Sex As Communion – Members Content

Sex is something we ‘say’, not something we ‘do’.

It is the most intimate communion between a man and woman and is so much more than just a physical activity and yet almost everything around us – movies, magazines, books, even your friends and relatives-approach sex as something we ‘do’. Most people never question this attitude and can naturally assume that if it is something that you ‘do’, you should ‘do’ it well. Prowess and performance can creep into your notion of sex and make you self conscious rather than other conscious.

If sex is merely something you ‘do’, it can be reduced to an action you do to someone or have done to you. At some point, both men and women are likely to feel used and guilty. This attitude that ‘sex is just an activity’ is responsible for most of the loneliness and isolation in marriage. For example:

• Couples become ‘performance-orientated’ when they tend to focus on technique and positions. This develops a self-conscious or self-centred disposition. It can result in pressure to perform or experiment sexually, preoccupation with how they look and a loss of confidence. More significantly, it works against an other-centred orientation which is the essence of genuine love.
• They can see sex as recreation. Because they think of sex as something fun to do, they can treat it as just a form of recreation. People tend to put off recreation until the serious responsibilities of life are taken care of; so sex can be relegated to the bottom of the ‘To Do’ list, after everything else is done. Seeing other activities as more serious or compelling will result in a lowering of the priority of sex in your relationship. You will also put conditions on being sexual: you have to be ‘in the mood’ or it must be during leisure time. In combination, these attitudes result in sex becoming less frequent, more impersonal and soulless.

Gender Bias

For most woman the preferred way of achieving intimacy is deep personal conversation, talking and sharing emotions, that is, verbal language. A man’s typical preferred way of achieving intimacy is physical bonding, touch and love making; in other words, body language.

For most women therefore, sex is seen as a celebration of unity already accomplished whereas for men, it is a means of accomplishing that unity. The opposite is true for verbal communication. A man will often open up and share his emotions and needs only when he already feels connected, whereas a woman typically sees talking as a way of creating that connection.

A typical pattern of married couples is that when sex is experienced as just an activity, the wife will eventually say “no” (or communicate it with her body language) with more and more frequency and feel justified in doing so because she thinks that she is just saying “no” to an activity. The husband however, experiences her “no” as a rejection of his person and of his desire to be close to her. He is denied access to his primary way of getting close and expressing love.

The truth is, both verbal and body language are ways of communicating and both are essential to marriage. They are equally valid and valuable and need to be honoured in the relationship.

Stories of the Heart

I can remember lying in bed staring at the ceiling and listening to the sounds of my wife emptying the dishwasher and even running the vacuum late during the night. I couldn’t understand why those things were more important to her than coming to bed with me. I was hoping that we could have some intimate time together, but she didn’t seem to be aware that I wanted to be close and I began to believe that being with me wasn’t important to her and that I wasn’t important to her.

I couldn’t understand how my husband could ignore me all day and then expect to have sex. He seemed like a stranger and I thought he was more aware of his own needs than of my emotions. Often I would go through the motions without a word, feeling used and empty and painfully alone.