Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Experiment (Harold’s response)

Well, Rob and Celia had their "half-way" experiment. And, apparently it has left them both in a half-satisfied state--although for different reasons. Celia is not fully satisfied because she is concerned about Rob. Rob is not fully satisfied because their boundaries restricted his full sexual expression. 

Friday, July 31, 2009

Keeping Cool Heads (Harold’s response)

OK. I admit that my conservative bent has left me feeling pretty uneasy about Rob and Celia's dance around this submit of premarital sex. But, I have to admit that I appreciate the honesty and forthrightness of their conversation. Talking sex has traditionally been taboo. Not only do couples not talk about it (just do it) premaritally they also don't talk about it after marriage. A lot of what is needed in the bedroom is honest conversation about wants and needs. But, sometimes these conversations are difficult.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Keeping Cool Heads (Joanne’s response)

I love what is going on for Rob and Celia right now.  I love that as Celia talks about her concerns, Rob is feeling understood by her while at the same time getting more in touch with thoughts and feelings he has not yet articulated.  They are doing something healthy couples know how to do, which is to hear the other person's perspective without getting upset or defensive about it, and allowing new parts of themselves to emerge in the process.  I believe this is how, as the Bible says, "iron sharpens iron" in relationships. By acknowledging two truths -- that Rob's sexual desire is valid, and that Celia's desire to wait until marriage is equally valid -- they have been required to move farther into the space between them.  This has increased their emotional intimacy significantly and in ways that I doubt would have happened if they had refused to engage the topic of what sex-or-no-sex meant to them.  In the process, though it is almost incidental, they are stumbling into some significant insight about the meaning of sex as well.  

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Walking a Fine Line (Harold’s response)

I'm curious as to Celia's response about meeting Rob halfway on this one. I think her answer is going to enlighten me and Rob. Call me "old-fashioned" or maybe you have something worse to call me. But, I see Celia's "halfway" as the proverbial "slippery slope."

Many of us who have been in these "halfway" situations in intimate relationships can relate to likelihood that things don't stay "halfway" for long. It is incrementalism. Your brain/body becomes "bored" with what was previously exciting. You then want to get a little more to boost your excitement. And, before you know it "halfway" becomes "the whole enchilada"--which in Celia's case is where she has said she doesn't want to go before the wedding.

Yes, I'm disappointed in Celia's response. But, it is interesting to watch her efforts to satisfy Rob's needs. And, to Rob's credit, he has done a credible job of letting Celia know that she means more to him than sex--although that sure seems to be all he thinks about these days.

I guess we guys can be singularly-minded when it comes to the subject of sex. Can't we? 

Monday, July 20, 2009

Walking A Fine Line

Previous episode

Still talking sex or no sex.  Rob has determined that sex with or without marriage is fine as long as the couple agrees it will grow the relationship. 

Current episode

“But what if one of them doesn’t want to?” Celia asked. “Is that a deal breaker?”

“Obviously not,” Rob said, clearly implying that if it were, he would have walked a long time ago.   From across the table, in the fluorescent lights of the cheesy taco place, Celia thought Rob looked very sexy as he thought about whether sex was or wasn’t a good thing for them before the wedding.

“Rob – are you hurt that I don’t want to have sex yet?” she asked. 

Rob shook his head as he slurped at his root beer.  “No.  Not in a way that makes me mad at you”—he thought again.  “Well, maybe I am mad at you.  I’m mad that this goofy ceremony we are planning means more to you than my word about what the rest of our lives together mean.” 

“You don’t look mad.”

“I am a paragon of self-control,” Rob said.   He smiled at her.

Celia was aware of how difficult the last months had been for Rob, and how flexible he had been for her.  He had been steadfast. 

“It would be all right with you if we waited, wouldn’t it?” she asked. 

“It would be hard.  It is hard.  But it’s not a deal breaker.”

Celia had barely started eating yet, but now she wasn’t hungry.  “Be right back,” she said.  She picked up Rob’s empty root beer cup and her own empty cup, and headed for the drinks station. 

Maybe I do want more, she thought as she refilled her ice tea.  Maybe that’s what I needed Rob to say – that it’s not a deal breaker.  He would wait if I said we had to.  Celia refilled Rob’s root beer and sat back down. 

“I appreciate that you are willing to meet me halfway on this,” she said.

Rob raised his eyebrows.

“OK.  I appreciate that you have been willing to meet me on my side of the court.”  Celia considered her food and pushed the plate back.  “So let’s meet halfway.  Not the ‘whole enchilada’ as you said before, but something more than kissing.”

Rob shifted in his chair.  “I’m not sure what that means,” he said.  But he looked very interested.

“I’m not either,” Celia said.  “But I’m game.” 

What does Rob say next?

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Tacos for Two (Harold’s response)

I like the conversation that Rob and Celia are having. Rob has thought through his feelings about premarital sex and concluded that he's fine with it since the relationship is firm (in his mind). He was able to communicate this to Celia (kudos).

But, I also love Celia's response because it shows that she is secure enough in the relationship and in her own position that she can challenge his assumption--by stating what if the "firm" relationship diminishes?

Celia's position is as valid as is Rob's. And, I appreciate that she is willing to fight for it. Ultimately, it is her body that Rob wants (even if that is couched in the genuine context of intimacy). And, if Rob is really seeking to empathize with her (a skill that will suit him well in marriage), he will hear her reservations. He will do what he can to make her feel comfortable--prioritizing her desires over his. And, isn't this the ultimate test of success in any marital relationship? 

Friday, July 10, 2009

A Bridge Too Far (Joanne’s response)

I don't see Rob looking to any religious source for guidance on the pre-marital sex issue, which means Rob is not looking for, as Harold writes, "an absolute standard" in his relationship.  While Harold and I surely have different views on what he might call "moral relativism" and what I might call "post-modern perspectivism," I will avoid that discussion for now.  I see Rob trying to figure out what is right for him, right now, in this relationship, on an issue over which he and Celia disagree, and on an issue in which agreeing to disagree is not really an option.  One of them will be hurt by the outcome of this, at least in the short term.  

Monday, July 06, 2009

A Bridge too far?

Previous episode

Rob and Celia are in an extended conversation about sex.  Celia’s position had been to wait until marriage, which Rob had accepted but with hesitation.  He has since changed his mind and is tired of waiting, but now it is apparently no longer a wait or don’t-wait question.  Celia challenged him with the question, “If not religion, then what guides your feelings about sex, Rob?” 

Current episode

Rob sat in his cubicle at work, head in his hands.  The Monday Morning Meeting was being held in the next cubicle this week.  This was not a real meeting.  It was a group of usually three or four twenty-something men in the office who got together to share the best porn clips from the internet they had seen over the weekend.   Up until about two months ago there had been filters to prevent this, but a major system upgrade had left them bare – as one of the Meeting founders, from IT, had been quick to let on, although not to anyone who would do anything about it. 

Rob was no prude, and he could not wait to finally have sex with Celia, but he hated this.  He had a mother and a sister and a fiancée and many women he considered friends and respected colleagues.  Pornography, he felt, demeaned them.  And – he was at work!  Rob knew he had inherited a work ethic from his father that many of his generation did not possess, but this was wrong on so many fronts. 

Further – and Rob was the most uncomfortable about this – however quietly the men tried to be, Rob couldn’t help but hear the clips and the comments made about them, and this frustrated his already pent-up sexual energy.  It was worse now than when he had been in college, before he had dated Celia exclusively, before he had been faced with the need to restrain himself.   

Rob opened his desk drawer and grabbed his wallet, deciding he needed better coffee than the break room provided.  He thought again about asking them to stop, but one of them, though only in his late twenties, was one of Rob’s supervisors.  Rob had ambitions with this accounting firm so he did not know what to do.  He did not want to go over this guy’s head, but maybe an anonymous note to HR?  That seemed cowardly, but it was something. 

He got in the elevator and pushed the button marked “lobby.”  What made him different from those men in the Meeting?  Celia wanted to know what Rob did believe about sex and when its expression was appropriate.  Rob realized that he believed something, that he attached some meaning to sexuality.  He knew it fell into the broad chasm between waiting-until-marriage-to-move-beyond-the-kiss stage and this sex-as-adolescent-amusement that he had faced since puberty.  

Beyond that, he had no idea what he based his beliefs on.  It was not religion.  It was not parental guidance – his parents had not said much to him on the subject.  It was not societal expectation, because there did not seem to be anything like that.  And he knew he did not want to have sex just to have sex.  Not anymore.  

Rob ordered an espresso from the vendor in the lobby and watched as he prepared it.  He wanted to have sex with Celia because he loved her and he wanted to express that love beyond words and hand-holding and wedding plans.   What could possibly be wrong with that? 

Rob decides that his position on sex is that it is right and good when:  

Monday, June 29, 2009

Faith Matters

Previous episode

Rob and Celia are in the middle of a conversation about sex, with Rob wanting clarification from Celia on her reasons for wanting to wait until marriage.

Current episode

Celia noted that the more she opened up about her reasons for waiting to have sex, the more Rob, who was driving them back to Columbus from her mother’s house, relaxed. 

“So what is your religious belief about sex, then?” he asked. 

Celia knew she was supposed to believe that sex before marriage was wrong, but she was no longer sure about that.  Perhaps sex with multiple partners is wrong, or maybe sex with someone you don’t care about is wrong, and certainly sex that is irresponsible about birth control and STDs is wrong.  But sex with the man you are marrying shortly?  It was hard to work that one out morally.

Celia sighed.  She wanted to answer Rob honestly but she feared he would use any hesitancy she conveyed to logic her into agreeing with him. 

“I never understood what changes the day the girl walks down the aisle in a white dress, that now sex is OK,” Rob continued. 

“I know.  Neither did I,” Celia said, and laughed.  She and Rob had different religious upbringings.  Rob’s family belonged to a church, but more often than not his parents played golf on Sundays in good weather and read the paper and drank coffee in bad.  Unlike Celia, Rob had never attended bible school and youth groups and retreats, so while he was respectful of her beliefs he did not profess a personal faith as Celia did.  Because Celia worked as the choir director at a church, church was her “job” and therefore the fact that Rob did not attend with her had never been an issue. 

However, church attendance and professed faith beliefs had not prevented her parents’ divorce.  Further, Sundays on the golf course seemed to be foundational to Rob’s parents’ togetherness.  They just enjoyed being with one another, all the time.  That was something Celia aspired to, after a childhood during which her parents’ relationship seemed to come in only two flavors: Moody or Angry.  

“So what do you think?” Rob said.

“I am thinking that we should have been talking about faith issues long before now,” Celia said.  She wondered why it did not bother her that she and Rob didn’t have a similar commitment to faith. 

Now Rob sighed.  She could tell he thought she was trying to divert him from the sex conversation. 

“I’m not trying to change the subject,” Celia said.  “This is important, too.”

Where does Celia take the conversation from here?

Friday, June 26, 2009

Waiting to Exhale (Harold’s response)

If you follow these posts regularly, you probably notice something of a difference in the way Joanne and I think about relationship matters. This difference is actually an important reason for our collaboration. Joanne and I hope that our differences in gender, ethnicity, and perspective provide meaningful insight to couples who sometimes (or always) differ as they grapple with important relationship issues.