SERIAL MONOGAMY SEXUALITY

(And how it differs for men and women)

The prevailing assumption among most modern Americans is that sex belongs within the confines of a "committed relationship."

The problem with these supposed commitments is that people almost never acknowledge exactly what they are committing.  In practice, though few folks would ever come out and say it, it seems that what is being committed is something like this: 

I promise not to have sex with anyone other than you until I'm through or almost through having sex with you. 

The unspoken premise of this serial monogamy sexuality is simply a determination to get what can be gotten, until it seems that more can be gotten elsewhere.  This using of the other person is justified by a willingness to be used, for a time anyway, by the other person.

This sham, this mutual using, this anti-love, can never satisfy us.  Deep within our beings, in the innermost recesses of our hearts, we desire so much more.  People in these serial monogamies can't help the fact that they begin to desire real love, real commitment.  They can't help beginning to long for the things of forever, as those forever feelings begin welling up in their hearts.  They can't help it because God made us all to desire the radical, absolute and irrevocable mutual giving by which a man and a woman become no longer two but one. 

Given the irresistible nature of this desire within our hearts, a desire for something so radically opposed to the lifestyle of serial monogamy sexuality, serial monogamers find themselves drawn into an elaborate pretense.  This pretense typically takes the form of pretending to be giving more than they are actually giving in an attempt get more of what they cannot help desiring from their partner.  The end result is not giving love, but taking, tricking, and using. 

Serial monogamers don't intend to wind up being used or becoming users in this fashion.  They don't focus on the fact that the current relationship is part of an ongoing series of monogamies.  And they try not to think about the illusion of commitment upon which their mutual sexual using is based. 

The decisions which lead people down this road are usually not intentionally evil, so much as they are simply careless.  But there is no point trying to fool ourselves--casual and careless abuse of our own sexuality and the sexuality of others leads us down a road at the end of which is the death of trust, the death of freedom, and the death of love.

SENSUALITY AND SENTIMENTALITY

The road to serial monogamy and related forms of impurity, and the types of rationalizations practiced along that road, tend to be very different for men than they are for women.

No matter what we may have been told, or how politically incorrect it is to acknowledge it, men and women are different.  As a matter of fact, that's probably why you're reading this right now, because you like the difference.  Viva' la difference!

So when it comes to the matter of the aforementioned using, we experience different temptations.  Mind you, we're not speaking in absolutes here, we can certainly point out exceptions, but the following differences hold true as general principles:  Women are by nature more sentimental, and men more sensual. 

To say that men are more sensual means simply that men respond much more quickly and strongly to the stimulus of our senses, to what is on the surface, to what we see.  This is why men are far more susceptible to lust after women for the sake of sex alone. 

Here is an example of this.  Not long ago there was a billboard campaign featuring a supermodel wearing an open trench coat, a bikini, and a milk mustache, with the tag line, "Got Milk?"  It's entirely conceivable that a woman driving by that billboard might get the idea to stop by the grocery store on the way home and pick up a gallon of two percent to go with the cereal tomorrow morning; whereas men are prone to an entirely different set of responses.  Yes, a guy can look away.  Or he can pray a simple prayer and move on.  But he can also look again at this woman, view her as merely an object to be used for pleasure, and very quickly experience an actual chemical change, a change in the physiological makeup of his brains and his blood.  Then he may well start thinking about taking the wrong exit from the freeway, going to the wrong places, and getting into the kinds of situations which he has been struggling to leave behind.  That's how guys are, most of us, anyway.  We're that simple. 

Women are much more complex and sophisticated than men in pretty much every way.  Women respond not just to the surface, but to the deeper aspects of what makes a man a man.  A woman's response to a man is more sentimental.  A woman responds to characteristics such as courage, confidence, strength, willingness and ability to be a provider and protector.  A woman's appreciation of a man's sexuality is mixed up with her appreciation of all of these other masculine qualities.  Subsequently, when a relationship with a man includes an element of sexual attraction, she is likely not to recognize and consider that nearly as quickly as he will.

All of this helps explain why we can say that a man is more apt to use emotional intimacy in order to get sex.  And a woman is more apt to use sex in order to get emotional intimacy. 

The main thing to be understood about this for the moment is that we are both susceptible to using each other in context of our sexual relationships.  Neither form of using is necessarily more prevalent, or more insidiously harmful, than the other.