This One's for the Boys
I have two daughters who are teenagers. One of them is almost old enough to go on dates. My husband and I were discussing how many conversations this requires us to have with our daughters about purity, protecting themselves from sexual assault, dressing modestly so boys won't get the wrong idea, birth control, teen pregnancy, STD's, sexting, pornography, sex trafficking, sexual predators, sexual harassment, and a whole host of behaviors they should avoid so they won't be vulnerable. As we talked, my husband noted that conversations about dating are simpler for boys and that many parents don't bother to have most of these discussions with their sons. "Have fun, but don't get her pregnant" seems a pretty common word of advice we remember boys hearing when we were teenagers.
This morning I decided it was time to give the boys (and men) out there some advice.
First of all, you need to know that girls want to have sex, just like you do. But we want it for a different reason than you. If you read Genesis, chapter 3, where Eve receives her "punishment" for eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you see that one of her curses is to desire after her husband. Ingrained in all women, if we are being totally honest, is a desire for the kind of unconditional, deeply-committed love that you ideally get from your husband. Sex, for most of us, is one of the things that feels like that kind of love for us. It isn't hard to get a girl to desire sex with you if she believes you love her with that kind of romantic, til-death-do-us-part love. But, Genesis 3 concludes Eve's curse with "and he will rule over you", meaning that part of our curse is that men use this desire against us to get their sexual needs met without meeting our need for "our husband". By the way, shame on you if you think this is a good thing to exploit.
With that said, here's what you need to know about being an honorable man who doesn't take advantage of girls.
Listen, fellas, I want you to know that I'm fully aware of what testosterone is doing to your body right now. It is basically sending you a 24/7 message that you are literally going to perish if you don't have sex RIGHT NOW. You don't even get a break while you're sleeping and are often awakened to the embarrassment of sheets that need to be changed. Girls in tight clothes turn you on, as do girls in baggy clothes. You can't avoid temptation when viewing breasts or legs or feet or shoulders or butts or bellies or any other part of the female anatomy. And it isn't just your fellow teen girls' bodies who are problematic; you might find yourself daydreaming about your not-unattractive geometry teacher's body as she solves proofs on the SmartBoard. Even the most godly, well-mannered teenage boys are daily beseeched by their raging testosterone into thinking about sex all the time. It isn't fair that your body is betraying you like this.
However, your testosterone serves an important purpose in becoming a productive member of society. Without testosterone pushing you to want sex, you might not care to impress the women around you at all. In fact, you might never get out of your parents' basement without testosterone pushing you to put down the PlayStation controller and doing something to make yourself more attractive to the fairer sex. Your constant desire to have intercourse drives you to shower each day and make yourself smell like something other than rotting onions and spoiled dairy products. It drives you to get a job so you can afford clothes without holes in them (or with holes intentionally in them because it's fashionable right now) -- and probably a form of transportation that can get you to and from your lady friend's house (and your job, of course). Desire for sex drives your desire to make something of yourself so that you can someday take care of your "special friend" and the kids you might someday have together. You can thank testosterone for wet dreams -- but also for the desire to make more of your life than the guy who finished all the levels of Halo.
With that said, your raging testosterone has the potential to turn you into a predator and you must always live your life with the knowledge that you have the potential to bring harm to others without much effort. The unchecked urge to have sex can cause damage to others and to yourself, so it is critical that you fellas know that up front and don't let your sexual desires control you.
When I taught my daughters about sexual desire, I compared it to a campfire. Camping in the forest is fun and brings lots of adventures like hiking, fishing and canoeing. At some point, though, night falls and you need to build a campfire to provide light, warmth, and a cooking source. When you build a campfire, it is critical to take extreme caution to keep the fire within its boundaries. If the fire stays where it should, it is a great source of heat for cooking s'mores and keeping you toasty while you enjoy nature. It is when fire escapes the boundaries of the campfire that it does damage. One doesn't have to look far into news archives to find evidence of out-of-control forest fires that have destroyed natural resources and entire neighborhoods. What started as something helpful and good in its rightful place, becomes a thing of terror and destruction when it escapes its boundaries.
Sexual desire is like that. Within the boundaries of loving marriage, sexual desire is extremely helpful and good. It pushes young people to desire marriage someday and to (hopefully) choose their spouse wisely so they can have a long, happy life together filled with lots of enjoyable sex. Within marriage, sexual desire keeps spouses connected to each other, even when times are tough. It prompts couples to procreate and fill their homes with children who are loved. Sex inside the bounds of marriage is a good and honorable thing which should be desired.
However, when sex gets outside of the boundaries God designed it for, sex can be physically, emotionally, psychologically, economically, and legally destructive. Young people whose sexual desire pushes them to send "nudes" have found themselves in legal trouble for creating and distributing child pornography. Teenage sex often results in unwanted pregnancies that then force painful and costly decisions upon people barely out of the stage of childhood. Do you keep the baby or have an abortion? What physical and spiritual devastation will last a lifetime following the abortion procedure? If you keep the baby, how does that decision limit the life choices of the baby's teen parents who now will struggle to pay for the child's care while finishing school? Adoption is a lovely option, but leaves emotional wounds behind for both the biological parents and their child.
These negative outcomes of teen pregnancy are obvious, but less obvious are the emotional wounds left behind by sex. Within marriage, sex makes both partners feel connected in a loving, intimate way that is shared only between two people who are deeply committed to each other. Outside of the commitment and love of marriage, sex leaves behind guilt, shame, and a tattered heart. It isn't just a casual, fun activity like it appears in movies and on TV shows. Sex is an emotionally, physically, and spiritually intimate experience to share with another person and it binds your souls together in a way that no other activity can do. Few people, especially girls, walk away from casual sex without at least a little baggage.
What all this means, boys (and men), is that allowing your raging testosterone to find "fulfillment" comes at a high price for you and the women you use to satisfy your "itch". You can use testosterone as an excuse to become a sexual-vampire who drains others of their dignity just to satisfy your own thirst -- or you can choose to control what you do with your desire for sex. Look at the women around you as human beings who have hopes, dreams, and a good future designed by God and desire those good things for them. Show that you care what happens to others by refusing to be the one who undermines their plans for the future. The consequences of sex for you are so limited compared to the consequences for your female partners.
To control your sexual "campfire" means to avoid throwing gasoline onto it. Just like gasoline turns a small fire into a raging inferno, so too there are things that ignite sexual desire into something that is difficult to control. Some examples: pornography, sending or requesting nudes, joking around with other guys about what you'd like to do to girls, substance use (drugs and/or alcohol), allowing fantasies to run wild in your mind, and being alone with a girl in a place where no one will hold you accountable. Any of these things adds fuel to the fire that's already burning inside your teen-libido. Even without help, testosterone is doing plenty to push you to desire sex constantly -- you don't need anything making that worse than it already is.
Remind yourself daily (or hourly) of these things:
This morning I decided it was time to give the boys (and men) out there some advice.
First of all, you need to know that girls want to have sex, just like you do. But we want it for a different reason than you. If you read Genesis, chapter 3, where Eve receives her "punishment" for eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you see that one of her curses is to desire after her husband. Ingrained in all women, if we are being totally honest, is a desire for the kind of unconditional, deeply-committed love that you ideally get from your husband. Sex, for most of us, is one of the things that feels like that kind of love for us. It isn't hard to get a girl to desire sex with you if she believes you love her with that kind of romantic, til-death-do-us-part love. But, Genesis 3 concludes Eve's curse with "and he will rule over you", meaning that part of our curse is that men use this desire against us to get their sexual needs met without meeting our need for "our husband". By the way, shame on you if you think this is a good thing to exploit.
With that said, here's what you need to know about being an honorable man who doesn't take advantage of girls.
Listen, fellas, I want you to know that I'm fully aware of what testosterone is doing to your body right now. It is basically sending you a 24/7 message that you are literally going to perish if you don't have sex RIGHT NOW. You don't even get a break while you're sleeping and are often awakened to the embarrassment of sheets that need to be changed. Girls in tight clothes turn you on, as do girls in baggy clothes. You can't avoid temptation when viewing breasts or legs or feet or shoulders or butts or bellies or any other part of the female anatomy. And it isn't just your fellow teen girls' bodies who are problematic; you might find yourself daydreaming about your not-unattractive geometry teacher's body as she solves proofs on the SmartBoard. Even the most godly, well-mannered teenage boys are daily beseeched by their raging testosterone into thinking about sex all the time. It isn't fair that your body is betraying you like this.
However, your testosterone serves an important purpose in becoming a productive member of society. Without testosterone pushing you to want sex, you might not care to impress the women around you at all. In fact, you might never get out of your parents' basement without testosterone pushing you to put down the PlayStation controller and doing something to make yourself more attractive to the fairer sex. Your constant desire to have intercourse drives you to shower each day and make yourself smell like something other than rotting onions and spoiled dairy products. It drives you to get a job so you can afford clothes without holes in them (or with holes intentionally in them because it's fashionable right now) -- and probably a form of transportation that can get you to and from your lady friend's house (and your job, of course). Desire for sex drives your desire to make something of yourself so that you can someday take care of your "special friend" and the kids you might someday have together. You can thank testosterone for wet dreams -- but also for the desire to make more of your life than the guy who finished all the levels of Halo.
With that said, your raging testosterone has the potential to turn you into a predator and you must always live your life with the knowledge that you have the potential to bring harm to others without much effort. The unchecked urge to have sex can cause damage to others and to yourself, so it is critical that you fellas know that up front and don't let your sexual desires control you.
When I taught my daughters about sexual desire, I compared it to a campfire. Camping in the forest is fun and brings lots of adventures like hiking, fishing and canoeing. At some point, though, night falls and you need to build a campfire to provide light, warmth, and a cooking source. When you build a campfire, it is critical to take extreme caution to keep the fire within its boundaries. If the fire stays where it should, it is a great source of heat for cooking s'mores and keeping you toasty while you enjoy nature. It is when fire escapes the boundaries of the campfire that it does damage. One doesn't have to look far into news archives to find evidence of out-of-control forest fires that have destroyed natural resources and entire neighborhoods. What started as something helpful and good in its rightful place, becomes a thing of terror and destruction when it escapes its boundaries.
Sexual desire is like that. Within the boundaries of loving marriage, sexual desire is extremely helpful and good. It pushes young people to desire marriage someday and to (hopefully) choose their spouse wisely so they can have a long, happy life together filled with lots of enjoyable sex. Within marriage, sexual desire keeps spouses connected to each other, even when times are tough. It prompts couples to procreate and fill their homes with children who are loved. Sex inside the bounds of marriage is a good and honorable thing which should be desired.
However, when sex gets outside of the boundaries God designed it for, sex can be physically, emotionally, psychologically, economically, and legally destructive. Young people whose sexual desire pushes them to send "nudes" have found themselves in legal trouble for creating and distributing child pornography. Teenage sex often results in unwanted pregnancies that then force painful and costly decisions upon people barely out of the stage of childhood. Do you keep the baby or have an abortion? What physical and spiritual devastation will last a lifetime following the abortion procedure? If you keep the baby, how does that decision limit the life choices of the baby's teen parents who now will struggle to pay for the child's care while finishing school? Adoption is a lovely option, but leaves emotional wounds behind for both the biological parents and their child.
These negative outcomes of teen pregnancy are obvious, but less obvious are the emotional wounds left behind by sex. Within marriage, sex makes both partners feel connected in a loving, intimate way that is shared only between two people who are deeply committed to each other. Outside of the commitment and love of marriage, sex leaves behind guilt, shame, and a tattered heart. It isn't just a casual, fun activity like it appears in movies and on TV shows. Sex is an emotionally, physically, and spiritually intimate experience to share with another person and it binds your souls together in a way that no other activity can do. Few people, especially girls, walk away from casual sex without at least a little baggage.
What all this means, boys (and men), is that allowing your raging testosterone to find "fulfillment" comes at a high price for you and the women you use to satisfy your "itch". You can use testosterone as an excuse to become a sexual-vampire who drains others of their dignity just to satisfy your own thirst -- or you can choose to control what you do with your desire for sex. Look at the women around you as human beings who have hopes, dreams, and a good future designed by God and desire those good things for them. Show that you care what happens to others by refusing to be the one who undermines their plans for the future. The consequences of sex for you are so limited compared to the consequences for your female partners.
To control your sexual "campfire" means to avoid throwing gasoline onto it. Just like gasoline turns a small fire into a raging inferno, so too there are things that ignite sexual desire into something that is difficult to control. Some examples: pornography, sending or requesting nudes, joking around with other guys about what you'd like to do to girls, substance use (drugs and/or alcohol), allowing fantasies to run wild in your mind, and being alone with a girl in a place where no one will hold you accountable. Any of these things adds fuel to the fire that's already burning inside your teen-libido. Even without help, testosterone is doing plenty to push you to desire sex constantly -- you don't need anything making that worse than it already is.
Remind yourself daily (or hourly) of these things:
- I am a human being with the potential to protect and honor the dignity of others.
- I am in control of what I choose to do.
- I do not have to ruin a girl's life just to get what will feel good temporarily.
- I will not literally die if I don't have sex right now.
- My future wife is important enough to me that I will wait for her, even if it is difficult.
- I am up to the challenge of keeping my mind pure by avoiding pornography.
- I will not degrade another human being by turning images of her body into pornography.
- Girls and women have the right to a good future, just like I do, and I refuse to steal that from them.
- I am a good person, created by God to do good things, and one good thing I can do right now is to control how I treat others.
- I will stand up for what is right and will hold myself and others accountable for how they treat girls/women.
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