When I first heard that question the immediate reply was, “Duh, men always talk about sex.” But then I realized, that mostly men think about sex. Talking about sex, not so much. Statistics vary widely about how often men think about sex, and are even more unreliable about how often they talk about sex. I suppose the question needs to be clarified to offer any chance of a reasonable conclusion.
Do men talk about sex as in, “ Wow, look at the booty on her!” This probably constitutes the majority of men’s talking about sex. Do men talk about it as in, “So Ralph, how’s your sex life and are you fulfilled and is your wife fulfilled?”? I would say probably about as often as men talk about eating more vegetables and watching less sports on TV.
I am a 51-year-old man that has been happily married for 25 years this year. I honestly do not think I have ever had a conversation about this. I don’t think men often really think beyond the basics about sex. Now understand I am referring to something beyond porn, lust, horniness etc. One of the reasons I am so thrilled to be writing these blogs with this ministry is because it is about time we in the church talking about sex in terms other than labeling people or at worst condemning people involved in sexual sin. (Condemn the sin not the sinner!) We need healthy discussion about sex in our marriages and in our church families.
We just had three baby dedications at our church yesterday and part of that ceremony is the church as part of the extended family committing to help raise the child by teaching in Sunday school, leading by example etc. But for various reasons as that child grows up and enters adulthood and gets married and deals with the issue of sex, how those babies are made, that becomes an area where we just don’t feel comfortable talking about, especially for men. I know our culture has made it where, a man is a man and of course he’s got it all under control and sex is just something that is private and we just don’t talk about it unless possibly if there is some serious problem then we may deal with it by telling him to get counseling or something. We have failed horribly in this area by not being proactive. We need a plan, we need to build a foundation in our lives that can withstand the attacks that are so prevalent in our world as far as sexual temptation and sin. Our culture has placed a huge emphasis on talking about and discussing drug abuse and yet we have not achieved any appreciable success in this area.
But can you imagine what we would be looking at if we never really discussed it openly? The first step in fixing anything is acknowledging that there is in fact a problem. You won’t fix it if you don’t see that it’s broken. With adult men, we are playing catch up in the area of dealing with sex. We need to talk about it. When we are dealing with the struggles, we need to talk about it with people that are where we want to be and find out how to get there. If you have children and are experiencing a problem in a certain area, you certainly don’t talk with parents that have children out of control in the same area. You get advice and help from parents that are healthy in that area and find out how they did it. If you are having struggles with sexual sin or questionable conduct, it’s best to talk with people you know are healthy in that area. Which means you will have to talk about it with other men to find that out.
Do men talk about sex? Not enough in a healthy way.