Surely, no two topics could be farther apart? Sex is about desire, passion, and mind-blowing orgasms. Surely, all God has to say about sex is “Don’t do it.”
This article explores sex from several perspectives: sexological research on sexual desire; romantic love or limerance; and, couple bonding. It takes a critical look at the role sex plays in today’s society. And, finally, the article peeks into the mind of God to learn what the creator of sex says about sex.
The brain in love
Recent neuroscience research gives us a framework to explore the power and beauty of desire and love. It helps us understand why sex is so powerful, and why it’s so core to our being.
Based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRIs) studies, Professor Helen Fisher, an anthropologist working in this area, describes the neurobiology of sexual emotions and motivations¹ as a three-stage model. In this model, sex drive motivates general sexual desire; romantic love, also known as limerance, is associated with a longing for a specific partner; and, partner attachment sets up and strengthens the long-term bond between man and woman.
The first stage is sexual desire. It’s a testosterone-powered urge that happens deep in the emotional (limbic) system of the brain, and it’s driven by a powerful cocktail of neurochemicals². Sexual desire is a non-specific hunger for sexual gratification. We could satisfy this hunger through a variety of ways: sexual intercourse, fantasy, masturbation . . . take your pick. Sexual desire motivates us to have sex.
Why are people turned on by different stimuli? We now know that external inputs strongly influence the overall process. This is particularly important in childhood and adolescence. However, our brains retain neuroplasticity into adult life. What we feed our senses continues to affect the control and expression of our desires.
As humans, we have a choice in how we respond to desire. We can’t deny our personal responsibility and say “my hormones made me do it.”
We choose what we put into our brains and we choose how we react to sexual impulses. And that means we can, and must, conduct our sexuality in a responsible manner.
The second stage of Fisher’s three-stage model is called romantic love or limerance.³ Romantic love is characterized by an increased focus on one preferred mating partner. We feel motivated to pursue one particular person for the reward of intimacy; that is to say, we “fall in love” with that person.
This emotional affective state is primarily associated with the brain neurotransmitter dopamine, a powerful pleasure chemical. Other chemical changes include an increase in norepinephrine and decreased levels of central serotonin. Dopamine gets us hooked on our beloved: we think about them all the time; we want to be with them, close to them. The decrease in serotonin causes us to concentrate on that person to the exclusion of all others – a bit like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Norepinephrine makes us feel fearless and inhibits our pain centers when we’re around our beloved.
This is why love is so powerful. Being in love is an addiction, an obsession; and, like an addiction, the loss of rejected love is felt at a neural and neurochemical levels.
Fortunately, this romantic state of lovesickness lasts between eighteen and twenty-four months. We couldn’t live our lives continuously in this high emotional state of love addiction!
What happens to a relationship after that time? One of two things: either the couple breaks up or they move into the third phase, which is attachment or bonding.
This phase of a couple’s relationship is characterized by feelings of trust, calm, security, social comfort, and emotional union. This stage is associated with the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin.⁴ We call these “cuddle hormones” for the simple reason that their level increases with any form of intimacy between the couple. An orgasm sends oxytocin levels through the roof. This shared intimacy of a long-term union brings lovers closer together, potentially triggering a “virtuous cycle”: the more you make love, the closer you feel; and the closer you feel, the more you make love.
Sex and society
How are we as a society dealing with the power and fragility of sex? Has feeding our desires become the goal in life? What about love? And long-term couple attachment?
The desire for more and more sex, better sex, and longer-lasting sex has spawned an industry of medicalized sexuality: props, pills, and surgery to enhance our bodily sexual functioning.
If you want a longer lasting erection, pop a pill. If that isn’t enough, and you want the mega penis you see in porn videos, get a penis enhancement. Or, maybe as a woman, you want that hairless prepubescent pubis of the porn star?
Labioplasty and vaginal reconstructions are available. Age, illness, disability – nothing need stand in the way of having the body we want, and the sex we want.
And then there’s pornography, a multi-billion-dollar global industry. The average age of first exposure to porn is between eleven and twelve. Repeated exposure to porn rewires the brain. Men are particularly vulnerable to porn because they are, on average, more visual (although there has been a recent increase in written, literary porn, directed at women⁵).
Is this really what we want sex to be? A desperate, porn-directed, pill-powered, surgically-enabled pleasure explosion?
What about the relational aspects of sexuality, love and romance? Have we lost the ability to distinguish between “I love you” and “I want your body”? Nowhere is this game of lust played out more than in our teenagers. In a national study among 15 to 19-year-old-never-married teens, 42 percent of boys and 43 percent of girls reported having had sexual intercourse.⁶ The same study revealed that 26 percent of boys and 17 percent of girls use alcohol before sexual activity and that there is a Chlamydia (a sexually transmitted infection that could lead to infertility) rate of 6.8 percent among sexually active girls.
What about long-term intimacy and attachment? Is commitment an outdated concept? Are we a nation of cheaters?
A particular online dating site, which focuses on married people who want to have an affair, attracts almost half a million members across Australia.⁷ Articles abound that discuss extramarital affairs as harmless, and possibly even healthy, to a relationship.⁸ Marriage rates are down and divorce rates are increasing. Couples are choosing instead to shack up, cultivate “friends with benefits”, or engage in casual sex and one-night stands.
Again, part of this emotion is neurochemical. We fall in love with falling in love. We seek the dopamine-fuelled emotional high of being in love; and when the high emotion fades – as it always does after two years – we move on. We don’t have the patience or commitment to the relationship to stay for “the cuddle hormones” to kick in.
So our sexual behavior like much of our sinful nature is broken. What can we do about this?
Sex and the mind of God
Let me put before you God’s good plan for great sex.
In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God lays down His plan for healthy and fulfilling sex:
The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.⁹
The God of the Bible is pro-sex. He’s so pro-sex that he created marriage as the framework for sex.
My years as a sexologist and Christian have taught me two things.
First, there is a wonderful congruence between sexological research and God’s view of healthy and wholesome sexuality. Secondly, our sexual biology and neurochemistry are God’s way of giving us the software and programming for the best sex ever.
Sexual desire is powerful because it is purposeful: it’s meant to point us to our sex partner. The “I want” of sexual desire is good . . . when coordinated with the other aspects of our sexual function, as God meant it to be and as recent sexological research has discovered. Sexual desire is meant to operate in harmony with falling in love with a particular person and bonding with them for life.
The first recorded words from God to humans in the Bible are the command: “Be fruitful and increase in number¹⁰” that is, have babies. God’s command to have children implies a command to have sex.
Why did God make sex so much fun? God gave us sexual desire, including all the neurobiology of desire, because sex is good. And sexual pleasure is good. Both are good because He – the one true God, the source and definition of goodness – created them.
Romantic love focuses the powerful energy of sexual desire onto one particular person.
All that heart-wrenching, heart-pounding limerance is meant to drive a particular man and a particular woman towards the mutual union of their bodies.
Not enough people read the Song of Songs these days. It’s divinely inspired erotic romance. The man and the woman – the lover and the beloved – long for each other, search for each other, get married (a wedding lies in the middle of the book (Song 3:6-11)), and delight in each other’s body.
Finally, attachment is God’s mechanism for seeing us through the long haul. Separation, divorce, and infidelity were never in God’s plan for sex and relationships. That’s why these experiences are so painful and traumatic.
Sex and God are topics that are not far apart, but very close together. The good God made us sexual beings, and He gave us a pattern for how to enjoy that sexuality in a healthy way that’s good for ourselves, our sexual partner, our families, our society, and the next generation. Try living in God’s pattern for yourself.
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SOURCES
- Helen Fisher, Arthur Aron, Debra Mashek, Haifang Li and Lucy L. Brown, “Defining the Brain Systems of Lust, Romantic Attraction, and Attachment,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 31, 5 (2002): 413-419.
- J. G. Praus, “REVIEWS: Pathways of Sexual Desire,” Journal of Sexual Medicine 6 (2009): 1506-1533.
- Helen Fisher, Arthur Aron, and Lucy Brown, “Romantic love: a mammalian brain system for mate choice,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Bulletin 361 (2006): 2173-2186.
- Bianca Acevedo, Arthur Aron, Helen Fisher and Lucy Brown, “Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (2011): 1-15.
- Daisy Dumas, “Loved Fifty Shades? Try these…,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 13, 2012, http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/loved-fifty-shades-try-these-20120713-220f1.html. Accessed December 6, 2012.
- Allison Stewart and Kelleen Kaye, “Freeze Frame 2012: A Snapshot of America’s Teens” The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
- http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/resources/pdf/pubs/freeze-frame.pdf. Accessed February 6, 2014.
- Genevieve Gannon, “Natural born cheaters?” Sydney Morning Herald, August 7, 2012, http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/natural-born-cheaters-20120807-23rmn.html. Accessed December 4, 2012.
- Ibid.
- Genesis 2:23-25.
