One summer while my husband and I were still dating, he worked as a lifeguard at an amusement park which had a reputation for hiring students on summer break who were looking to party. High school and college students roomed together in co-ed staff apartments, creating the perfect set-up for working in the sun all day and partying all night. Fortunately, Zach had a good friend working with him that summer, and they were able to escape this environment by renting an apartment of their own. It only took a few weeks for their co-workers to figure out that they were different.
Zach expressed to me his incomprehension of their chosen lifestyle many times throughout the summer. The girls and guys were hooking up every week or even every night; everyone slept with each other as if they were interchangeable. And when there would be talk the next morning about who got with who, there was a strange absence of jealousy in these reactions. No one became boyfriend and girlfriend that summer because that wasn’t the goal; the goal was to just have a good time, no strings attached.
Needless to say, Zach stood out like a sore thumb. After declining invitations to go out drinking or partying where rumor had it there would be a “stripper pole,” the girls he worked with were just confused. They knew he had a girlfriend, but as soon as they found out I was in Amsterdam for the summer, the conclusion was, “Oh! Well…clearly you can do anything you want!” It made no difference that I was in Amsterdam completing my college internship and serving in a Christian ministry, they considered our long-distance relationship a good enough reason to cancel out any commitment between us.
But I love this story of what Zach finally told them that silenced their skepticism. One girl asked him, exasperated, “Zach, I don’t get you. You could have any girl you want working here this summer, and yet you’re not into that. You don’t even flirt with us. Why?”
His answer said it all (and won major points with me!), “Because I already have what I want,” he told her, “And nothing is worth jeopardizing this relationship.”
Because he was looking at the long-term dream instead of the immediate impulse.
Because he knew what he wanted and he wasn’t willing to settle for less.
Because he considered our relationship worth protecting and preserving at any cost.
And for these reasons, I count myself an incredibly lucky woman.
Wired for Intimacy
Since the advent of marriage in Eden, God’s design has been for one man and one woman to forge a uniquely exclusive relationship, to which our human chemistry bears witness. Scientists of the brain have long studied a hormone called oxytocin, which is released in powerful doses during sexual intimacy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, and is commonly associated with feelings of trust and relational bonding. Women experience higher levels of oxytocin in general, but men are also influenced by it, also during intimacy and when fathers are playing with their children, for example.
Oxytocin surges in the brain during sexual encounters, creating emotional memories of that encounter which become entrenched in the brain. This is the reason first sexual experiences can be recalled so vividly, whether the experience is desirable or traumatic. It is also the reason God designed intimacy to be exclusive to a committed marriage relationship, so that these powerful bonds would never have to be fragmented.
In my ministry to teen girls in years past, I’ve seen this pattern tragically repeat itself. Young girls enter a relationship willing to give anything, even sex, to feel loved, and inevitably they get hurt. Then, rather than put their emotions on the line like before, they learn to shut down emotionally, training their hearts to become numb and inaccessible while making their bodies vulnerable instead.
Sex and Wholeness
Without even knowing it, we’ve become dysfunctional in our relationships by suppressing and desensitizing the very sensual experience of sex that we so glorify in contemporary culture.
Because by the time we’ve given ourselves to multiple partners, sex ceases to be transcendent, a sensory experience in which our emotions, body, and mind are engaged. Our emotions would overload if we tried to maintain a sense of oneness and a heart-level connection with each partner, only to have that oneness broken over and over. By necessity, we then compartmentalize sex as a merely physical act, denying the holistic experience of becoming one in effort to protect ourselves.
I believe that God’s design is a good enough reason alone to keep this powerful kind of intimacy within marriage, but I also believe common sense speaks for itself. We’re not meant to become one with a person only to have that intimacy painfully severed. We’re not meant to power down the human range of emotion in the midst of one of the most meaningful, pleasurable human experiences. Rather, God has gifted us with a radical means of expression, a human exchange that is intended to captivate our senses and deeply connect us to our beloved: two whole people, wholly committed, wholly captivated, as long as they both shall live.
