The touch of a hand cradling your face. A puff of air that tickles your ear from a whisper. Eyes that look deeply and longingly into yours, engulfing your soul so you can’t look away. Being held so tightly that you can barely breathe. That is intimacy.
Intimacy is the actions and emotions we share between individuals.
With each person that enters your life, you have a unique intimacy with them. However, many people in your life can be grouped together in different levels of intimacy that you share with them. The levels of intimacy are intimacy resistance, zero intimacy, basic intimacy, friendly intimacy, and cherished intimacy.
At the lowest point of intimacy, there is intimacy resistance. This is a lack of and refusal of intimacy with a person or group of people. It might have been a person that had harmed you in the past(or present) and you have no desire to be around them or share your life with them. It could be someone who touched you inappropriately, someone who bullied you, your parents, your siblings, your pastor, your teacher, your neighbor, your camp counselor, your best friend, etc… You are actively reisting contact with this person and avoiding speaking to them. And if you cannot resist the intimacy, then you mentally escape your trauma and are being scarred deeper and deeper psychologically.
Whether you are meaning to or not, you share a certain level of intimacy with everyone you meet.
To most people, such as waitresses, flight attendants, bus drivers, mechanics, etc…, there will be zero intimacy. You meet them once a month, maybe once in a lifetime and you never see them again.
With others, you will have basic intimacy. These are typically acquaintances, coworkers, or distant relatives. Someone you at least recognize and know their name.
With some, you will have friendly intimacy. They are people you like to be with and you might share a slight touch or divulge a secret/vulnerable side of you.
Those who you share friendly intimacy with may, at some point, be promoted to those with cherished intimacy. This is an intimacy where they are your best friend. They are your love. They are your future spouse or adopted sister/brother. They are the people you show your true self. They are the people you show the most physical touch and deep discussions with. They are the people you want to be with as much as possible.
Intimacy towards others is decided upon by you.
You control how you express intimacy to another person. You give permission to how they show intimacy towards you. If it is something forced upon you, then it is not intimacy. If it is something you agreed to and then changed your mind about, it is still intimacy…you just regretted the intimacy you shared. If it is intimacy that happened because you were too scared or embarrassed to say no, then that shows an area we need to work on in our lives. People will believe it’s a yes if you don’t say no.
Intimacy is a core part of our life. We are surrounded by it and cannot escape it forever. Eventually, we will have to grasp the concept of how intimacy works and decide the levels of intimacy we want to share with people.
This is where I believe it is important to have guidelines for sexual intimacy,
the most defenseless and deepening intimacy you can share.
The deeper the intimacy, the more life-altering and painful it can be if it goes south. It will be a hurt that not only affects your heart but also your mind and soul.
Many people just see sex as a pleasure-filled act between two people. But when that person you shared sex with hurts you, it not only affects your sex life but also your mental state, your future plans, the children you share, and the world that you have currently created.
Sexual intimacy touches every area of your life. If we are to take any form of intimacy seriously, it should be sexual intimacy.
To help protect us from this pain, I believe we should hold onto four core principles.
They will help you understand the type of person you want to have sexual intimacy with. They will help protect you from being mistreated, used as an object, disposed of, and internally fractured. They will make your future decisions easier to acknowledge and decide upon.
They will help you follow the path that is truly the one you desire because you are not compromising your beliefs. You are staying true to yourself.
I would rather live a life of sadness because life didn’t go how I had hoped than regret it because I lost myself along the way.
These principles cannot guarantee you a perfect life. Nothing can guarantee that. But it can stop you from making poor decisions and regretting them.
But I can guarantee you this, If sexual intimacy is shared with someone that goes against these principles, then you have a greater possibility of being harmed in the end.
It is something that should not be treated lightly, for you are precious and worthy of safety and security.
As a Christian, I believe God gave us sex. He is the creator of it. And there are certain key elements that He suggests/commands that we do in regard to sex. These principles will be touching on many aspects of His wisdom, but this post is not an entire viewpoint of God’s design for sex.
In total, I believe there are four core principles for sexual intimacy. And each of these principles help guide me and establish who I am and what I value.
4 Core Principles For Sexual Intimacy
1.) Be careful who you are sexually intimate with.
Our current culture lives for the now. If it feels good, then you should do it. If it is something that you want then it must be the right thing.
We are living in a world where we believe there are no regrets and no consequences. We are living our life as if tomorrow will never come and we will never have to pay the piper.
If you have never heard this expression before, then let me explain. It comes from an old-time fable of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. According to the myth, he was hired to rid the village of Hamelin of the rats that had infested it. He did so by playing a song on his flute and leading them out of the city.
However, once the job was done the people refused to pay him. His revenge for the lack of payment was to steal all the children of the town. The moral of the story was to pay the piper, and do what you promised, or else you would regret it. But the saying has also come to mean that it is time to accept the consequences of a thoughtless or rash action.
If we are lax in who we are sexually intimate with, then there will be consequences. Consequences that are unexpected and we don’t get to choose what they are or when they happen. We will not know the extent of how these consequences will affect our life. They just happen.
Have sex with a stranger on holiday? Now you have STDs. Have sex with a person you met on a dating app? Now you find out they have a family and you’re the home wrecker (truthfully they are but their family might not see it that way). Have sex with your boy/girlfriend. Now you have a baby entering the picture and no form of commitment to each other. With no commitment, you haven’t had talks about the future and you will be stressed and scared about what they will decide to do.
These are all extreme cases but these are times when a person is not careful with whom they are sexually intimate. They are doing what seems right at the moment, they are doing what feels good now.
And sometimes, these consequences will cause us to mature and become better people because of it. Our life will be enhanced even though we made a mistake because it caused us to make better decisions. But that is not typically the case.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.
Galatians 6:7
The Bible says that we reap what we sow. What we plant, we will harvest. When we live carelessly, our future life will be stuck in the past through the consequences that eventually came. Those careless moments will stay with you and it will be much harder to grow into who you want to be because you will still be paying the piper.
God is telling us that bad and thoughtless decisions on our part (again forced intimacy is different) will lead to a hurtful end. God can see that end and is giving us a warning. He loves us, He is trying so hard to save us from the things that hurt us. He is trying to save us from ourselves.
I believe there are three values to hold onto so we are careful with whom we are sexually intimate.
Have self-respect.
You are valuable. Your sex life should not be used to create worth in who you are. It is not to make other people feel better, nor to help you make friends, and definitely not to make you feel loved. If you are having sex for those reasons, then there are other problems that you have in life that need to be addressed. Sex should not be used to find value but to enhance your already known value to the one you are having sex with. (Luke 12:7)
You are beautiful. God created you and He makes all things beautiful, in His time. If the person you are with does not believe you are beautiful, then they do not love you or respect you. Love is blind. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. God has carefully crafted each of us to be beautiful, even if it is not by our society’s standards of beauty. Someone that loves you will think you’re beautiful, even if you are seriously hideous. And if they don’t love you, then why be with them at all? Is this person really worth your time and energy? No. You deserve better. (Psalm 139:13-16)(Ecclesiastes 3:11)
You are worthy. You are worthy of being loved by others. God desires for us to be loved. And when you are loved your sex will be great. Your past does not define you, but it is what crafted you. Work on your present for a better future, the future YOU want. But remember, good things come to those who wait. Great sex takes time, it takes practice and it takes an understanding of your partner. Relax. It’s a skill that you will have to work on together. Never judge a person by the first time you have sex with them. The more difficulties you overcome and the more experiences you share will enhance your love life. (John 15:12-13)
Love yourself so you can believe in another’s love. If you hate who you are, if you hate yourself, then you are stopping yourself from having good sex. This mentality of self-hatred will not allow you to accept your partner’s love. It will distort your view of them and will make you believe in a lie. Which is the lie that they see you the way you see yourself. And if you hate yourself then you believe they must secretly hate you too.
Love yourself. Not in an arrogant and self-obsessed way. In a way that you know, God loves you. And if He loves you then He must see something worth loving. If you are having a hard time loving who you are then figure out why that is. Really search your soul.
If you can change the thing you hate, then you can become the type of person that would make you love yourself. Can you get rid of the problem? Can you change it? Then do the work. Only you can change who you are. If it is something you can’t change, then either mourn it and embrace it as you or find a way to love the thing you hate. See the beauty in it. You have the power and ability to love yourself.
Once you stop viewing yourself in a negative light you can become looser and more at ease with your partner. Remember, sexual intimacy is the deepest and most vulnerable intimacy you can have. It connects with our true feelings and beliefs that we cannot hide from them at that moment. So, to fully enjoy this time with your partner you need to be mentally, spiritually, and physically ok as well.
Have standards.
Who your partner is matters. If you desire to be right with God and keep a good relationship with Him then you have to follow His design for sex. Surprisingly, He has been very specific about who we should not have sex with. These people should not be seen as potential partners if we want to have sexual intimacy in God’s way.
It is a biblical command to not have sexual intimacy with family members, orgies, divorced people whose spouses are still alive(except for the case of sexual immorality), animals, currently married people, anyone you’re not married to(this is called fornication) and members of the same sex. This is a very unpopular position to hold in our current world, but nonetheless, it was topics God felt were important enough to have as commands and not suggestions. I could speculate about why God made these commands but to be honest, I would rather save that for a different blog post in the future.
(I Corinthians 7:2)(I Corinthians 5:1)(Matthew 5:32)(Matthew 19:9)(Galatians 5:19-21)(I Corinthians 6:9-11)(Deuteronomy 27:20-23)(Leviticus 18)(I Timothy 1:10)
You do not owe anyone sex. Sex is yours to give. If you are feeling pressured by your significant other or by your peers that are all doing it, don’t give in to pressure. There is no requirement to have sex by a certain age. There is no law or rule that you’re missing out on life if you die a virgin.
Just because you have a boy/girlfriend does not mean they are entitled to your sexual intimacy. If you are not ready or you haven’t found the person that you want to be that intimate with, then simply wait. There is no shame in seeing sexual intimacy as a thing to be treasured and held close to your heart. Believe it or not, there are more ways to have fun than having sex.
Now if you are married, that is a different story. You have given your body to them just as they have given themselves to you. You no longer solely own your body. You should think of your partner and their needs just as they should think of yours. But you still don’t have to give it to them. There is rape in marriage and it is just as hurtful. Your spouse should not force you either, they should love you enough to put your needs before their own.
Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
I Corinthians 7:3-5
But if you continuously don’t want to have sex with the one you have committed your life with, then I would ask why? Married people should have a lot of sex, they should WANT to have sex. If you don’t desire sex or you hate sex, then there is a deeper reason and it is worth figuring out and resolving because you are worth a great sex life. A sexless marriage by choice is not a marriage at all. It is nothing more than a partnership.
(If you are curious about intimacy specifically in marriage, click here to read my other post.)
If you don’t want to marry them, don’t have sex with them. Why share a bond with someone you want to leave someday? Why create a life with someone you are uncertain about? It might be fun, but it will hurt you in the end. There will be so many missed opportunities for other types of intimacy, so much confusion, and so much tip-toeing around important topics. You won’t feel safe in your own home. If there is no commitment to each other, then there is nothing to deepen. Sex is being used and abused and will, more than likely, cause the relationship to be thrown away in the end. (I Thessalonians 4:3-5)
Don’t give it out for free. Sex was not made to be a form of greeting. It was not created to help you get to know someone. Date them. That will show you who they are as individuals and if they match well with you. If you are having sex to see “if you’re compatible”, then you don’t understand what a real relationship is. There is no longevity to a relationship that is based on sex. All you will enjoy in that relationship is the sex and nothing else. It will only be skin-deep.
Plus, if you give your special person sex whenever they want, then why should they commit to you? They are getting the benefits of marriage without the responsibilities. If you are playing house with no legal obligations and protections, then what happens when they decide you aren’t good enough for them?
You won’t be able to divorce them. You, as a couple, will just end. Your life will come crashing down and everything will change. They could kick you out of their house if they own it and you are now homeless. They can decide to take your kids away forever and never let you see them and there is literally nothing you can do about it (at least in the case of fathers).
Sometimes telling a person no sex until marriage is enough to keep you away from a person who really isn’t that serious about you. Or being married to you would mean they would have to show you parts of them that they have been lying about. Marriage, even just the prospect of marriage, and abstinence can be a form of protection.
Sex was created to deepen our already decided-upon bond and commitment for the future. Marriage, a marriage that follows God’s principles, is the commitment that deepens our sex life. It is the strongest bond for intimacy. Unfortunately, many people don’t see it that way anymore but that is what God intended it to be.
Don’t just give it away to anyone, not because you are a prude or need to keep pure. But because having a momentary high is not enough. You want a high that lasts a lifetime. That type of sex can only be found when you give it to the one you love and trust. The one you want to grow old with.
Multiple lovers do not equate to a better sex partner. Sex with multiple partners does not make you a better lover. You become a better lover by having continuous sex with one person because you are learning about them. What that person likes, what rocks their boat.
The only thing you learn from having multiple sex flings is how the human body works. Congrats, you have learned how to please a biological body. But you haven’t learned how to please your partner. Of course, there are key parts that almost every one loves in sex. But we are not all the same, and what works for one person might not work for another.
Have trust.
How long have you known this person? How many fundamental topics have you discussed? Do you really understand them? Are you sure they have been telling you the truth? Have you had enough experiences with them that you can say you believe in them from the bottom of your heart?
There have been many people that have married someone they barely knew and ended up happy for life. There have also been others that quickly got married and found out they married serial killers and psychopaths. With the same experiences, how did their stories end so differently?
Knowledge is power. Morals give strength. Trust is key.
But to get trust, you must make sure they are consistent in their stories. If their timeline does not match up, if they are never at fault for anything and if people that meet them don’t like them, that should be a warning sign.
And what if they don’t respect your boundaries? If they are pushing you and wanting you to forsake your life beliefs for them, then that should be a red flag. They should treat you well. They should be open and honest about everything. If there are any topics that they won’t discuss, walk away. If you can’t have a conversation about certain topics then the trust has already been broken.
If you don’t completely trust a person then YOU SHOULD NEVER give them sexual intimacy. If you feel weird and uncertain about a person, trust your gut. Sometimes God talks to us through our intuition and is warning us to stay away from a destructive person/circumstance. Don’t doubt yourself if you have that feeling.
Because remember what you are trusting them with. You are trusting them to not hurt you while you unconsciously sleep next to them. You are trusting them to show and teach qualities that you want your children to live by and do. You are trusting them not to control or dominate you, but to hold you as precious.
The Bible doesn’t use the word precious, but instead, uses the word “weaker vessels”. God calls men to love their wives as weaker vessels. (I Peter 4:7) He is not saying that we are a weaker vessel. He is saying to treat us as precious and something they don’t want to hurt or break. In a similar way, we treat our pets as weaker vessels, not because they are defenseless or fragile, but because we want to protect them. Because we love them and care about their lives.
If you want to learn more about the ways to know if a person is trustworthy, click here.
2.) Expect from yourself what you expect of others
Do you respect and value the one you are having sexual intimacy with? Do you see them as beautiful even if they are not what we have been taught to see as beautiful? Do you love them more than yourself? Are you treating them as someone being worthy of a great life and your sex is showing that?
And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
Luke 6:31
Are you aware and alert to your shortcomings? Are you trying to work on yourself to become a better person for them? Are you trustworthy? Are you protecting the one you love? Are you giving yourself entirely to them or are you cheating with another? Are you refusing to have sex with them just because you don’t want to work on the problems between you or your past?
It is easier to see the broken and failing person in front of us. It is harder to force ourselves to look in the mirror at our own problems. We must stop choosing to be blind to our own imperfections. We must confront ourselves every day and hold ourselves to the same standards we hold others.
Our love should be genuine. And genuine love does that which is good, not what is evil. (Romans 12:9-10)
But to know what good is, we must know who God is. For God is the creator of good and only things done through Him are pure from the stain of sin.
To work on ourselves we must shut off the noise that we hear from everyone around us, including those on the internet. All we have to do is sit in the stillness and quiet of our homes and read His Holy Bible. It is full of the wisdom God wants us to live by and the knowledge of what is right and wrong.
3.) Keep it pure.
I have made it pretty clear throughout this post that God intended sex to be between one man and one woman that get married to each other. It was our wedding gift from Him to be used to bless our lives and deepen our bond.
But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
I Corinthians 7:9
There are no stipulations for the skin color, nationality, age or intelligence of our chosen partner. God does not care about that, it is not all that important to Him. The only thing He has commanded is that if we love Him and are a part of His family then we need to find someone with the same spiritual beliefs as us.
“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14)
Once you have married your love, then you should experiment and try new things as a couple. Your sex life might start out amazing, or it might be painful and awkward. Either way is fine. Keep working on it and learning what makes you feel good together.
God does not explicitly tell us how we can/can’t experiment in our sex lives. He has given us that liberty to decide and enjoy. But He does give us some important guidelines.
Sex is for two. God made sex to be between two people. Sex was not supposed to be an orgy party trick. It was not created to be a spectacle for others to watch. It was not to be watched to get you turned on for your own love making. It was supposed to be just you and the one you love.
Solitude is important in sex. The whole world disappears from your mind. You are focused on that person. You are focused on the way they are making you feel. There is no outer pressure. There are no eyes lusting after you and what you are doing. It is a moment shared only between you two.
Keep sexual perversions out of your marriage. This is to say that pornography, even in marriage, is wrong in God’s eyes. You cannot love your spouse if you are lusting after someone else’s sex life. You do not need to learn how to have sex by watching what others do.
Your spouse might not like what you learn. You might begin to think there is something wrong with them or you. It might cause a divide in your relationship and then you turn to pornography for comfort and get addicted. And once addicted you crave the pornography and not your spouse.
You do not need to copy someone else’s sexual adventures. Have your own. Be you and no one else. Does your spouse love cosplay? Then maybe dress up for them, even if it’s not your cup of tea. At some point you might enjoy it too. Do they want to experiment with toys? Buy some and help them enjoy sex in other ways. But be careful to not use toys on yourself.
Masturbating by yourself is not keeping to the sex is for two logic. If you are pleasing yourself when you are alone, you are still robbing your spouse of that joy and that connection. You are treating toys as nothing more than your own pleasure tool. You no longer need your spouse, you are bonding with yourself and the toy. Sex is an act between two people. When a spouse is left out, they will begin to feel rejected and not enough.
That is also to say that orgies or threesomes are wrong as well. Even if your spouse and you are part of it and you consent to it together. God did not create it for that. You are still going against His principles which are sex is between two people, who are married to each other and keeping it undefiled. We are defiling it by allowing outside influences to shake our bond and come between us. (I Peter 4:3-5)
“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” (Hebrews 13:4)
If we have more people enter our sexual intimacy it can lead to jealousy, envy and lust for the other person(s). These emotions do not strengthen our marriage, they will lead our marriage to destruction. They undermine our sexual intimacy. God wants our marriage to succeed and not fail, this is why He gives us this advice, to have it be only you two.
If your sexual intimacy is tainted it will lead to other problems. There are so many things we can do to enjoy our sex life, and sex is so amazing even if it doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles. Don’t be a copy of someone else, be yourself. Be inspired if you want, but remember who you are.
There is nothing wrong with learning how the body works and what you can do to make it sex better. But be careful and make sure your motives are pure. The grass is not greener on the other side. It only is if you are not watering your own.
4.) Stop putting on a facade.
If you need help, ask for it. It is easy to put a filter on a photo. Or post about how amazing your life is and only show those times. It is easy to lie. It is easy to hide because youe are embarrassed or ashamed. It is hard to ask for help. I know you want to seem strong. You don’t want people to know what hides behind closed doors.
But we are only hurting ourselves. We were made to be social and talk to people about our problems and get help when our life gets hard. We were made to share in our experiences with not just our spouse, but also our friends, families and churches.
Get rid of the facade you have portrayed. Find someone you trust and allow them into your reality. You do not have to go through hardship alone. There is no shame in asking for help. You are not weak because you couldn’t do it alone.
If your marriage is failing, if you or your children are being abused or you feel lost and confused at what to do next, get help. You do not have to stay in your circumstances. Harmful sexual intimacy should not stay that way. There is a better way.
Talk to a therapist, talk to a counselor, talk to a pastor, or talk to a friend.
Come to terms with how you are being treated. Genuine love must go two ways to work in sex.
You cannot be the only one giving of yourself and trying to change your life. You can start working on yourself first, but if your significant other never changes and refuses to see the changes in you, then sexual intimacy is nothing more than an act. The deepening bond has already been severed. And your spouse is choosing to keep it that way instead of healing it.
The next best way to genuinely love this person is to see what is happening in your relationship with a fresh pair of eyes. Now that you understand your value, worth and beauty, you will also know if you are being treated well or not.
They might still be blind to themselves, but that does not mean you have to allow them to continuously hurt you. Show them you have value and will not be treated with anything but love and respect. Unfortunately, that might mean leaving them for a time. Letting them live their life without you and see what they decide from there.
Their reaction and decision after you leave will help you know what to do next. It will also show you the side of them that you might not have seen before. It might help them to finally see, or it will cause them to buckle down and resist you. But someone who resists you would have eventually hurt you in the end. At this point, you are protecting yourself from them and anymore future harm.
Do the next right thing. If you have done the hard work to improve yourself and you are living your life to the best of your ability according to God’s standards, then there is nothing else you can do. We cannot force change. We cannot force someone to respect and love us. They either do or they don’t.
Stop killing yourself to make it work if it has clearly collapsed. Staying on the battlefield will not help us if it never ends or has a good outcome. You can’t stop the other side from fighting, so you might have to find an alternative way.
Remove yourself and start to think about your future. Now, please don’t hear me saying that you should divorce them. I am a strong believer in separation first and only having divorce as the final option.
However, God does not desire for us to stay in a toxic situation. Leave the unsafe home and then work on marriage counseling from afar. You might be able to make it work, you might come back together. But don’t come back together until you feel safe again.
Sexual intimacy can return after the trust has come back to the relationship. But this may take time and lots of work. But if the relationship is important to you and you feel it is important to them, then it is worth it in the end.
What Do I Do Now?
Look at your life.
What do you want your life to be like? If you are not a Christian but want to have great sexual intimacy, then, please, follow these core principles. God knows who you are and He can see that you desire to do right. He will honor and give blessings to your obedience.
If you have already failed to do these principles and your life is a mess, don’t worry. We might have to work harder or make tough decisions but we can always change it. We just have to make the decision to do so and take the first step forward. God also sees you and He will lead you if you desire.
If you are having problems with your sexual intimacy then take I Peter 4:8 to heart. It says, “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.” If you have been wronged or you have wronged someone else, then fall back on the most important part of sexual intimacy. To love one another. If you love each other and choose to keep that love, it will cover anything that has ever been wronged.
So I guess the best question to start our journey is this, do you love them?
