July 26, 2021
When fundamentalist Christians spend half their lives suppressing and repressing their sex drives, they’re damaging their health more than they think.
As a whole, regardless of religion and belief systems, I think we’ve developed a distorted view of what is or isn’t healthy, especially here in the USA. These days, it seems like the standard is that if it doesn’t literally kill you, then it’s fine. For example, just because the FDA has deemed something “safe for consumption” doesn’t mean it’s healthy. If at any point you’ve ever gone down the rabbit hole of researching all the preservatives and chemicals in processed food (and even in non-processed food) then you know what I mean.
Often, sex is seen in a similar light. That is, if you don’t have a healthy sex life, then it’s perfectly fine because not having sex won’t literally kill you.
That’s true. Not having sex won’t literally kill you, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t negatively impacting your health. And I would hope that everyone reading this would aspire to a level of health that’s above the bare ass minimum.
You can take five minutes and do a google search for the health benefits of regular intercourse. You’ll find a myriad of scientific studies with seemingly-endless lists of positive health effects that come from having regular sex.
One of the best nuggets of wisdom about health I’ve ever heard was that you don’t know you’re unhealthy until you’re healthy. It just makes so much sense. All you know is your own body, context, and experience. You can’t transplant yourself into someone else’s body to see how they feel all the time. So even if your health is suffering in ways you aren’t aware of, you don’t really know. Your individual context becomes “normal” to you and you think that just because something feels “normal” then you’re good to go.
Sex works much the same way. As I’ve said in my book, everyone has a different sex drive—a different need. (Yes, I’m calling it a need, because we need to move away from the idea that not having sex doesn’t impact your overall health). You may not have any idea what that need is, especially if you’ve spent a long time in the Church and have actively suppressed your sex drive for a long time. It isn’t until you start having the quantity and quality of sex that you need that you realize that what you thought was “normal” wasn’t normal for you at all.
I’ve talked to guys who spent years in a relationship or marriage where the sex had dwindled to something like three times a year. After they broke up and started seeing someone else, the sex went to four times a week and they felt like totally new men.
Determining how much sex you need isn’t that hard to figure out. Really all you need to do is listen to your body. How long after you have sex is it until you feel the need to have sex again? Track that feeling over a period of time and you’ll have a pretty good indication. Some people need sex three times a week while others need it three times a month.
When determining how much sex you actually need, you need to be really honest with yourself and do your best to block out any negative sex programming you may have picked up from the Church, or even from society. In general, the sex needs of men (particularly heterosexual men) these days are regarded with sharp derision. But that has nothing to do with your needs and body and health, so the opinions of others have no place in your decision.
If your health is one of the seven life areas you’re currently focusing on improving, then you should also track your sex. If you count your calories, weigh your food, ensure you’re drinking a certain amount of water in a day, tracking how much weight you’re adding to the bar at the gym, and checking your hormone levels, then it should be a no-brainer for you to also track how much sex and the quality of the sex you’re having.
I understand addressing your sex life is hard work, especially if you’re a man. These days, women need only a couple of hours on a dating app to have a hundred messages in her inbox. Men, on the other hand, need to put in some work. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do that work.
It’s also not as much work as you may think. We’ve been programmed to believe that sex is scarce. The Church told us that sex should be scarce by preaching that you’re only allowed to have sex with your wife for the rest of your life. Hollywood told us that sex is scarce even if you want it really badly—just think of all those teen comedy movies that portray thirsty, desperate men dedicating all their time to trying to hook up with one woman. Neither of these things are true. Sex is not scarce provided you approach your relationships and sex life in the correct way—which, as I’ve said before, can be a massive project for a recently Deconverted Man.
Besides… what do you have to lose? Since not having sex won’t literally kill you, having more sex also won’t literally kill you. It can only make you feel better. I’m telling you to go out and have more sex—kinda hard to scoff at that.
I should also mention something quickly about masturbation. Yes, masturbation has health benefits (such as prostate health). No, masturbation is not a sin. Yes, now that you’ve left the Church you can masturbate guilt-free all you want. However, masturbating more is only a marginal improvement to your sex life, and that’s me being generous. Really, you should be getting out of the house and having consensual sex with living, breathing humans who you find attractive and have a connection with. That’s where the health benefits come from. Just take note of how you feel after you have sex with a real partner and how you feel after you’ve jerked off to a computer screen. You don’t need a scientific study to tell you which is better for you.