cell phones. No one knew where I was (I was supposed to be at the movies), and he was a really large, muscular guy. I thought my life was over, and I was praying with all my might that my angels would come and protect me.

He drove down the desolate dirt road, turned off the engine, and got out. He went over to a steep hillside and threw rocks over the edge for like ten minutes, doing battle with my angels. Then he got back in the car and drove me home in silence. I dodged a serious bullet there. I think about how different my life could have been—if I was still alive to tell about it.

When I met my first husband my junior year of high school, it was like someone turned on the lights in my body. For the first time, I felt emotional safety along with intense physical chemistry and desire. These were weighty new feelings to try to navigate for a nice Christian girl.

About a year and a half into our relationship, at age eighteen, we crossed the line of no return. It was a cosmic clash of pleasure and guilt, ecstasy and shame. The shame eventually out-shadowed the pleasure, forming neural grooves that attached to our future marital sex life, from which we never recovered.

During our entire thirteen-year marriage, while submerged in Evangelical Christian churches and ministries, I carried a deep-seated distrust and resentment toward him that he did not respect me enough to protect me from his urges prior to marriage. This is so irrational and regretful to me now, but in those days we were taught that men were supposed to be the protectors. In those days, I always felt shame during sex and dirty after sex, as if our entire marital bed was ruined by what came before. I should have tried to get therapy for these irrational and damaging internal pathologies, but I wasn’t conscious that they were abnormal. I thought I was the problem—I was sinful—and I didn’t question the validity or irrationality of my beliefs.

With my second marriage, I was still steeped in a Christian worldview and beliefs. We did not have sex before marriage, which was helpful for my delicate conscience. But there was still always something inside that felt protective, guarded, inhibited.

I can’t say which came first for me—sexual shame, fear of intimacy, or distrust of men, but the tangled mass of all three made it impossible for me to feel free sexually throughout my adult long term relationships with men.

And then I met the woman. Marita innocently stumbled in, turning my world upside down in just about every way. I have written a bit about the stars colliding at this fateful encounter six years ago (and here), but someday the story will find its way into a book I’m sure.

I was as surprised as anyone that I developed crushy, sexual attraction feelings toward a woman. I’ve since learned that our astrology charts reveal that we’ve had a karmic past as lovers and were fated to meet in this lifetime (combining astrology charts is very helpful for identifying the meaning of specific relationships in our lives). I have to mention that learning astrology has opened my mind to see the stories we bring into each lifetime with us. One’s birth chart clearly shows the patterns and wounds that we bring in to heal, as well as the significant relationships from previous lives. It’s course-altering and brings about so much more compassion for self and loved ones and what we are all trying to overcome in this lifetime!

Entering into a relationship with this unique woman, she brought out things in me that I didn’t know were in there—things like trust, openness, vulnerability of heart and soul. It was the first time in my life that I felt free of self-consciousness or expectations, experiencing sex as a great sacred and spiritual encounter. It was through this relationship that my previous detrimental beliefs became conscious—my inability to trust men, and my shame wounds. This level of being truly seen and exposed to the core by another human seems like a vital human rite of passage that everyone should experience in their lifetime.

It should be included that, for me, the distressing distrust of men stemmed from an emotionally and physically abusive father, as well as my formative views of a “masculine,” punitive and fearsome God. After all, the whole Christian narrative is that Jesus came to save me by taking my punishment from such a “loving God.” I have a feeling most people who grew up under such appalling, nonsensical teachings—teachings often being delivered by fallible, untrustworthy men—distrust men!

But loving a woman also brought about extreme discomfort at times. As expected, many people who have followed my work through the years but have not expanded in their understanding of the deeper Story and the mystical (non-literal) teachings of the Bible, and the vastness and diversity of Real Love, are not ready to accept the legitimacy and non-issue of same sex relationships.

Add to that, many people were not ready for alternative marriage models, such as Steve and I opening up our twenty year marriage to allow for Marita and I to be together. I received (and still receive to this day) emails and messages from well meaning people who write to tell me about how I’m living in sin. I’ve gotten off track, they tell me, and I need to repent. These people have no idea about authentic God-given life or the real message of Jesus.

Another surprising and uncomfortable result of the relationship with Marita was the experience that my old Christian self would crop up at times and begin judging and condemning my current self. When we would be in public holding hands or being clearly a couple, I would see Christians (they’re pretty easy to spot) looking at me in that way Christians do— “Those immoral lesbians! Oh well, we must love the sinner and hate the sin.” I would suddenly see myself through their eyes and slather myself in shame and disgust. It was a real mind-fuck to be inhabited by these two versions of myself at the same time.

I also grappled with sexual identity issues. Was I now gay? Bi? A straight girl with an anomaly relationship? For a long time I felt deep confusion in my relationship with my husband and with myself. These days that has resolved somewhat. I feel like I’m getting past all of the old baggage and I no longer label myself as anything. I love who I love. I don’t know if that will be a man or a woman. It’s no longer important what package it’s in, as long as it’s real.

The Meaning of Sex
I guess the point is that for some people, sex really is a lot like eating a sandwich. It doesn’t take much thought, and it’s over after it’s over. For others like myself, sex is deep, meaningful, and sacred. It’s a soulful and spiritual connection. It’s seeing and being seen in ways that otherwise cannot be fully understood or quantified.

As I was writing this blog, I found a compelling interview with Dr. Joe Malone, “The Sexual Integrity Scientist,” who is a research expert on women’s health as well as the founder of Sex IQ. He previously taught at Middle Tennessee State University where he conducted research on the health of the college women. At first he thought that diet and lifestyle were the greatest impacts on the health of these women. But while working with them he discovered that the surprising number one impact on their mental and emotional health was the hookup culture. Most of the young women on campus participating in his research admitted that they only went along with hookup culture because “everyone else was doing it,” and because that was the their best shot at finding connection with men. But in fact, this culture was greatly harming them. His research reinforced that women are generally built to bond, not to bed hop.

When I feel those triggers around the carefree approach to sex by others, it makes me look at myself. Am I psychologically and spiritually damaged? Have I caused myself harm by taking sex so seriously, so cautiously? Is this prudish side of me the result of the influence and programming of religion?

Or am I perhaps more aware than some others of my innate feminine proclivity and need to bond?

I may never know what is the cause of my inner discomfort and resistances to other ways of doing sex and intimacy. But it feels so core that I can’t imagine ever changing the way I am.

P.S. If you are in the sandwich category, please know that I’m truly not judging you for what you do in the bedroom or how you perceive and engage in sex. It’s more that I can’t even imagine how I could ever approach sexuality that way and I wonder why we are so different.