Love and Sex

Love and Sex
This blog is lovingly written to all the young women who ever dream of true love. Perfect love is probably the most sought and the most elusive concept on earth. Everyone seeks it, but it seems the more it is sought, the less it is found. To try to find love almost guarantees that we won't find it.We see true love everywhere we look. In every movie. In every novel. Everyone at school has found it except for you. If you could only find someone to marry, life would be complete and perfect. Lies. All lies. Not only is love the most sought and the most elusive, but it is the most misunderstood of concepts. The love we see in the movies is a fairy tale. We watch it develop perfectly in two hours and are led to believe that when we leave the movie theatre, the screen couple lives happily ever after. It is a work of fiction, one that sells because we all have bought into a false definition of what love really is.One of our problems with defining love is that the English language uses one word for many concepts. We love our favorite tv program. We love chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. We love our parents. We love our grandparents. We love our boyfriend. We love our dog. This overuse of the word accounts for much of the reason we struggle with defining what love really is. But there is more.We are seeking something we cannot find because we are working with a flawed definition. We have come to define love as a feeling. An emotion. Hear me in love, as I tell you this is where we have gone wrong. Allow me to back up for a moment and take us on a new look at adolescence. Adolescence is a time of rapid change (although the one experiencing it may not see how rapid it is), beginning in the preteen years and continuing into the 20's. Certainly we are all aware of the outward changes. Our bodies change quickly from children into adults, right before our eyes, and we don't quite know what to do with it all, or how it all operates. Well, that's only the beginning of the adolescent story. At the same time we are changing physically, we are also undergoing drastic changes both emotionally and mentally. All of a sudden we are able to analyze and synthesize information like never before. We are able to understand more than one side of an issue and begin to hear for the first time views that differ from what we have been taught, and they all sound reasonable to us. We have a new array of emotions that seem to have a mind of their own, coming and going without our control, much like what's happening with our bodies. With our new mental capabilities, which are still out of our control, we come to believe that we are now more intelligent than our parents. And with our equally out of control emotions, we get angry and exasperated with them for not understanding us. The truth is, they do understand. They remember well the confusion of those years, and they know first-hand the pitfalls that await us there, many of which can alter our entire lives. They have lived through adolescence and now have control of their physical, mental, and emotional capabilities, meaning there's a good chance they actually know more than we do. There are some things that change, but the basics stay the same from one generation to the next. One day your body, your emotions, and your intelligence will stabilize, but until then, your parents are probably trying to keep you from making very costly mistakes.Unfortunately parents cannot keep us from making bad choices. Ultimately there is no person in the world who controls your life except you. That's right. Others may control parts of it for periods of time, but you are the person who ultimately chooses the person you will be. Now, that's a frightening thought, because we are making these life-altering choices during the years when our mental and emotional development is in a state of confusion (although we don't know it). We think our parents, our teachers, our pastors, the adults in our church cannot possibly have anything of value to offer us in our world of hook-ups and friends with benefits, and we often choose to take our advice from peers, who are equally confused, and who perhaps will not end up in life where we would want to be.Now, let's go back to "love." I said that love is not an emotion, and then I left you hanging. True love is much deeper than an emotion, and it is unlikely that you will find it as a young woman where you are looking. It is a deep caring and cherishing of another person, and it is a commitment. It is a decision, not dependent on any feeling or circumstance. "I can do that," you say, and I know you mean it, but love cannot be forged. Chances are you already have some true love in your life. Is there someone in your life who is committed to loving you unconditionally, no matter what? Is there someone who cares for you more than anything in the world and cherishes you? Maybe a parent. Maybe a grandparent. But not likely a boyfriend. Yet. Why do we think of love as a feeling? Because true love can bring feelings. The problem comes when we skip the true love, or more often convince ourselves we may have found it when we are nowhere close, and we want to go straight for the feelings. If we can find the feelings, we tell ourselves, then we have found love. No. No. No. This kind of thinking is sure to lead us down a path we will later regret. The regret may come immediately, or it may come 10 years later, but it wil come. It is so easy to confuse the feelings of physical intimacy with love, and we can become so emotionally involved that we choose to believe everything "he" or our peers say to convince us this is the "right" thing to do.Suppose you have a Christian boyfriend, who believes it's wrong to be sexually active before marriage. This is great, but it leads to another danger, that of trusting him to be the one to say no. If we do not have our own lines drawn, we set ourselves up to fall when the other person is weak.Sexual activity is one of the most confusing issues of adolescence. Everyone seems to be doing it, and it appears to be an exciting part of being grown up. The philosophies surrounding the young sexuality scene are all over the map. Many engage in sexual activity in hopes of making someone love them. Others "hook up" with no interest in commitment. Others consider themselves "friends with benefits." Others say as long as we don't do it one way, it doesn't count. All of these are detrimental to that elusive search for true love, because once true love finally finds you, you are sure to regret all these choices.Why? Because when you finally find that true love, you will cherish him deeply and want to please him in every way. You will want to give of yourself as you have never given to anyone else. And past experiences become what the movies call "baggage." For example: the early sexual explorations you experience are teaching your confused body and mind how to react. We were designed this way, to bond intimately with the one person to whom we commit our lives. However, when we "practice" with others and then find intimacy with a husband, we cannot help but compare this experience with what we have known before, and because our bodies were "trained" with someone else, we are likely to experience physical and emotional frustrations with the one we love. Likewise if he has been sexually active before, there will be similar frustrations. I suspect it is this very phenomenon that accounts for many of today's divorces, that we have "practiced" being married too much. Marriage needs no practice. It needs love and commitment.How do we find such love and commitment? Here's the tough part. We stop looking. We distract our minds with other things. Education. Jobs. Volunteer work. Church activities. Finding our own interests. Hobbies. Joining groups. And interestingly enough, when we find happiness within ourselves, we actually become more attractive to others. That "perfect" relationship (which is never perfect, by the way, but it can be the "perfect" one for you) is complicated. Imagine this picture: She wants someone who:is a Christianwants to live in the countrysupports her choice to have a careerwants 2 childrenShe meets "him," and he meets all her criteria, plus he is really good-looking. Problem? These are not the criteria he has for a mate. There are other criteria that matter most to him.He wants someone who:shares his political views and love for politicsenjoys lectures and operamixes well with his colleaguesshares a natural chemistryAnd although he likes her, she doesn't fit the mate he is seeking. As females, we often tell ourselves, "I can be all that. Just give me a chance." But we are missing the point. Finding the "perfect" match has to be a mutual fit. And it will be, when the time is right. (Maybe a clearer picture is to look at the guys who have thought you were the one for them, but you were not interested. What if he told you he could be all the things you are looking for? Doesn't work, does it?) For now, concentrate on getting to know yourself, so you will know what it is you really want in a mate and in life. Seek to discover what is truly important to you, and commit to yourself that you won't settle for less than true love. True love probably won't be found as long as you are seeking it, and it certainly will not be found in physical intimacy, but when it comes along unexpectedly, it is worth the wait!I realize that many of you who are still reading this blog have already made some bad choices. "It's too late for me," you say. No, it's not. You just have a bigger challenge. That's all. Does it make sense to continue making bad choices for the rest of your life just because you have already made a few? Of course not! There will be regrets for what you cannot change, but if you commit right now to live a life of purity, God will honor that, and you will be better prepared for love.And if you have already found that true love? It is still worth the wait! If he is really the one, it will last. There's no reason to rush. Intimacy involves so much more than just the physical, and you will have a lifetime together for that, with no regrets!
13:4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 13:5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 13:6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 13:8a Love never ends.
.._VERSE start="46013004" end="46013008" translation="RSV">.._VERSE>1 Corinthians 13:4-8a RSV
4:16 So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
.._VERSE start="62004016" end="62004016" translation="RSV">.._VERSE>1 John 4:16 RSVNote: The passion in this blog comes from 12 years of teaching high school students, 8 years of teaching college students, listening to more stories about searching for love than I can count, and taking several psychology and counseling classes in seminary and college. This is a blog written in love.