What is
harmony?
What is discord?
Do they matter?
Are your mind and body in sync,
saying the same things?
Your Body's
Language
Your
body has a very limited vocabulary. Any physical gesture or
facial expression can express exactly how you feel, but it
can also be misleading or be misunderstood. Have people
ever thought your were angry when you were just reading
something intently?
Words
matter
For most people, words are really important to understand
what's going on. Words can express a greater variety of
thoughts and feelings, and allow us to make important
distinctions and be precise about things. Of course, we
would all love to be able to keep life simple, but it's
doubtful you could buy a house or take other important
steps in life based on a smile and a handshake. Some things
are too important for vague or temporary gestures.
Unhealthy
Confusion
A handshake means one thing. A peck on the cheek another.
Kissing on the lips still more. What
is the other person saying?
When it comes to sexual intimacy, clear meanings can become
even more difficult to discern. Each person can interpret
gestures in completely different ways.
One problem is that, with sex, the body cannot express
itself very differently as if according to levels of
relationship. Sex is sex whether it's a casual one-night
stand or a fully committed life-long relationship.
Sex is an
extreme event for the body. Your body is at its maximum
in communicating itself
to another person
during sex. Is that a message you mean to communicate?
Clash of Mind
& Body Messages
What is your body saying and are you saying the same thing
as a whole person? Since a sexual event is also how our
bodies produce a child, that kind of
physical communication is something quite significant,
unifying, bonding, and potentially
life-generating. However, if your
mind
is against those
messages, then there is an unhealthy disconnect between
mind and body. If your thoughts are that the sexual event
is non-significant, non-unifying, non-bonding, and your
mind is positively against the generation of new life, then
your mind is out of sync with your body.
How much do I
like or love this person?
It's easy to discern how much
we like, respect, admire, or detest a person if we are not
sexually attracted to them. But when we are in love, most
of us are overly optimistic and blind to character flaws
that others can see clearly. Before you get intimate, it
seems important to spend a lot of time getting to know who
this person really is. Would we trust them with our money?
Our car? Everything we own? Naked pictures of ourselves?
Our children? Why is it that breakups are fueled by people
making late discoveries of immaturity and
"incompatibility"? Could that not be discerned sooner? How
do they treat their friends? Former friends? Family? How do
they behave under stress, or when they do not get their
way?
Adding sexual
intimacy to the discerning process does not bring clarity;
it brings confusion.
Many people regret hasty decisions, and even empower
immature, unstable, and disrespectful people to hurt them.
Imagine what it could mean if you let your body communicate
total unity with a person while they are only there to use
you and move on? You or they may not even realize that
that's what is going on. Two "nice" people could easily
"use" each other for their own needs and believe they are
being open and honest about the relationship. But there is
still harmful deception going on. Your body cannot engage
in sex without communicating total union with another
person.
What
alternative is there?
Finding a great person takes a lot of work. Most of us need
some chipping and polishing. The last thing we need is for
people to make things too easy for us; then we would never
become better and grow.
If you want someone worth marrying, do you hope they will
be faithful? What kind of training will it take for them to
be ready for fidelity? If they can't control their sexual
appetite now, with you, what makes you think they'll
control it with others who attract them later?
You are in
the driver's seat of your life.
The treatment you demand is the treatment you will get. You
are the teacher. You can choose to reward or punish other
people's behavior. If you reward someone with sex, they
will learn to seek and find that, whether from you or
someone else. You can end up marrying your best friend, who
will be by your side regardless of difficulties, or else
waste years with people who will abandon you for something
better or easier.