True Intimacy

Real intimacy is the result of letting another person see who you are. But if you don’t feel good about yourself and your identity, you will keep yourself hidden and never achieve intimacy. Only a person with a relatively good sense of security and identity can fully enter into the experience of intimacy.

We can never enjoy the full potential richness of a meaningful relationship—for which we were created—without becoming intimate with at least one other person. Again, I am speaking primarily about psychological and spiritual intimacy, which is the result of being open and transparent. It is more a matter of communication and sharing than of any kind of grand passion. When two people confide in each other about their innermost dreams, hopes and thoughts, they are “being intimate.” True intimacy involves being able to remove all the masks and disguises we hide behind, without fear of rejection, and be known and loved for ourselves.

The Fear of Intimacy

Today we see people getting involved in sexual activity, often promiscuous sexual activity, for the simple reason that they don’t understand what true intimacy is. Sexual experience becomes a substitute for intimacy. We use phrases like “making love” and “being intimate” in talking about sexual intercourse. Yet most sexual involvements, outside the loving commitment of marriage, express very little genuine love or closeness.

Not only do many people misunderstand what real intimacy is, but they are afraid of it. Why do people fear intimacy? Because intimacy inevitably brings vulnerability. Emotional sharing requires self-disclosure, and for many of us the idea of opening up our innermost selves is a scary prospect. Many young people repeatedly share their bodies because they are afraid to share themselves. They participate in countless “one-night stands” because they are afraid to be vulnerable. Most teens and adults mistake the ecstasy of an orgasm for the intimacy of love.

Searching for Intimacy

One reason adolescents rush into sex is the attempt to find intimacy in a relationship. Kids want to feel close to another human being, to make an emotional connection, and to feel especially cared for. Many young people mistakenly equate physical intimacy with emotional or relational intimacy. Getting close in bed or in the back seat of a car makes them think they are really starting to get close.

The excessive sexuality among adolescents indicates our culture’s inability to experience true intimacy. A young person who has been involved sexually with various men wrote: “It is far easier to ‘bare your bottom’ than to ‘bare your soul.’” Emotional contact is the goal; sex is often the means. Obviously, a physical act cannot help someone reach an emotional goal. But for an insecure teenager hungry for intimacy, it seems plausible.

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

People throughout time have tried to understand love, define it and experience it. If our young people can’t adequately define love, how in the world can they know whether they are in love? They can’t. If they can’t define love, how can they know whether they are being loved? They can’t. If they can’t define love, how can they even know whether they are in a loving relationship? They can’t. The confusion about love weakens a young person’s resolve to wait for sex.

Our society, to a great extent, has stopped passing biblical morality on to its kids. Without clear standards of right and wrong, teenagers are left to find their own standards. Many come up with “love" as the justification for sex. But they don’t know what love is. I took a survey of 4,000 college students at Campus Crusade for Christ conferences, asking them to write their definition of love in two minutes. When I examined all the cards they turned in, I found that only seven of these Christian students were able to give a definition. No wonder so many Christian kids are getting involved sexually in the name of “true love.” They have no idea what they’re getting into.

If You Love Me

The pressure line is: “If you love me, you will have sex with me,” or “If you love me, you’ll prove it.” Sex is never a test of love. The true nature of love is seen in how we treat people (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). The result of this pressure is that the person pressured begins to feel that his or her willingness to take the next step into sexual involvement becomes a test of true affection or love for the other—not trust, respect, caring and sensitivity.

Usually the two discover later that what they thought were feelings of love were only charged up sexual sensations and now they must live with the consequences. The “I love you” of one person can be significantly different for another. Sex is often given in the name of love with the anticipation of marriage and commitment. But for the partner, sex might simply be saying, “You’re someone very special,” with no anticipation whatsoever to marry.

That pressure line, “If you love me, you’ll have sex with me,” should be considered in the light of the following replies by teens:

“OK, prove how much you love me by understanding and respecting my feelings.”
“Love or no love, anyway you slice it, it can result in a baby and that does matter.”
“I love you. But I’d feel better showing you in another way.”

Searching for Love

Maybe some kids don’t know much about being in love. But they still reach out for it in ways that bring them heartache. The following story, shared with me by a heartbroken teenager, painfully illustrates this point:

It was near Thanksgiving and I was babysitting. My boyfriend said, “Mind if I come over?” Well, one thing led to another, and in a strange house on an old beat-up sofa, I was no longer a virgin. Virginity gone, innocence gone, the floodgates of immorality were now open. In poured masturbation, promiscuity, marijuana, speed, a couple of acid trips, crabs and a few bouts with gonorrhea. Love and acceptance were all I was looking for. How could the world be so rotten? I hadn’t found love. I’d found casual sex with all kinds of strings attached. Acceptance? No one really cared. They were too worried about getting burned themselves.

All she was looking for was real love, not a cheap imitation with all kinds of consequences

Why Don’t Kids Wait to Have Sex?

One reason kids don’t wait until marriage for sex is that, without knowing the difference, they are trying to meet several different needs with only one solution. Kids don’t realize that they are attempting to meet emotional needs through sexual activity. They don’t realize that they are substituting sex for relational needs—and usually at a high price. Like the rest of us, adolescents are created with the need for love, security, intimacy, companionship, affection, spirituality, etc. When these needs go unmet—as they do occasionally for everyone—some kids turn to sex. They are hoping to fill the void they feel with sex.

Quite often they lack the skills to even recognize the true deficit in their well-being. Without being taught to understand God’s ordained role for sex in a committed marital relationship, they use it as a cheap substitute for a variety of different needs. And they may go from relationship to relationship trying to fill the void, never realizing that the answer can’t be found in someone else.

It’s “Simple”-- Just Listen

Parents need to focus on their kids and listen to them. One of the most powerful ways to build a relationship is to listen. You have to know what is going on in their heads. In some ways it is no different from establishing a friendship. When you listen to someone, you are telling that person that he or she is important to you. As you and your teenager become more important to each other, you will want to spend more time together. When you feel you are reaching this point, begin working on some activities together.

As the relationship and trust are gradually (or sometimes quickly) reestablished, the rebellion will become less of an issue. Your kids don’t have to hurt you now because they like you, and may even love you. They don’t have to rebel against what appears to them as your stupid rules any more because now they know you love them and have their best interest at heart. They don’t have to have sex with someone now just to be rebellious—they trust your judgment more—even if they don’t understand it perfectly.

Sex is Not the Unforgivable Sin

Along with the necessary information about sex, parents must convey that premarital sex is not the unforgivable sin. Even kids from Christian homes make wrong choices about sex. These kids need to know they can turn to their parents. They need to hear their parents say, “No matter what you’ve done or what you do, we love you and will never turn our backs on you. Nothing you have done wrong is beyond repair. We will help you through any trouble. We are here for you to turn to. Talk to us.”

As the influence of Christianity diminishes in our society and families, the devastating results will continue to show up in our kids. Without direction, they clutch at false securities. Without the solid self-image of a child of God, they grab at anything to make them feel a little better about themselves. Without knowledge of God and His love, they settle for anything that resembles love, even if they are exploited and hurt by it. Without the Word of God taught in the family and the love of God shown in the family, kids are adrift. They have no basis on which to make decisions. They have no security.

Performance-Based Sex

Children can grow up desiring to love their parents, but still not feel secure in the relationship. Often in order to get the love of their parents, they fall into the “flight syndrome.” That is, they put themselves on a performance basis for their parents’ love, and when they do something they think won’t be pleasing, they cover it up. They run from honesty. They are afraid that their shortcoming will lead to rejection.

This can happen when well-meaning children try to please Mom and Dad, but it has a stifling effect. Open communication is blocked when the children think that honesty will lead to parental disappointment. They may cease trying new things for fear of failure. They may stop taking risks to stretch their horizons. These kids then enter their teenage years equating love and performance. When they say, “If you love me, you’ll have sex with me,” they are only keeping in line with their own distorted definition of performance-based love.

Start Talking about Premarital Sex

Kids don’t want to discuss something they feel guilty about, because they don’t want to let their parents down. Nor do they want their parents to add to their guilt. They want their parents to be happy with them, yet the actions that led to the guilt may have resulted in part from a lack of instruction from Mom and Dad. But the objective here is not to find someone to blame. The objective is to bring about understanding, and thereby, change. It’s a change that must overcome the traditional inhibitions most of us in the older generation have about discussing sex.

Kids really want to find the answers they need—at home. What often turns them off is that parents jump to conclusions or over-lecture instead of really listening to what their teens are trying to say or ask. If parents show an interest in their children when they are young, the kids will show an interest in their parents later. Good communication with teenagers and younger children requires a lot of time and thought, but it is the start of a lifelong family relationship. The right time to start talking to your children is now—it’s never too late to start.

Kids in Need of Instruction about Sex

When there is a love famine in the home, positive, nurturing communication suffers. As a result, adolescents lack parental instruction about sex. They must gain their sexual education elsewhere, through self-discovery, peers or the media. As a result, sex education is at best incomplete and at worst erroneous.

A couple of students summarized the situation this way:

Teenagers are ignorant about what they are doing. All they know is that they were made with certain body parts, so they might as well find out what they’re used for. Sort of like test-driving a car just to see how well it performs.

Lack of accurate information about sex, although less of a problem than in our parents’ adolescence, is still quite common, and young people often don’t realize how far they are going. Before they know it, they have an unexpected pregnancy on their hands. It must be pointed out that some parents are much to blame since they have not informed their children on the topic of sex, either because they are too embarrassed to discuss it, are irresponsible or are ignorant themselves.

Need I say more?

Broken Home, Broken Kids

A Chinese proverb says, “In the broken nest there are no whole eggs.” What a provocative summary of the negative impact of divorce. The U.S. Census Bureau gives the following statistics regarding the increase of divorce in our culture:

· In 1900, one divorce for every 10 marriages.
· In 1920, one divorce for every seven marriages.
· In 1940, one divorce for every six marriages.
· In 1960, one divorce for every four marriages.
· In 1972, one divorce for every three marriages.
· In 1976, one divorce for every two marriages.

And the divorce rate today is still approximately one in every two marriages. God the Father is the model for earthly fathers. This is the design, yet it has all but disappeared from American society in the last two decades. We are seeing many results of this in our kids, one of the results being early sexual involvement.

Mary is a seventeen-year-old with two younger brothers and a married sister. Her parents have been divorced for almost a year. Mary and her brothers have been living with their mother, who works outside the home all day. Mary’s boyfriend is the dream of every girl. Erick is a senior and a very popular football player. He has been Mary’s only source of comfort for months now and he asks her to have sex. She consents out of her own loneliness for her father and her fear of being rejected again.

Searching for a Father’s Love (continued)

Inattentive mothers are one reason that kids get involved in premarital sex, and they undoubtedly have a damaging effect on their children. But I think that we men must shoulder much of the blame for our teens being where they are. When we come home tired, it is easy to neglect our children. What we men need to realize is how important it is to our children that we have a close, loving relationship with them. Mothers can’t do the job of loving our children alone.

I held a one-week youth conference at the largest (and one of the wealthiest) evangelical churches in our country. I had counseling appointments with forty-two junior and senior high school students. Their number one question was, “Josh, what can I do about my dad?” When I asked what they meant, they made statements like, “He never has time for me”; “He never takes me anywhere”; “He never talks to me”; “He never does anything with me.” I asked all forty-two of them, “Can you talk with your father?” Only one said yes. I also asked all the girls, “If you got pregnant, could you go right to your father and share this with him?” Most of them didn’t feel they could. That’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?

Parental Modeling

I often am asked to give one single reason why kids get involved in premarital sex. Of course I always reply that there are many reasons. However, if I had to narrow it down to just one reason, it would be this: inattentive parents. Parental inattentiveness creates a love famine that affects both parents and children. It also creates a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle in which parents who are starved for love raise children who are even hungrier for love. The results are devastating.

On the other hand, a healthy home environment makes a significant difference in the health of American youth. When teens feel connected to their families and when parents are involved in their children’s lives, teens are protected. When parents are more frequently present in the home at key times of day, adolescents are less likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, engage in premarital sex or participate in other destructive behaviors. One of the greatest things parents can do for their children is to love one another and let their children know it.

Communicating Inadequacy

The media not only distorts sexual realities, but it also cultivates feelings of inadequacy among young viewers. When judging the value of a person, tremendous emphasis is placed on the physical. The media communicates that the value of a person is primarily his or her physical attractiveness. We are blitzed in the media with an endless parade of beautiful women, which gives teenage girls a very unrealistic standard by which to judge their own attractiveness.

I hope you know that the media’s standard for beauty is not realistic. What’s more, it is constantly changing with regard to which body types, hair styles, fashions, etc. are “in.” Think what that does to the average young woman. For many of them, it has totally distorted their sense of self-worth. If by comparison to the latest standards of physical beauty she is not attractive, she sees herself as without worth or value, which results in tremendous feelings of inadequacy.

No One Pays for Sex on TV

You may say, “Yes, excessive examples of illicit sexual activity on television, in movies, in music lyrics and videos, on the Internet, etc. is undoubtedly a bad influence on our young people. But in a society as sexually permissive as ours, where’s the lie?”

You can see it yourself by answering this question: In all the casual sex you have seen portrayed in the media, how many times has a character contracted a sexually transmitted disease? You are unusual if you can think of at least one occurrence. I often ask that question of the audiences to whom I speak. Even in crowds as large as 5,000, I rarely find someone who can remember even one bad outcome from casual sex.

Here is my point in bold letters to underscore its importance: Hardly anyone on TV or in the movies pays a price for illicit sex. But in real life, people often pay dearly.

Wisdom

The intellectual maturity of today’s youth seems to have surpassed that of previous generations because of the enormous amount of information available. But many educators are questioning the validity of what passes for intellectual maturity in our educational system. Memorizing data and repeating it does not bring about intellectual maturity. Young people need to be challenged to reason, to deduce and to be creative.

Yet this type of maturity—the ability to solve problems, to reason through and foresee the consequences of one’s actions—is not necessarily taught in schools. Educators call it intellectual or cognitive maturity. Everyone else calls it common sense. The Bible calls it wisdom. Many teenagers are trying to become adults without it.

“Sex Proves that I’m an Adult, Not a Child”

The teenage years are times of transition from being a dependent child to becoming an interdependent adult. Interdependent persons believe that they have something worthwhile to give to others, and that others have something worthwhile to give to them.

While this transition from childhood to adulthood involves every facet of a young person’s life, we must remember that the different areas of that individual’s life develop at different rates of speed. For example, one person may seem more “mature” than another of the same age because he or she is more mature socially and emotionally than the other. But the second person may be more mature physically than the first.

Regardless of a teenager’s actual level of development, many of them see sex as a way to speed up their total passage to adulthood. After all, sex is not something children do. It is for adults. The logic behind this way of thinking is not hard to see. So kids begin to mimic adults by engaging in so-called adult activities: smoking, drinking, and sex. By doing these things, they mistakenly think they will magically become adults.

“Having Sex With Me Will Prove Your Love”

“If you really love me, you will prove it by having sex with me.” How many young people, especially girls, have been drawn into premarital sex by the false assumption that illicit sex is proof of true love? Nowhere in the Scriptures do we find someone demonstrating love by manipulating and causing another person to sin. Sex without marriage can never demonstrate the love of God. People who fall for “proving their love” with sex are buying into a lie with their bodies and emotions. They are squandering something priceless on a cheap product. Christian teenagers who think sex is a way to show love have lost sight of God. Acts of love do good and draw others to God. Premarital sex does not fit that description.

But what about non-Christians--people who don’t measure right and wrong by God’s standards? If a non-Christian girl believes that the most loving thing she can do is give somebody something he wants, she is caught. If he wants sex, she can give him that but what if he wants something else? Does she, out of love, do whatever he wants? Of course not! Such a question is ridiculous. But, without an absolute standard like the Bible as a foundation, the answers become very foggy and uncertain—opening the door wide open to abuse and manipulation.