The Prude and the Porn Star – Part One
It is said that when innocence is lost due to sexual abuse that the person who is violated either chooses the path of the prude and is sexually introverted or the path of the porn star and is sexually extroverted. For me, I choose the prude. It fit with the moral reprimands of my mother who got pregnant her senior year of high school and had to get married to a man who didn’t love her. Though I flirted with foreplay and was almost date raped at 15, I managed to graduate from high school a virgin. However, the pressure of a long-term relationship and ridicule from others cost me my virginity and my long-protected virtue. Up until this point, my prudish ways hid my secret shame and a very wounded sexuality. Now that sex entered the picture, everything fell apart both in my five-year relationship and within myself. Heartbreak and shame led me to my knees and that is where I found Christ.
As a Christian, the standards for sexual conduct fit my prudish role perfectly and waiting until marriage seemed easy. But marriage to my first husband was extremely neglectful and sex was highly dysfunctional. The neglect and rejection drove me into therapy where I uncovered the truth that I had been sexually abused as a child. My body remembered what my mind had forgotten. My prudish ways hid my sexuality in a cloud of shame and guilt that drew my first husband like a moth is drawn to a flame. The sexual dysfunction of our relationship sadly felt safe to me. It also triggered a flirtatious side of me that plagued my days and nights with constant thoughts of infidelity.
It is common for sexual abuse victims to desire what is off-limits or wrong because it matches the “bad girl – I’m responsible for what happened to me” script we have inside our head. Unfortunately, my ex-husband didn’t understand how his dysfunction was a catalyst for my sexual abuse issues so instead of dealing with it in counseling, he checked out and our eight-year marriage ended without a fight.
Then when therapy uncovered the untamed side of my sexuality, I came face to face with the porn star, another perversion of sexuality that victims of sexual abuse have to deal with. I refer to her as tiger-lady because her thirst for revenge wanted to use men as they had used her. The prude and the porn star collided as my virtue, or what was left of it, lay in the balance. When I met my second husband, this battle intensified. My morality and sexual naivety (the prude) were an attractive challenge to him. However, because I was still working out boundaries for my sexuality, the porn star had me walking a very dangerous moral tightrope.
After we were married, the prude was no longer needed, and marriage was no fun for the porn star. So, I began to find my way apart from these two roles. Maybe this time, my husband and I could find the path to true intimacy where shared passion and shared pleasure could be expressed. But after 20 years of marriage, my cravings for the simple affections expressed in a goodbye kiss, a warm embrace, or a loving glance went unfulfilled and were seen as unrealistic, unnecessary niceties that had no place in our busy lives or our bedroom. For him, my role as wife and mother of three girls was more of a priority than being the adventurous, exciting woman he had married. All I wanted was to be captivating to and cherished by my husband and all he wanted was to be desired in a way that let him know he “still had it”. Regrettably, our marriage had become boring and routine where shared passion and shared pleasure were non-existent and where genuine desire failed to cultivate genuine intimacy.
This was the dilemma I was in when the Lord broke through. He showed me that in order to have true intimacy I would need to risk everything in me! This would require sacrificial love for my husband and absolute obedience to the Lord. He counseled me regarding the legitimate physical needs of my husband and showed me that they were by His design. He also helped me understand how to meet those needs, not out of obligation, not because he deserves it or even knew how to meet mine, but out of my love for him and obedience to the counsel of Scripture. In I Corinthians 7:3-5, Paul counsels both husbands and wives to fulfill their duty (sexual interaction that expresses ultimate passion and produces ultimate pleasure for both) to another as a concession (to meet a legitimate need) and not a commandment from God. Yet the Greek word for “fulfill” has to do with the concept of paying a debt and thus not defrauding each other by withholding that payment (sexual fulfillment) from one another.
The Word says that if we see the need of another and it is within our power to meet that need but we do not do it, this is SIN. I realized that true unconditional love was what my husband needed the most and anything less would be sin and less than God’s best. Regardless of the multitude of reasons we gave one another for withholding love and/or sex from each other, this was not an option for me to entertain. Love for the Lord and the unconditional love He placed in my heart for my husband, made them all null and void. This is not the counsel I wanted to hear, and I don’t imagine for many of us (women) it’s the counsel we want to hear either. It goes against every fiber of our fleshly nature. Satan has a tendency to wrap God’s truth in a package that makes it difficult to receive. Either by distorting the message via guilt and shame or delivering it with a “lording it over you” type of command. This makes it difficult to hear and even more difficult to obey.
However, what if the enemy does that to keep us from discovering the treasure inside? Yes, beloved, a treasure trove of unconditional love where one is captivated by the Spirit, cherished by God, and free to express a desire that is both passionate and pleasurable. The enemy does everything he can to rob us of this treasure, and I can honestly say, I’m tired of playing a game that leaves me miserable like the rest. I no longer want to withhold intimacy from the man God has given me to love. That is not how Jesus loves me nor is it how He has taught me to love others. It’s time for a change and that change has to begin with me. If you’re up to the challenge, come along for the ride, and let’s discover what God can do with obedient lives as He pours out His unconditional love in and through us to those around us.