Lesson 07: Sexual Intimacy and Family Life

I learned a lot of new things this week that can be helpful in my future marriage.  On Monday my class learned about sexual intimacy.  Sexual intimacy should be about an emotional and spiritual connection that the husband and wife have to increase their respect and love for each other.  It is important to know that men are aroused quicker and shorter, and women take longer to be aroused and response is longer.  This can be frustrating for sexual intimacy but can help if partners understand.  The challenges of sexual intimacy are timing, being critical of each other, feeling hurt, and being tired. Women and men are so different and it is amazing how Heavenly Father created our bodies, and the precious gift we have of bringing children into the world.  The opportunities for sexual intimacy is to become closer to spouse, learn to work together, learn to be considerate of partner, being able to fee loved and supported, and to better understand God and feel connected.  I have always thought that it would be scary to start having a sexual relationship with my future spouse after being married because it is crammed into our heads that sex is bad before marriage and I liked how my teacher said that easing into sexual intercourse will make you more comfortable and it will increase marital satisfaction.

                I also learned about fidelity.  High fidelity is true, loyal, and pure.  Infidelity in marriage can cause vulnerability.  I learned that there are also different ways of being unfaithful besides sex with another person.  Some of the ways to be unfaithful in a marriage is to have thoughts about another person, wanting to keep up that friendship, being friends on Facebook and talking to another person on social media, not going to spouse for problems but someone else, being alone with someone of opposite gender, flirting, putting things before your spouse like hobbies, sexting, dishonesty, and pornography.  There are many ways to be unfaithful to your spouse besides sexual sins.  It is true that we need to be careful to put our spouse first.  I thought it was interesting that pornography gives us false expectations for reality and it is so harmful to a marriage.  Marriages can start deteriorating when needs aren’t meet like a person doesn’t feel loved or desirable and they will look for that assurance outside of marriage.  I found that it was interesting that marriage when sexual infidelity happens that half of them stay married and that it can make the marriage stronger.  You have to put a lot of work into marriage after something so heart wrenching and hurtful happens because the trust is gone.  It is important to stay far away from committing infidelity by watching your thoughts, actions, and words.  Couples need to discuss clear boundaries and have trust in each other to develop a strong marriage.

                It is also important to teach children about sex before they hear it from somewhere else.  There are sexual teachings that children can hear from media like cartoons, hearing it in school, and also on the street from people.  Telling your kids about sex before others will increase their understanding and will teach them the way you would want them to think about sex.  It has been engraved in some peoples mind since they were a child that sex is bad so when they get married it is hard to adjust.  I think that we should teach children that sex is to become closer to your spouse and that it good after marriage.  We should teach that dressing modestly is to respect our bodies because our bodies are precious, not because we are ashamed and want to cover them up.  We shouldn’t use fear to teach that if we are “used” that no-body will want us.  I also believe that it is important though to express the dangers of being sexual like STD, pregnancy, not keeping the standards (consequences), and that being sexual affects more people than just you.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has a manual of how to teach children about their bodies and the importance of respect to our bodies http://www.lds.org/manual/a-parents-guide?lang=eng .  I think that it is important to stress the positivity of sex after marriage and that it is a beautiful thing so that when children get older they aren’t necessarily scared of it.  There is a balance to teaching this subject and partners need to discuss how they will talk about it to their children.