Christianity And Sexual Dysfunction

[cobrakai]

I have quoted it before but I think Christopher Hitchens puts it best when he says, "Sexual innocence, which can be charming in the young if it is not needlessly protracted, is positively corrosive and repulsive in the mature adult." I couldn't agree with him more. I would tend to assume that many of us on here would agree that one of the worst parts about our former faith was the absolute mind fuck it created when it came to our sex life. I can't even put in words the bitterness and anger I feel towards this issue. I am a 29 year old male and I have finally started to have intercourse. I was always sexually active as a Christian but it was that whole warped view of "anything goes besides intercourse", which obviously makes no sense. After finally having sex I find that my bitterness and anger are that much stronger. To finally start having sex has been a great burden lifted off of me and it has been with a woman I really care for and I just can't help but to think "WHY THE FUCK IS THIS CONSIDERED WRONG?!" WHY THE FUCK DID I WAIT?!I know many on here probably have even worse experiences but I can't believe I absolutely wasted my 20's on waiting for marriage. It makes me absolutely sick to my stomach that I gave up such a great part of life because I thought I was actually pleasing some Jewish carpenter in the sky. How fucking silly does that sound? How did some of you get over the anger and regret?

 

I recall what it was like in that christian world and it just seems so unhealthy to me. Why deny something that comes so naturally? I think it has also effected me in a physical way. Because I was trying so hard to resist "the real thing" I always turned to porn. It is no secret that the majority of Christians have healthy (or unhealthy) porn habits, but I truly blame the faith for being addicted to porn for so many years. It is sickening to me thinking that most of my sexual experiences involve me and my hand and a computer screen, instead of seeking the real thing in a healthy manner. More over I can only imagine what those sexual experiences would have done for my ego and confidence in my early 20s. On a physical level it has been something to overcome. I feel that for all the years of using porn and resisting what is natural I have conditioned myself and hurt myself sexually. I find it has been hard to overcome the effects of Christianity. I remember the first time I had oral sex as a christian I was so consumed with guilt that I could barely get hard. That is not normal for a man in his early 20s. Now as a 29 year old I still find it difficult sometimes to achieve orgasm or remain erect during sex. I just feel this dysfunction was born from my Christianity. My body became so acclimated over time to not having a real woman, to using my hand, and to having a sensory overload variety of porn to look at. It just makes me angry to think how much this faith fucks with what is natural. They try to make sex out to be this dirty act, yet by making it taboo they force you into habits that are actually unhealthy. Has anybody else, male or female, had similar experiences? Did you find it hard to actually enjoy the real thing once the shackles were lifted?

[godlessgrrl]

Arguably, sexual shame helped get me into Christianity in the first place.

 

I learned a lot of horrible things about sex from my family, but they were socially conservative rather than religious. It wasn't until I was sexually assaulted in my mid-teens that sex and religion really intersected. My family didn't believe it was even possible for a teen to be raped or assaulted; to their minds that was something that only happened to foolish women in dark alleys who dared to try to walk home alone after an evening at the bar. It wasn't something that a horny irresponsible teen's boyfriend did to her on a breakfast date in her mother's own house. No, that just wasn't possible, it had to be my doing somehow. So they locked me in the house, the perp was sent away, and I was shamed for "having had sex" like the bad little whore my family always assumed I was.

 

Enter Christianity and its message of redemption. I think I was badly in need of something that would "wash me clean", so to speak, and wipe away my sexual transgression so I could be respectable and human again. I don't think I thought of it exactly like that at the time, I just felt as if I were the worst person who ever lived, and felt like I needed something to save me. So I was ripe for Xianity, really.

 

From that point on sex and Christianity were linked, and it wasn't pretty. I was a guilty Pentecostal dating a guilty Catholic for awhile; it didn't stop us from shagging, but it sure screwed with our heads bigtime. I married an old friend who adopted Christianity too; he turned out to be largely indifferent towards both me and the marriage, including sexually indifferent. (We were married for nearly 4 years and I think I can count the number of times we shagged on my fingers and toes, and I'd have digits left over.) I was miserable, but Christianity kept me in it when I really shouldn't have gotten involved at all.

 

Later on, after I divorced, I encountered probably the sharpest sexual issues with the Notorious Bible-Thumping Ex™, about whom I've written before. He was a real piece of work, I tellya - had a genuine, certified Virgin/Whore Complex™ about women, felt sex was dirty, felt he was addicted to porn and masturbation, the works. Dealing with him dragged up all sorts of old shame - which I didn't get over until I finally ventured into a polyamorous relationship and just said, fuck this, I'm going to do sex on my own terms, not somebody else's.

 

Thing is, what I perceive is that Xianity screwed not so much with sex, but with gender relations and sexuality together. All of this negative sexuality was tangled in with things like gender roles, relationships between men and women, sexual politics, that sort of thing. To this day I find it really odd when I hear people vilify feminism for supposedly creating this huge clash between men and women, because that isn't my experience at all: everything bad I've learned about gender and sex roles comes from religion and tradition, and everything good I've learned about it comes from feminism and humanism.

 

I dunno. It's just been really weird.

[ShallowByThyGame]

I was certainly stunted sexually, I did, and to some extent still do, have a deep fear of intimacy. I felt that if girls knew I found them attractive, or if I touched them, they would think I was a pervert and I'd be abandoned by my peers. Sex was supposed to be wrong, and yet my feelings indicated otherwise. I never got to have a high school romance, though I tried, but in the end I would hit a wall of fear and probably seemed disinterested. Because all the hollywood movies depict how easy teen romance is, I felt like a complete failure, and sometimes it would make me ill to even see other people happy together because I felt that would never be me.

 

I was able to shatter some of these chains before I left college and I am now married, but many scars remain. For example, I rarely initiate hugs, and I don't even kiss my mother on the cheek. I feel that everyone is wearing these heavy blankets of Christianity(and other religions) that say we shouldn't show our feelings to one another, and it makes me sad.

 

I had access to porn at a very young age, and while I'm not against porn as it's the only reason I had any idea what to do with a girl, the fact that it taught me more about the body, and how people can please each other, than the humans that raised me seems strange.

 

I remember the day after I lost my virginity I was still in shock, because before I was sure I would be moral and be able to resist advances until I was married, but in the heat of the moment I gladly threw that away because I knew deep down my fears were not healthy.

 

I don't have any problems with virility though and I'm about your age, so I don't think whacking off is the primary factor there.

 

I do lament all the good times I might have had if I had not been afraid of appearing like the dirty, perverted, sinning human that I am.

[Brought None]

Grew up in a Church of Christ environment which is very anti-gay. I'm still deprogramming some of the teachings the church and church community crammed into my head. Mainly the fear of people knowing I'm gay. As a homosexual, growing up in a religious community, coming out was not an option, thus I didn't have a real change to develop socially via romantic relationships like heterosexuals are encouraged to do at an early age. So here I am now with a drastic amount of catching up to do. Confidence is another I'm still building. Church tosses the word "abomination" around, views homosexuals as vial lesser beings, which leaves one with little self worth growing up. These are my scars which I'm still working on.

 

It's just now I've started to go to gay bars to try to connect with the GLBT community and perhaps be romantic, but even then I still have a great deal of stigma to cut through. Doesn't help I'm in the Bible Belt either. Still going to have to come out to my parents eventually.

 

Repression of emotions has been a norm in my life for too long. In the past I isolated myself, and still am guilty of doing that to myself sometimes cause the stigma that still lingers in my mind about some things. It's one reason my signature is perverse like it is. I created it to break myself of the fear of just displaying something like that on a place like this. I do wonder if all the repression I've endured will have some impact on my sex drive one that time comes to be intimate with someone.

 

Oy, don't mean to ramble out a book here.