Sex

Psychoanalysis is suffering recently from a re-emergence into society's psychotherapy field.  I don't know too much about it, except that, although Freud is still regarded as the pioneer of modern psychology, and his research and concepts still permeate the field, psychoanalysis in it's original form has long since been replaced by newer, more cost-effective therapies.  In all of my study in psychology, I have found that the results of therapy tend to dissipate in time after the therapy has ended.  Probably because, like most modern American medicine, it makes quick moves to alleviate symptoms.  Freud's original psychoanalysis was known to take as long as decades, but the symptoms of mental diseases tended to stay gone.

Most of what I know about the human psychology I never have to actually access, with one exception.  A couple years or so ago, I embarked on a behaviorist research project that involved lending council to several single young men in regards to their single-hood.  In return, I received beautiful statistics to plug into a feasible algorithm.  See, I had a problem with the gay community for being SO MUCH BETTER than the straight community at hooking up with each other.  You walk into a gay bar and there's a specific protocol: if I wear a cowboy hat with a motorcycle bandanna, that meant I was a butch who likes it on top and I'm looking for two nights with no strings.  Meanwhile men and women suck at communicating with each other so badly that the institution of marriage is falling apart and my generation's faith in it is all but totally depleted.

I had so many socially awkward single male friends, and I felt genuinely bad for them, and their frustrations.  High School is a place where the general opinion of a person can easily get exaggerated and become stuck like glue to their back as a permanent label.  In this environment, as I found to be just as true in college and later life, being single took on the traits of being in a bathroom - a perfectly natural place to be!  Everybody goes in from time to time right?  Until you're in there just a moment too long, and then people begin to get... ideas.  And the only real problem I saw was confidence and communication.  Usually, because attraction happens in the limbic system in the brain, which is a subconscious and mood-based facet involved in human reasoning, the communication aspect usually took the form of body language that sent signals that said "I'm confident."  So really it was all about confidence.  But I swear I made it a thousand times more complicated.  Here's an example of a common piece of advice I'd give, though I will admit, I don't think this plot originated from me:

"How do you convince her to come home with you after a date?  Well, I'll tell you how to make it a lot easier.  If she hasn't been there before, she will likely not feel very comfortable going there with you.  You should have her meet you at your house at the beginning of the date, then invite her in, saying "I just have to make a quick phone call" or something like that. She will probably be fine with that, and may do a little snooping.  Be sure to have a clean house, and hide the porn.  Leave some things out that are indicative of your hobbies, so she can bring it up over the course of the date.  Then, come down and leave your house.  Now that she's already seen the place, she should not be nearly as uncomfortable following you back to it.  It's not a guarantee, obviously, but it improves the odds almost a whole pie cart."

What I said I wanted to do was get the straight community communicating with each other properly.  What I actually did was log the protocol for being a "player" so accurately that my information made sex-addicts out of everyone I gave advice to.  Not that my advice was "go be sex-addicts." I suppose once most post-pubescent, irresponsible boys learn to stop doing creepy things and behave in ways that send signals to girls that they are ideal valuable partners to consider, it tends to open a can of worms in the "I'm a huge douche" direction.  It was upsetting that I managed to deceive myself into thinking that because they held morally responsible sex lives before meant that I shouldn't include some advice on how to stay that way once the availability of sexual opportunity was present.

The chief problem was that I left Christ out of my whole philosophy, my whole approach.  Once I started thinking about it from that perspective, a couple of other things came to light pretty quickly: you would never find a quality Christian girl on the meat market.  Not only would you never find a woman worth having brought to bed by the players, but you would also never find a women worth having even present in the clubs available for a cold approach.

As I am writing this to-day, I still lend advice to a few close friends, but it's usually biblical - because I've come to SERIOUSLY distrust my own authority on matters of the heart.  I am leaving the wake of quite a bit of relationship turmoil; and indeed, I was going to attempt to compose a blog to address all of the ins and outs of the issues my loves were having, but every time I'd get too far into quoting the Scripture's take on sexual protocol, I became fearful of sounding too preachy and in-your-face.

I would get all the way through why the Bible says that polygamy is essentially one unfaithful marriage and more than one act of adultery, then I'd start to explain that anyone who is sexually active is either married or committing adultery, and the first step to solving any relationship problem that has sex in it begins with first defining which it is. Then I'd explain that once the sex is removed, then the priorities are put back into their natural order.  But that's SO ACCUSATORY. Nobody's going to ENJOY reading that, even if you can't argue with scripture.  I caught myself sounding judgmental rather than helpful.  The reason is that nobody who's relationship isn't in an INCREDIBLY desperate state is going to be readily willing to say "okay blog, I'll become chaste RIGHT now!"  No way.  

Nobody even comes to salvation in the first place without first realizing how desperately enslaved by sin they are, and how much they NEED Christ.  It would take a serious leap of faith.

I haven't made any headway into a relationship blog.  I suppose I'm the wrong person for the job anyways.  I'll let C.S. Lewis sum up what I DO know about it.

"Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things" --C.S. Lewis.

In other words: If we put our partners first, we not only compress our relationship with God, but with our partner as well.  If we put God first, we do not compress our relationship with our partner, but instead it becomes pulled up with us, and greatly enhanced.  

--J.M. Gatewood
Christian

P.S., You probably read this entire post thinking that I'd post about my own sexual experiences.  I have not actually had sex.  I've been saving myself for my wife.  Yes, it sucks.  Yes, I'm still going to keep it up.  Sorry to disappoint. :D