Affection
A few months ago I read an article about some of the problems porn was creating in Australia. Apparently there are a lot of 15, 16 year old girls, in order to keep their boyfriends, let their boyfriends do anything they want to sexually to them. These 15 and 16 year old boys try out what they have seen in hard core porn on these girls, and it has resulted in a lot of girls going to the hospital. But that wasn’t the gist of the article. The article was about how these girls are doing some hard core sexual acts with these boys but they have never even had their first kiss.
I read that article and it stayed in the back of my mind for months and I may have even mentioned it on this website somewhere. And somewhere along the way I figured out that all the fantasies that my mind throws my way involve very little kissing. All the fantasies I struggle with start the neck down really. Porn has trained my mind to rarely think about kissing. If we were to be honest kissing is rarely in porn, and when it is in porn it is only to lead to sex.
Then I started thinking about that. It’s not that kissing isn’t ever in porn, it’s just that when it’s in there it is in there to exclusively lead to sex. While thinking about that I realized nearly every kissing scene I had ever seen growing up gave the clear impression that they were kissing so that they could have sex. I realized then I have a problem in my thought life. I have been trained to think of kissing only as a means to get to sex.
Then I started thinking about it some more, and realized that in all my years growing up any physical intimacy, whether kissing, hugging, holding hands, or otherwise that happened between a man or woman clearly emphasized to me that physical intimacy between a man and woman is to lead to sex.
Then I realized I am really screwed up.
Growing up I watched step by step, and family matters. In both those shows they had episodes where they made a big deal about being a virgin when you were married, but then both those shows had dozens of episodes where it showed two people making out. Watching two people swallowing each other’s tongues is sexy, and hot. Let’s be honest, there is no way that a couple who is making out is not burning with lust toward one another. And as one lady in my church put it “Making out is part of sex.” Mixed into this were all the tv shows and movies that basically showed two people kissing and immediately having sex. Most didn’t show the sex scene, but it was made clear that after they kissed they went and had sex.
If we can be honest, in most of these kissing scenes which were either make out sessions, or led directly to sex, they hugged so that they could kiss in a very sexual manner. So since I was little the media taught me to hug in a sexual manner so that I can kiss in a sexual manner, so that I can have sex.
Then I realized that tv shows and movies taught me that even hand holding is to lead to sex. If you pay attention to the action movies there are two times men and women hold hands. When the man is leading the woman through danger and either when the man is leading the woman to bed or the woman is leading the man to bed. This is so pervasive in our culture that the Christian video production of the book “Not a Fan” even shows a teenage girl taking a teenage boy by the hand to lead him to the bedroom. “Not a Fan” is a good book, and a good video production (I am not even trying to imply that it is bad) but hand holding leading to sex is so pervasive in our society that Christians are showing it in a Christian production.
Even a man and woman sitting together is often a case where the media sexualizes the situation. How often have we seen a tv show or movie that shows a man sitting next to a woman only for them to touch each other inappropriately? In fact I can recall several tv shows where the man is taking the woman to a movie for the sole purpose of sitting next to her so he can touch her inappropriately.
I have a problem. Every act of physical intimacy in my mind leads to sex. I have been taught this since I was little by the media, and on one level or another the Christian community even shows this. When I was in Bible College I was shown a video where a man got up and explained why everything in the book song of Solomon is sexually explicit and raunchy. He did a wonderful job of reinforcing this idea that all physical intimacy leads to sex.
I didn’t start thinking this way after I started looking at porn. To be totally honest I can remember when I was in elementary school and riding the bus talking to the other little boys about how sex is the purpose of marriage (I grew up in a Christian household I knew that sex was reserved for marriage). Sex is this amazing thing and it’s reserved for marriage and when you get married you are to have as much sex as you want because it feels good, and you are kissing the girl because you want sex. Touch the girl in whatever way you need to, to get to sex. And if you can skip all that other stuff to get straight to sex even better.
I developed this very poor ideal on marriage and sex early on. It’s no wonder I ended up addicted to porn. Eventually I became a teenager and somehow the entire Christian community seemed to think I needed the clinical definition of sex, but that only led to porn. But a part of that was because my view on sex was that it was only for pleasure, and that all physical intimacy leads to sex.
Maybe you are wondering where my parents are in all of this. My mom definitely gave me hugs and kisses of an affectionate nature, and I gave them back to her in an affectionate nature. But I have a hard time seeing my mom as a woman. Mom is mom. When I was a kid I definitely didn’t see her as a woman, I saw mom as mom. So even though I was hugging and kissing mom in an affectionate nature, the media showed me thousands of women who were kissed, hugged, hand holded, sat by, and touched in an almost exclusively sexual manner.
I have not looked at porn in a year and a half, and only now am I realizing the depths of the problems in my heart. I am again very grateful for being single. I have heard story after story of married men going through a porn addiction who will not touch their daughters because they are scared of what they might do to them. But I have to wonder is that the porn addiction, or is it a culture that has taught us from every angle that all physical intimacy leads to sex?
I am now rethinking physical intimacy.
Why can’t I kiss just to say I love you? Why can’t I kiss just to say I am glad to see you? Why can’t I kiss goodbye to say I will miss you? Whether it’s a wife, a daughter, a mother, or a sister a kiss should show affection. Sure there will come a day when I will privately kiss my wife in a sexual manner, but the vast majority of my kisses will not be sexual, but affection.
Why can’t I have a hug that says I love you? Why can’t I have a hug that just says I want to hold on to you? Why can’t I have a hug that says be with me one more minute? Sure there will come a day when I am married where there will be a sexual hug, but until that day why can’t I just focus on the hugs that show affection?
Why can’t I hold a hand to show my love for you? Why can’t the grabbing of a hand say I am so glad to be on this journey with you? Why can’t the holding of a hand say don’t go away? Sure there will be a day when I will grab my wife’s hand to say come to bed with me, but most days I will hold a hand for affections sake, not sex sake.
Why can’t I sit by a girl to say I love you? Why can’t sitting by a girl say I am so glad to spend time with you? Why can’t sitting by a girl say I enjoy your presence, and your person? Sure there may come a day when I am married that I will make the act of sitting next to my wife sexual, but most of the times I do it, it will be about my affection.
One of these days whether it’s a wife, daughter, sister, mother, niece or cousin my touch will show affection. Perhaps it will be a kiss, or a hug. Maybe I will get to hold hands on a journey, or sit down and watch a movie, but the purpose will be affection. Maybe one day we will be sitting together and they will be talking and I will be listening, and I will need to show my love and support so I will squeeze a hand or perhaps stroke their hair. But it will be about showing my affection.
I have been reading Song of Solomon so different than what I was taught. I was taught Song of Solomon is a raunchy book filled with erotic stuff. For some reason I was taught it was filled with make out sessions. But then I read through it and only find them kissing twice. The first time in chapter 1, and I think that is referring to a dad kissing his daughter. I think the Song of Solomon is a song written by Solomon because he recognized his mistake in marrying so many women, and he had hundreds of kids so he wrote a song to instruct them how to do better than he did, and the first 4 verses in that book deal with him loving his kids, giving them kisses of affection, calling them to him so he could sing a song so they could do better than he did.
The second kiss in Song of Solomon is in chapter 8:1. She tells her love that she wishes he was her brother so she could kiss him in public and not be despised. She wants to kiss him like her brother! So the Bible tells us of this great love a man and woman shares, but instead of a super sexualized kiss, that a movie would call a kiss of true love, we find the Bible telling us how great a kiss of affection, no different than a kiss between a brother and sister, would be to this woman. For generations the worst kiss Hollywood could think of is a kiss that’s like a sister kissing a brother (Back to the Future, among many others, mentions this). But Song of Solomon shows this kiss of affection as so important it is only one of two kisses mentioned in the book on romance.
If you put the word kiss into your favorite online or computer Bible (I use esword) you will find that kissing is almost exclusively about affection in the Bible with the only possible exception being in proverbs 7. My thought life on kissing and physical intimacy is finally starting to line up with the Bible.
There are four types of intimacy, there is intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical. At times to show intellectual, emotional or spiritual intimacy I will need to squeeze a hand, or kiss a cheek, or hug someone. I have done karate. In karate to show intellectual intimacy I must physically touch someone. That is not sexual in nature, that is intellectual, and it is for everyone’s best.
Before I can marry I must be intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually intimate with the woman I marry. But once married most of our physical intimacy will be about affection. Of the sexual intimacy we experience, I must remember God made it so that we can be more intellectually emotionally and spiritually intimate with each other than anyone else in the world. Sexual intimacy is meant to amplify all other aspects of intimacy. But affection, through physical intimacy comes way more often.
In many ways this shifting of thinking has helped me with my thought life. I have been away from porn for a year and a half, and my thought life is my major area of struggle. But it is so freeing to think of a kiss as affection instead of this leads to sex. I feel like I have taken ammunition away from my addiction. And I feel far more stable.
I read that article and it stayed in the back of my mind for months and I may have even mentioned it on this website somewhere. And somewhere along the way I figured out that all the fantasies that my mind throws my way involve very little kissing. All the fantasies I struggle with start the neck down really. Porn has trained my mind to rarely think about kissing. If we were to be honest kissing is rarely in porn, and when it is in porn it is only to lead to sex.
Then I started thinking about that. It’s not that kissing isn’t ever in porn, it’s just that when it’s in there it is in there to exclusively lead to sex. While thinking about that I realized nearly every kissing scene I had ever seen growing up gave the clear impression that they were kissing so that they could have sex. I realized then I have a problem in my thought life. I have been trained to think of kissing only as a means to get to sex.
Then I started thinking about it some more, and realized that in all my years growing up any physical intimacy, whether kissing, hugging, holding hands, or otherwise that happened between a man or woman clearly emphasized to me that physical intimacy between a man and woman is to lead to sex.
Then I realized I am really screwed up.
Growing up I watched step by step, and family matters. In both those shows they had episodes where they made a big deal about being a virgin when you were married, but then both those shows had dozens of episodes where it showed two people making out. Watching two people swallowing each other’s tongues is sexy, and hot. Let’s be honest, there is no way that a couple who is making out is not burning with lust toward one another. And as one lady in my church put it “Making out is part of sex.” Mixed into this were all the tv shows and movies that basically showed two people kissing and immediately having sex. Most didn’t show the sex scene, but it was made clear that after they kissed they went and had sex.
If we can be honest, in most of these kissing scenes which were either make out sessions, or led directly to sex, they hugged so that they could kiss in a very sexual manner. So since I was little the media taught me to hug in a sexual manner so that I can kiss in a sexual manner, so that I can have sex.
Then I realized that tv shows and movies taught me that even hand holding is to lead to sex. If you pay attention to the action movies there are two times men and women hold hands. When the man is leading the woman through danger and either when the man is leading the woman to bed or the woman is leading the man to bed. This is so pervasive in our culture that the Christian video production of the book “Not a Fan” even shows a teenage girl taking a teenage boy by the hand to lead him to the bedroom. “Not a Fan” is a good book, and a good video production (I am not even trying to imply that it is bad) but hand holding leading to sex is so pervasive in our society that Christians are showing it in a Christian production.
Even a man and woman sitting together is often a case where the media sexualizes the situation. How often have we seen a tv show or movie that shows a man sitting next to a woman only for them to touch each other inappropriately? In fact I can recall several tv shows where the man is taking the woman to a movie for the sole purpose of sitting next to her so he can touch her inappropriately.
I have a problem. Every act of physical intimacy in my mind leads to sex. I have been taught this since I was little by the media, and on one level or another the Christian community even shows this. When I was in Bible College I was shown a video where a man got up and explained why everything in the book song of Solomon is sexually explicit and raunchy. He did a wonderful job of reinforcing this idea that all physical intimacy leads to sex.
I didn’t start thinking this way after I started looking at porn. To be totally honest I can remember when I was in elementary school and riding the bus talking to the other little boys about how sex is the purpose of marriage (I grew up in a Christian household I knew that sex was reserved for marriage). Sex is this amazing thing and it’s reserved for marriage and when you get married you are to have as much sex as you want because it feels good, and you are kissing the girl because you want sex. Touch the girl in whatever way you need to, to get to sex. And if you can skip all that other stuff to get straight to sex even better.
I developed this very poor ideal on marriage and sex early on. It’s no wonder I ended up addicted to porn. Eventually I became a teenager and somehow the entire Christian community seemed to think I needed the clinical definition of sex, but that only led to porn. But a part of that was because my view on sex was that it was only for pleasure, and that all physical intimacy leads to sex.
Maybe you are wondering where my parents are in all of this. My mom definitely gave me hugs and kisses of an affectionate nature, and I gave them back to her in an affectionate nature. But I have a hard time seeing my mom as a woman. Mom is mom. When I was a kid I definitely didn’t see her as a woman, I saw mom as mom. So even though I was hugging and kissing mom in an affectionate nature, the media showed me thousands of women who were kissed, hugged, hand holded, sat by, and touched in an almost exclusively sexual manner.
I have not looked at porn in a year and a half, and only now am I realizing the depths of the problems in my heart. I am again very grateful for being single. I have heard story after story of married men going through a porn addiction who will not touch their daughters because they are scared of what they might do to them. But I have to wonder is that the porn addiction, or is it a culture that has taught us from every angle that all physical intimacy leads to sex?
I am now rethinking physical intimacy.
Why can’t I kiss just to say I love you? Why can’t I kiss just to say I am glad to see you? Why can’t I kiss goodbye to say I will miss you? Whether it’s a wife, a daughter, a mother, or a sister a kiss should show affection. Sure there will come a day when I will privately kiss my wife in a sexual manner, but the vast majority of my kisses will not be sexual, but affection.
Why can’t I have a hug that says I love you? Why can’t I have a hug that just says I want to hold on to you? Why can’t I have a hug that says be with me one more minute? Sure there will come a day when I am married where there will be a sexual hug, but until that day why can’t I just focus on the hugs that show affection?
Why can’t I hold a hand to show my love for you? Why can’t the grabbing of a hand say I am so glad to be on this journey with you? Why can’t the holding of a hand say don’t go away? Sure there will be a day when I will grab my wife’s hand to say come to bed with me, but most days I will hold a hand for affections sake, not sex sake.
Why can’t I sit by a girl to say I love you? Why can’t sitting by a girl say I am so glad to spend time with you? Why can’t sitting by a girl say I enjoy your presence, and your person? Sure there may come a day when I am married that I will make the act of sitting next to my wife sexual, but most of the times I do it, it will be about my affection.
One of these days whether it’s a wife, daughter, sister, mother, niece or cousin my touch will show affection. Perhaps it will be a kiss, or a hug. Maybe I will get to hold hands on a journey, or sit down and watch a movie, but the purpose will be affection. Maybe one day we will be sitting together and they will be talking and I will be listening, and I will need to show my love and support so I will squeeze a hand or perhaps stroke their hair. But it will be about showing my affection.
I have been reading Song of Solomon so different than what I was taught. I was taught Song of Solomon is a raunchy book filled with erotic stuff. For some reason I was taught it was filled with make out sessions. But then I read through it and only find them kissing twice. The first time in chapter 1, and I think that is referring to a dad kissing his daughter. I think the Song of Solomon is a song written by Solomon because he recognized his mistake in marrying so many women, and he had hundreds of kids so he wrote a song to instruct them how to do better than he did, and the first 4 verses in that book deal with him loving his kids, giving them kisses of affection, calling them to him so he could sing a song so they could do better than he did.
The second kiss in Song of Solomon is in chapter 8:1. She tells her love that she wishes he was her brother so she could kiss him in public and not be despised. She wants to kiss him like her brother! So the Bible tells us of this great love a man and woman shares, but instead of a super sexualized kiss, that a movie would call a kiss of true love, we find the Bible telling us how great a kiss of affection, no different than a kiss between a brother and sister, would be to this woman. For generations the worst kiss Hollywood could think of is a kiss that’s like a sister kissing a brother (Back to the Future, among many others, mentions this). But Song of Solomon shows this kiss of affection as so important it is only one of two kisses mentioned in the book on romance.
If you put the word kiss into your favorite online or computer Bible (I use esword) you will find that kissing is almost exclusively about affection in the Bible with the only possible exception being in proverbs 7. My thought life on kissing and physical intimacy is finally starting to line up with the Bible.
There are four types of intimacy, there is intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical. At times to show intellectual, emotional or spiritual intimacy I will need to squeeze a hand, or kiss a cheek, or hug someone. I have done karate. In karate to show intellectual intimacy I must physically touch someone. That is not sexual in nature, that is intellectual, and it is for everyone’s best.
Before I can marry I must be intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually intimate with the woman I marry. But once married most of our physical intimacy will be about affection. Of the sexual intimacy we experience, I must remember God made it so that we can be more intellectually emotionally and spiritually intimate with each other than anyone else in the world. Sexual intimacy is meant to amplify all other aspects of intimacy. But affection, through physical intimacy comes way more often.
In many ways this shifting of thinking has helped me with my thought life. I have been away from porn for a year and a half, and my thought life is my major area of struggle. But it is so freeing to think of a kiss as affection instead of this leads to sex. I feel like I have taken ammunition away from my addiction. And I feel far more stable.