Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
October 30, 2002
Love — and do what you will
By Julie A. Collins
Teen-age males are as enamored with sexuality as the rest of the human race. Teaching religion at a boys Catholic prep school for 16 years, I've spent a lot of time discussing sex with teen-agers.
I've come to see that what we human beings crave most is to be competent, connected, and comforted. What do I mean by these words? Competent: we want to feel that we have skills, we have gifts and we have the power to bring them to fruition — to produce, to create, to serve. We also long for a sense of connection. We know that at a fundamental level we are social creatures who need relationships and need to be accepted for who we are. And beyond these, we look for comfort — for touch, tenderness, support. We want someone to be unequivocally "for us."
Now if all human beings desire to be competent, connected and comforted, these aspirations apply to our sexuality, too. We want to feel that we love someone competently — that we have the power to give love, to give pleasure and to receive it in a way that's most pleasing to them. We also want a connection with another human being that will be electric, like no other relationship we have with anyone else — passionate and profound. And, at the core of our deepest hope, we want it to be permanent because we also desire to be comforted — to be held, supported and known. Not one night, but for a lifetime.
So, what are you to do?
First, as regards your sexual choices, please CHOOSE. Don't let circumstances dictate your sexual behavior. Don't let alcohol, a persistent date, advice in Seventeen magazine or a loneliness that you didn't realize was there dictate what you do with your sexuality.
Reflect on it ahead of time: What does sexual touch mean to you? Does it mean anything? Are you saying anything to a young man when you kiss him? How about when you kiss him again and again? And what are you feeling while this kissing fest is going on?
I find that as people answer these questions on what sexuality means to them, they tend to operate out of one of two sexual "models" — sexual touch is either about recreation or it is about love.
Turn on the TV and it will take you about three minutes to see that today's culture tends to promote the recreation model: "You want to play tennis, I want to play tennis; let's meet at the court at 1 p.m. and play tennis!" The sexual touch in this model is just like that tennis game: fun, sometimes challenging, usually pleasurable and, as soon as the game ends, the game itself "says" nothing. It means nothing. The event is over.
In the recreation model of sexual intimacy, the only real moral criterion is consent: you must have two "consenting adults." The subtext here is that there is a flip switch which will disconnect the heart from the hormones. So who are you going to believe? The cast of "Friends" or 4,000 years of Judeo-Christian tradition which tells us there is no such switch? In the eyes of the God who created us, our bodies and our hearts form just one integrated circuit.
There is no "safe sex" outside of marriage. Sexually transmitted diseases happen. Condoms give little or no protection against some of the most common incurable STDs. And there will never be a prophylactic that can protect you from getting a broken heart.
Sexual intimacy always involves these significant risks. And sex outside of marriage can have only three outcomes:
1. The fairy tale ending: The couple falls into bed casually, but wakes up passionately in love. Their fidelity never wavers and they end up at the altar, "happily ever after."
2. The unrequited ending: One of the partners wants to renege on the "recreational sex" contract and hopes for true love. The other partner, kindly or unkindly, says "thanks, but no thanks." Significant heartbreak.
3. Gold medal in the sexual Olympics. It looks clean, neat and "safe," but physically and emotionally it is the most deadly outcome. Even secular psychologists are now questioning what years of recreational sex do to our capacity for intimacy.
So what are we to do with this incredibly strong sexual drive if we also hope to be competent, connected, and comforted? The answer lies in the second model of sexual behavior — sex with love. Real love. Sex with love helps us fulfill our desires to be competent, connected and comforted in our sexuality.
In the fourth century, St. Augustine offered advice that looks like something one would find in Playboy or Cosmo: "Love — and do what you will." But how do you define love? Poets, philosophers and psychologists have struggled with this mystery. I think that human happiness is captured in a phrase from John's Gospel: "Love one another as I have loved you." And the model of love Jesus gave us is to love permanently, faithfully, completely and fruitfully.
God wants only the best for you. He wants you to understand that "(the) meaning of life is found in giving and receiving love, and in this light, human sexuality and procreation reach their true and full significance" (John Paul II, "The Gospel of Life," 81).
So, as Augustine says, "Love — and do what you will." But remember that loving God, loving yourself, and loving your future husband or wife means postponing sexual intimacy until marriage. That's the time and place where you can discover all that love is meant to be.
Julie Collins teaches religious studies and offers spiritual direction to adults and teens at Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Md.
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