The Purity Movement: The messages you DIDN'T get ? | Musings ...

I recently released 8 short videos from a conversation with a young Christian woman a couple months before her marriage.? She had grown up in a family that was unable to discuss sexuality, sexual development, sexual desire, the spirituality of sexuality, or how to cultivate sexual health.?? Like many conservative Christian families there were two primary communication tools used to transmit information about sex ? Silence and an abstinence only message ? ?Don?t have sex before marriage.? If you do, you will hurt yourself, hurt your future partner and hurt your relationship with God.?? Period.? Silence communicated ? ?Sex is bad or shameful and parents are uncomfortable.?? No other discussion outside these two messages.?? This silence plus ?don?t? combo was reinforced in church and para-church experiences.?? Added to this message were all the confusing cultural sex messages floating around ? ?Sex is recreation ? not more than that.? ?It is ok to use people for your own satisfaction.? To girls ? ?If you get hurt by some guy sexually ? or a guy comes on too strong or pressures you, you somehow asked for it by the way you dressed or the way you looked. ?It is your fault.? To boys ? ?You are a sexual animal, girls are for your pleasure, you can?t be expected to manage your strong sexual desires.?

Nowhere are the messages ?

• Your body is a work of beauty and art created intentionally by the same God that created the earth.? It is a sensual body filled with many wonderful ways to know, experience and celebrate joy and pleasure.
• You were given your sensual, beautiful, miraculous body so you could know more of God?s great love for you.
• You were created to know love ? to be loved, to give love, to act in love and to defend love.
• You are hard wired for pleasure and connection.? This is part of your desire for love, for touch and as you get older, for sexual touch and intimate knowing.
• Loving deeply and sharing your body, mind and soul with another can be both amazing and painful.? Love is powerful ? it can be powerful for good and it can hurt deeply when you or your love are rejected, treated poorly or when your loved one leaves or dies.
• Because loving can be painful, it takes a lot of courage and strength of character to choose to love others in the face of potential rejection and pain.
• Sometimes people have been hurt or treated poorly in their life and this affects their ability to give or receive love well.? Sometimes people are still maturing and don?t treat others with the respect and care they deserve.? Because of this it is good to discern if the people you?care for have the maturity and strength of character to be loving and caring toward you ? cherishing the miracle of you.
• All people, men and woman, boys and girls, you and me, are not responsible for what we feel but are ALWAYS 100% responsible for our actions and words. ?You can and will manage strong emotions if you choose to. ?No one has the power to make you do or say anything you do not choose.
• Your body and desires are good.? Determine to make choices so your experiences of love, intimacy, touch and pleasure give you memories you cherish. ?You write your sexual story with the choices you make. Write a story you love!
• Find people you can trust to coach, guide, love and support you as you learn about the gifts of your body, heart, mind and spirit. It can feel complicated and it helps to have a?few people you can trust so you don?t feel alone and confused.

Tina Schermer Sellers is a recognized scholar in the integration of spirituality into a multitude of areas represented in family and career life. As a behavioral scientist, licensed family therapist, medical family therapist, and certified sex therapist, she specializes in helping to craft relationships, organizations and lives that flourish. In the area of sexuality, Tina has spent a career helping people discover what culture has failed to teach them about their bodies, their hearts, their capacity for intimacy and their erotic potential. This entry was posted in God, intimacy, Relationships, Sex, Sex, God, and The Church, sexual health, sexuality, spirituality and tagged body, desire, integrity, mindfulness, personal responsibility, sex and Christianity, sex and God, sex and religion, shame, Tina Schermer Sellers. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://blog.tinaschermersellers.com/2012/11/18/the-purity-movement-the-messages-you-didnt-get/

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