Healthy Sex Support Group
This community is dedicated to an open discussion about healthy sex and sharing thoughts and feelings about sexuality and improving one's sex life. Most active adults desire to have an active and fulfilling sex life, both for themselves and also their partner. Here we discuss common sexual challenges faced by both men and women.
The "57 year old man (who presumably was a Catholic priest)...still got it?" post got me thinking about this. I was raised Catholic and that religion drilled into us that sex outside of marriage and the desire for procreation, even masturbation, is bad, lust, dirty, a sin.
Now, at age 50, I know that's not the case, God wants us to have sex, and not just to procreate, but out of the pure joy of showing love and appreciation for each other! I haven't gone blind from masturbation yet, but there's still that twang of Catholic guilt here and there that still rears its ugly head. Any tips on how to push through this, "purge this demon", finally shed it?
Now, at age 50, I know that's not the case, God wants us to have sex, and not just to procreate, but out of the pure joy of showing love and appreciation for each other! I haven't gone blind from masturbation yet, but there's still that twang of Catholic guilt here and there that still rears its ugly head. Any tips on how to push through this, "purge this demon", finally shed it?
I will comment more later , but wanted to say good thread Kool !
I think the real issue is promiscuity. Watching and masturbating to porn, which exposes us to a variety of many, many "partners", IS in a sense adultery, since "when a man merely LOOKS upon a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery in his heart". I do see the spiritually corrosive, even destructive nature of porn, and how resorting to it keeps me from forming a monogamous, more powerful and vastly more enjoyable relationship with a real flesh-and-blood woman.
I've been cutting way back on my porn consumption, and when I do watch it, I only view ONE girl, or ONE couple, and that's it. This helps foster an attitude of wanting to be monogamous.
When I joined the religion, I did it of free choosing and was very happy with that selection. In reality, any Christian based faith promotes the same message in their teachings so Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, etc. They are all the same.
Although I am Catholic, I was not raised in a religious home - far from it. Therefore, unlike the cradle Catholics, I choose to enjoy the things I love about the religion and ignore the stuff I don't agree with. From my conversations with friends that are still involved in the religion, many do the same.
I equate it with being an American. There are things that I love about being from the United States, that I am very proud of but there are other things I don't like and therefore, choose to ignore them (or I would go batshit crazy). I would never relinquish my citizenship or not want to be American because of a few things I didn't like.
Hopefully that makes sense.
As far as sex and guilt, I think if it were that big of an issue, I'd seek therapy to help deprogram that message in my head. I love sex, I have sex and I watch porn. I was married in the Catholic church, still am (not annulled) and never feel guilty about it.
For grammar school I had Ursiline Nuns and in high school Sisters of Divine Compassion (The name makes me laugh)
I don't recall the nuns ever talking about sex. The closest any of them ever came was in 6th grade when mother Mary John put newspaper on the window of the door then showed us what a sanitary napkin was. We all tried hard not to giggle since half the class was already using them and we went shopping with our Mothers who bought them, though they were put in a plain brown paper bag so no one would know what they were.
I was in the Catholic SChool system from preschool to 8th grade. It just so happened that it was at the same time that all the supposed boys were being molested by priests. In the years of 1976 to 1986 and I was never molested by a priest or anyone else affiliated with the church.
It was drilled into our heads on a regular basis that
Sex outside of marriage was wrong!
Homosexuality was wrong!
Lustfully looking upon a woman was wrong!
Mastubation was wrong!
Pornography was wrong!
All these reasons would send you to HELL and dont even get me started on the 10 Comandments and Udultry.
So that was what I was taught at a very early age and brought up to believe. Now that I think about it I feel that the boys were told things like this more then the girls were. I also found it funny that once we all went to a public highschool after 8th grade a lot of the girls became permiscuouse and three of theseven had babys either right before or after graduation.
Now to get to the guts of this post. I dealt with a LOT of trauma and fear as a child and I have never spoke about this before in this legth of detail. I was molested and coaxed into sexual acts as a child of 7 years old with another male that was 6 years older then me and I will leave it at that. For the longest time I felt I was to burn in hell for what I had done. I felt I was gay and there was no forgiveness for me so I was doomed to the fear of living and knowing I was going to hell. This still haunts me at times today and is probably why I blocked most of my childhood out and do not remember much of it at all.
I now have a healthy hetero sex life. I have learned to put the past behined me and move on. I do however think that my past played a part in my early sexual development. I have had a very high sex drive since I was 13 to 14 years old and still do at 43. I feel the church had caused a lot of guilt and remorce in my life from the teachings I learned as a very young child.
Now with all that said I still believe in God and the teachings of the bible, but I do not follow the Catholic church to the letter any longer and have not for years. I do not go to church other then for funerals or babtisams. I still struggle with my beliefs and convictions. I suppose I always will.
it also helps that he has a bisexual wife, who enjoys porn (most the time), identifies as a voyeur and enjoys watching and doing masturbation, etc. I am a very open-minded person. I always have been. so, I have helped bring him out of his shell a bit because I can explain that I am his wife, and I am not judging. I am ENJOYING these things.
but he still admits of having catholic guilt sometimes. it makes me sad. I never want my children to feel that way.
Walking around on eggshells a la "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards is a very Puritanical view on life. I don't believe God wants us to have all parts of our humanity EXCEPT our sexuality. To my mind that is how one has part of his personality stripped away and that can cause a lot of sexually deviant (rape, incest, etc.) behaviors to occur. It seems to me that if one's personality is split apart like that one cannot fully integrate as a human being and eventually a lot of problems can occur.
Unfortunately, Catholic church history is replete with deviant behavior including the crusades, rape and conquest. The Catechism of the Church has been changed where sexuality is embraced and is not viewed as dirty or sinful. It is the gratuitous or degrading behaviors that some get off on that the Church still condemns.