Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality (33 page)

Dealing with the Jesus trap is difficult. She is probably not consciously thinking, “I will ignore my guilt for a while until I can trap him into accepting Jesus.” He is not thinking, “I will go along with her religious stuff, but I’ll be prepared in case she tries to convert me.”

Here are some strategies to consider.

1. Engage in open, direct and detailed discussion of religion to make the issues visible to both partners. It might take the form of, “I am having a great deal of fun with you and am really getting to like you a lot, but something puzzles me. Your religion says everything we are doing is sinful, how do you square that with what we are doing? Do you think you might start feeling guilty about it at some point? For my part, I don’t see a problem, but I am concerned that the conflict between what we are doing and your religion may get in the way as we develop a stronger relationship.”
   

   This strategy forces both of you to look directly at a major threat to the relationship. The downside in this approach is that it may evoke the guilt cycle and make it difficult for her to go back to having fun again. You may choose to enjoy the fun while it lasts. Just be aware, the fun will come to an end. The consolation is that the result will be the same whether you convert or not. A religious person simply cannot ignore the internal conflict forever.
   

2. Honestly discuss your sexual attitudes. It may take the form of a discussion such as this: “I am really interested in you and think we may have something special between us. You have expressed interest in getting married and having children. I like that idea, but I also want to be sure that we are both on the same page when we do have children. I want my children to feel free and open about their sexuality. For example, many parents are shocked when they learn they have a gay child, when they catch their child using porn, or they learn that their child is discussing explicit sexual acts with a classmate. I’d like to discuss how we would approach these kinds of issues if we were parents. For my part, I would like our children to have
   the same kind of free, open and creative kinds of sex we have been having since we began seeing each other. What are your views?”
   

This kind of discussion will quickly bring out the partner’s religious sexual identity. You may soon experience his or her homophobia. He or she may also express their guilt over the kind of sex you’ve been having.

This kind of openness and honesty is not part of religious courtship. It brings out your values and challenges hers. Initiate the values discussion soon after you have decided to move the relationship to a more serious level. The more addicted you get to each other, the harder it will be to admit that the value differences are insurmountable.

The psychology behind the Jesus trap is simple if you understand the guilt cycle. In the course of dating, it is very likely that you will find a person who really seems to match you but is also religious. Hopefully, this discussion will give you the tools to think rationally about the relationship before making a commitment to someone who may try to convert you and infect your future children with religion without your agreement.

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As we noted earlier, it is usually the female who is more religious, but this story can and does go either way.

165
New Relationship Energy, as discussed in
Chapter 17
..

166
Living After Faith
podcast, episode #38, available online at
http://livingafterfaith.blogspot.com/
.

People seek different levels of security and variety in relationships. One size does not fit all. But religious maps imprison us, blinding us to the problems the map itself causes
.

You are a walking conflict with regard to sex and relationships, as is every other person on the planet. On one hand, you want excitement, adventure, stimulation and being swept off your feet with the hottest, most attractive person in the world. On the other hand, you want to feel secure and stable, protected and supported by a solid partner. Most humans are a mix. Some want more security, others more adventure, but everyone wants some of both.

New relationship energy (NRE) helps fulfill the need for excitement and stimulation, but it does not fulfill the need for the stability and long-term support to rely on when the going gets tough. This is an entirely different kind of relationship. It is not the kind you read about in Harlequin novels or Shakespeare. It does not have flash, excitement and adventure, but what it offers is even more important. It offers a sense of security, of being loved, and loving and caring for someone.

We call both of these relationships love, but they are actually quite different at the biochemical level and at the social and psychological level. Long-term security relationship, or LTS, includes the feeling of safety and satisfaction you get when you can come home after a hard day and enjoy a quiet evening with your partner. Your body reacts to the security your partner offers and releases hormones that counteract the stress hormones generated throughout the day. This is a powerful experience and addictive in its own right, but it can take years of experience with a partner before you realize the positive results.

Now for the conflict. In
Chapter 20
we discussed SSO (socio-sexual orientation). No matter where you fall on this spectrum, you probably want some level of excitement and some security. If you and your spouse are both high SSO, you crave the excitement and adventure that comes in NRE, but you also want the security of a solid partner. To meet those needs, you may seek out and enjoy adventurous activities together or separately. This might mean one partner runs marathons and the other has a boyfriend on the side. It might mean both of you enjoy sexual role-play or watching porn together occasionally.

If you are on the other end of the SSO scale, you crave the quiet sense of support and security that comes from a predictable routine and stable partner. Years of enjoying each other brings satisfaction, trust and well-being. A low level of sexual activity may be just fine. You would never dream of
attending a fetish party, and the thought of sex outside of your own home has no interest for you.

Both of these styles can work. But there has to be a mutual understanding of each partner’s excitement/security level. If the partners are too far apart on the SSO scale, they’ll need much more understanding and communication. One partner will be interested in more adventurous sexual activities while the other sees no need. It can be a source of major misunderstanding, though not insurmountable.

Unfortunately, the religious culture around us values the low-SSO type of relationship. Low adventure, low excitement and low sexual activity provide a nice quiet place in which to infect children or grandchildren with negative religious sexual ideas. Religion needs this kind of environment to incubate.

The fact that humans, when given the opportunity, change partners occasionally helps us understand how we can love a partner but still want someone else – how a person can enjoy LTS with her partner but want NRE with someone new. These are not mutually exclusive emotional states. They can exist in the same person at the same time.

The famous CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt died in 1997. As the estate was being sorted out, a mistress surfaced and sued to maintain possession of the Montana property he had promised her. To most people’s great surprise, it was then revealed that Kuralt had lived a double life for 29 years. But the Kuralt story may be more common than we realize. The aunt and uncle of a good friend of mine revealed that they had lived in an open relationship most of their married life. They dared not tell it to their family or friends, but they attributed the happiness they had experienced for over 50 years to their non-monogamy. Even a small amount of research on the Internet leads to many websites and organizations where people communicate and connect in non-monogamous lifestyes.

The ratio of men to women featured in the history books would lead one to believe that women did not even exist or played no part in our culture. Similarly, a reading of religious history over the last two centuries shows almost no atheists. One would think that atheists did not exist until Richard Dawkins wrote
The God Delusion
(2006), yet atheists have been present in significant number for centuries. In Utah, there are hundreds of
polygamous Mormon compounds, but no one talked about them or even acknowledged they existed until Warren Jeffs was arrested for child abuse and molestation.
¹⁶⁷
In the same way, there are many non-monogamists among us; they just don’t advertise it.

Culture has a way of ignoring some kinds of people or making them so uncomfortable that they hide in plain sight. People will find ways to get their needs met, even if they have to hide it for 29 years. Warren Buffet, one of the two or three richest men in the world, was married for decades. When his wife moved to California to pursue a career, his mistress moved in with him with the full knowledge of his wife. The arrangement lasted for decades with his wife’s full knowledge and approval. When his wife died, he married his mistress.
¹⁶⁸
All this in Omaha, Nebraska!

How many famous people from FDR to Bertrand Russell, from Mark Twain to Simone de Beauvoir have led lives with multiple partners – whether openly or secretly? If it is common among famous people, it is happening among the less famous as well.

The shame in these stories is not in their non-monogamy, but in the secrecy with which those involved felt they had to live. Monogamy is not the default position for humans. Openly recognizing this would allow people to decide for themselves what types of relationships work for them. Religion and our religious culture dictates one approach to relationships, but as we saw in our review of other cultures and species, there are many possible relationship configurations. Even among different religions there are other configurations as we see in Islam, Hinduism and fundamentalist Mormonism. Of course, these religions are highly prejudicial against women, but they are different configurations from mainstream Christianity. Is it possible that there are relationship configurations that are friendly to women and men but not tied to traditional Christian marriage?

The challenge for those who want to throw off religious influence is to learn how to make rational choices about relationships and sexuality. Our Christian culture says monogamy is the only acceptable arrangement. Unless you are Christian, there is no reason to follow that particular dogma. Even the Christians do not adhere to Christian monogamy, despite their claims.
Newt Gingrich has had three wives. He had affairs with two of them while married. That is not monogamy by any definition, yet he holds himself up as a devout monogamous Christian. I would estimate that well over half of the divorces in my home church were preceded by an affair on the part of one partner. That is not monogamy.

If people were taught to communicate openly about their sexuality, they would have wonderful opportunities to develop long-lasting, loving relationships that meet the needs of all parties and create safe spaces for children to grow up.

So what does love have to do with it? We would first need to determine what love looks like. Is love two men kissing after their wedding? Is it a Black man and white woman living happily married for 40 years? Is it two lovers having a 10-year relationship but never getting married? Is it a married couple getting all dressed up to go to a swingers' party? Is it a polyamorous woman with her husband and boyfriend? All of these forms of relationships are based on love and care, despite Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Mormon or Hindu scriptures. People within these relationships define love on their own terms, not in terms of scripture or the current religious interpretation. Love must be defined within the relationship, not by some outside criteria.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, a very religious couple I knew lived together for almost 45 years, hating each other most of the time and sleeping in separate bedrooms. Their children and grandchildren got an earful of complaints whenever they were alone with one of them. When the husband died, the minister praised the couple for their long happy marriage and for raising their children in the Lord. Yet, everyone knew this to be a lie, including the minister. But they were in church every Sunday and gave generously, so the charade was perpetuated.

Which of these relationship styles makes for greater happiness? Which allows people to grow and learn to communicate their aspirations and desires? Which is more honest? The religious couple lived a lie and their unhappiness impacted dozens of people inside and outside their family. Their religious values prevented them from divorcing or finding a different relationship arrangement, yet those same values did not help them learn how to be happy together.

The need to lock in sexual monogamy for life is simply unrealistic for many people and may not even be emotionally or physically healthy. Recognition of this fact would go a long way toward making long-term relationships possible. If people communicated honestly on these issues, other relationship approaches might work for a wide range of people. Of the 50% in our culture who divorce, how many might remain married if other relationship options were seen as viable?
¹⁶⁹
How many who stay in miserable marriages would find renewed happiness and commitment to one another?

Most people simply inherit the sexual map of their religious training and never examine it. So when they repeatedly get in relationship trouble, they never think to examine their map to ensure it is accurate. A very religious former coworker of mine was married three times over several decades and had children by two wives. A few minutes of discussion over lunch one day easily revealed why. He believed strongly that the man is the head of the house, and his attitudes about sex were prudish at best. It would never occur to him that his map of marriage, sex and relationships was the primary reason for so much unhappiness and disappointment in his life. He was imprisoned by his map.