‘There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.’ Norman Mailer
We have this dichotomy of safety and adrenaline in the modern world, more and more safety precautions are being loaded on families, have you seen the stuff we now carry with the baby, and businesses to ensure nobody gets hurt yet we have the opportunity to engage in death defying leisure activities that make mums hair stand on end. (here in New Zealand we introduced the world to Bungy Jumping)
Now we know that many of the adrenaline activities we pay for are hugely regulated and require safety precautions second to none with redundancy after redundancy built into the activity. You have to be of a certain height, sign a document, go through a safety demonstration, be strapped into safety gear and only then are you able to jump. Makes sense as the risk to our lives is great, the final outcome of a bad jump is death so you have to get it right the first time.
Why then do we allow underprepared people participate in the greatest thrill of all, sex. Nothing is as exciting and gets the whole body tingling like sex, nothing engages and tingles our senses like sex, nothing involves so much of our whole body, mind, heart and spirit as sex, and nothing has the power to bring such hurt to a life than sex.
Norman Mailer makes the statement ‘There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.’ and for the first part I agree, there is nothing safe about sex, its not suppose to be safe. Great sex requires a level of giving, openness, transparency, vulnerability, and of giving that makes us feel unsafe, yet this adds to the excitement and the thrill. Great Sex requires two people willing to be unsafe with their hearts, to trust so much in the other that they can reveal, fully, themselves. Great sex is unsafe for the individual yet so safe for the couple. I disagree with the second sentiment of Mr Mailer as I believe sex can be safe while being unsafe all at once.
Safe ‘Unsafe Sex’ is about living within the boundaries set for it by the creator of it. God loves for us to engage in this great rush but only within the boundaries it came with. Sex is unsafe for the human heart if it is not surrounded by the promise given in marriage. The promise marriage gives allows a freedom and safety of heart that make sex so much the better. It is not about performance, not about taking, not about reaching a self climax but about an ‘excitement in vulnerability’. Sex is Unsafe for everybody, all the time, outside of these boundaries, this includes self climax through pornography as much as it includes one night stands. I have been involved in all three and cannot be moved in my assertion that sex inside a great marriage is the absolute best type of Sex. (Even sex in a struggling marriage is better as at least this brings us together and is not self satisfied)
Yes great sex is unsafe, it has to be for it requires great vulnerability, yet is safe in the bounds of a marriage that has two people promising to be there in the good and bad times. Marriage makes the act of vulnerability easier to get to, it makes the act of giving yourself easier as you know they won’t hurt you or leave on a whim. Pornography requires no vulnerability on the part of the one watching so is completely unsafe for the heart. Sex in the one night stand can never be as good as marriage as one can never make themselves totally vulnerable to one that might run away if they so feel.
Sex is unsafe but can be a safe ‘unsafe’ if the right rules are followed. Are you following the rules?