First things first. I am not a Lady Gaga fan. Her music is awful and her histrionics and drama are too much for my taste. Then again, maybe I am just a middle-aged dad.

Lady Gaga caught my attention this week when she said she is now celibate and encouraging her young fans to embrace that as well. Surprising words, to say the least, from a performer whose music basically is about, well, sex... and lots of it. Is she sincere? I have no idea.

Nevertheless, let's give her a small bit of credit for actually broaching a subject that Hollywood rarely does. Sex as something that might actually have meaning rather than merely as recreation or commerce.

Maybe, just maybe, sex is intended to be an expression of love by a couple given over to each other in marriage. Perhaps chastity and celibacy can be healthy expressions of a life well-lived with self-control, purpose, and joy. People of faith have known this for centuries. Hollywood might figure it out, eventually. But I am not holding my breath. In the meantime, here's to Lady Gaga for bringing up the subject in the first place. In doing so, she gave parents a great opportunity to use her remarks as a teaching moment and a springboard for conversation with kids.

More great emails. I share these ones that make me think and really pause to noodle through what listeners are saying.

Check this one out from J, a listener. Long, but worth the read!


Re Aging, Fatigue, and Sex

When your show on this topic came on recently, I started listening to it with avid curiosity on my way back from the grocery store. Unfortunately, soon after the show got going—before any callers had called-- I had arrived home, turned off the ignition, and missed most of your show. It was an interesting topic, though, and in the days afterwards I wondered whether an aspect I’d been thinking about relating to it had been discussed that night, or not. The aspect to which I am referring is the one concerning women’s interest in sex as they get older. I was really interested in seeing where a discussion about that would go.

I went to your website today and found that none of the callers went into that, although before callers got on the air with you, you had quickly tossed out the idea-- just to consider as a possibility-- that the phenomenon of women not being as interested in sex (as men were) as they got older was perhaps part of an over-all pattern of women not being as interested in sex as men are throughout life.

There is something to that, I think.

The relevance of women’s hormones to women’s interest in sex was not brought up, though—and it merits discussion. These are my thoughts on it, ones that I shouldn’t share with a radio audience, for a number of reasons, prominent among them the fact that it would be unfair to the show.



I’m about 60, and my wife has gone through menopause. Something I began to think about at some point in the current, post-menopausal era of our married life, was, “Do women have any interest in sex at all when they get older (without hormone therapy)? “


Why is this possibility not widely discussed? Because it is too dispiriting to be entertained by a culture whose loftiest ideals are sex, youth, and physical attractiveness? Doesn’t sell ads? Has no merit? Not fun?

Whatever it may be, my interest in the question of sex, age, and hormones became a practical one on a Sunday a few years ago, when my wife and I were on the way home from church. Alluding to something in the sermon, she confessed that she hated having sex. The sermon’s message had had to do with men, women, sex, and marriage. Her sudden admission that she hated having sex was scary to me. God bless church, I was thinking.

But in the aftermath of her telling me that sex was abhorrent to her, I began to remember that she had mentioned on at least one occasion in the last couple of years that she made sure she had sex with me as part of her “wifely duty.” (Our problems, you can figure out, include the fact I’m kind of insensitive and selfish.) It was something we needed to talk about, I admitted. As we discussed it, she maintained that her hatred of having sex was largely my fault-- because of my lustful inclinations and sexual activity during trying times of our marriage in days gone by-- she’d simply developed an emotional block, due to my horrid thoughtlessness, insensitivity, and selfish behavior. I didn’t dispute I’d been a bad mess. But I pointed out that even after those times, we’d still had a lot of lively sex which she had enjoyed. She didn’t deny it. (Also, I’d her say, when a possibly of a “Viagra” drug for women had come up, that she wished there were such a thing for her to take. I think she wanted to still like sex.)



Although I was remorseful & repentant regarding the thoughtless behavior of mine to which she alluded, I was certain she was mistaken that this was the cause of her loss of interest in sex. Based on the evidence below, I came to believe that it’s normal for a woman’s sex drive (without hormone “therapy”) to give out as a result of menopause. Here’s a number of separate incidents and experiences, that, over time, convinced me:



1. My first boss, in my job that became my lifelong career, was in his late fifties when I was thirty-two or so. His wife (I now understand) was going through menopause or had gone through it. My wife and I were both young and loved sex, and lots of it. We sometimes compared notes.

This boss wasn’t satisfied, from what he told me, with sexual relations in his marriage. He recounted to me several times, in the couple of years we worked together, that a study had found that if you had a jar and you were filling it up with beans, and you placed a bean in it every time that you and your wife had sex, from the time you first had to the last time in your life, the jar would be ¾ full by the end of the 1st year, and would never reach the top the rest of your life together. Something to that effect. (I just searched online and found another version of this-- one that’s not as striking as the one my boss related.)

Hearing this (about the beans & the jar), I thought, “How strange.” His wife, it was clear to me, was a very attractive woman; so cute that you wouldn’t even think of her being in her 50’s. Surely, the beans were still rising in their jar. They ought to be having a pretty great sex life. Were they? I asked him one day (mentioning, as a lead up, his wife’s admirable looks.)

“Her?” he replied, chuckling. “She’s cold as a fish.”

“Wow,” I thought. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it-- an attractive woman, and . . . ‘cold as a fish’? It didn’t add up, to me; and I tried to put it out of my mind.

2. I never understood my boss’s comment about coldness and fish until around the time of that church message that my wife and I had discussed in the car, when she told me she hated sex. (Although the thing about the beans and the jar was coming true.) Was she cold as a fish? I started considering the relevant facts. Odd, now I thought about it-- it was true that whenever we had sex, it ended up that I’d be as interested as ever-- while she’d be, more and more—you might say . . perhaps, I couldn’t be sure-- stifling a yawn? In any event, there was no denying that if the TV was on in the bedroom, and we were in the bed, she’d be following whatever was happening onscreen with infinitely more interest than what was going on in the bed.

3. Shortly after the church sermon and discussion on the way home in the car, I went out to dinner with my older sister. She’s beautiful, I would say; she’d been indisputably crazy about sex in her youth. I presumed that she had not lost interest as the decades had gone by though we hadn’t discussed it ever. As we were waiting for out order to come, I told her about my concerns about my wife’s dwindling interest in sex in our marriage. I related what my wife had said about hating sex, and the part I played in it, according to her. “She’s not interested.” my sister said. “Women completely lose interest in sex. Don’t take it personally.” I expressed my astonishment.

“We lose interest,” she went on. “That is why Viagara is such a bad joke. Men pop it in order to be able to keep on having sex with their wives-- who no longer could care less about sex.” Could it be true?

Well, after that night with my sister at dinner, I thought it might behoove me to read up, learn more about menopause and women’s sexual enthusiasm as they get older. I hoped to enlighten myself and perhaps even find information to help us to get our sex life back on track. As I began to look into the matter, there was much that I read on the internet, or in popular magazines, or heard on TV shows, that seemed very encouraging. There were so many ways, it seemed, that women could—with a little persistence and hard work-- make sex go on being a significant ingredient of a couple’s happiness well into their 70’s- maybe even 80’s. And 90’s was coming up fast just around the corner.

But-- one thing presupposed in any scenario I read about was hormone therapy.

Here, though, I realized, was a snag. My wife was adamant that she wasn’t going to be a sucker like her sisters and a lot of other women she knew and take hormones. It was dangerous, she said, and not worth the health risks. I didn’t know much about it, but wondered if she was right, and began reading about hormone therapy. The more I read and thought about hormone therapy, the more I felt my wife was right about not doing it. With a possible (however small) cancer risk with hormone “therapy,” there was no way a woman could justify it, I decided. Because no matter how important sex may be to a person, it doesn’t outweigh being alive. Thus, I agreed with my wife. And I began to wonder about the possible right-thinking of our great-grandparents, and pre-Freudian, pre-Kinsey, pre-Playboy, pre nudity-on-cable-TV, forefathers. Might they have exhibited a common sense greater than any we current people could muster, when they resorted in their later years, to sleeping in separate beds?

5. Something that helped confirm the conclusions I was forming with regard to sex, hormones and women’s aging was the book The Change, by Germaine Greer. I found Greer’s dim view of women’s lives during their hormonal years and her rhapsodic praise of women’s post-menopausal years sans hormones, to be heart-warming, convincing, and logical. Especially in her belief that with finally being liberated from the effects of hormones after menopause, women in life’s last stage are able experience a joy above anything promised by couples’ sex-therapy manuals, Cosmo magazine, or even, as she puts it, the happiness experienced by their husbands during sex with them (their wives) in their days as a younger couple. Though many people apparently found Greer strident, eccentric, and a pain, her views made more sense to me than any others I’d encountered on the subject. I found her insight inspiring.



6. At last, I wondered: Could the Catholic Church be onto something? As the evangelical churches have in the last few years been insisting more and more on the paramount, overriding, must-be-met importance of women fulfilling their men’s insatiable need for sex (basing itself possibly, on St. Paul’s absurd advice to get married if you’d otherwise be burning with lust) in marriage, the Catechism of the Catholic Church implied, from what I could make of it, that sex without the risk of having babies wasn’t really sex anyway-- and, consequently, hardly worth the energy expended in its behalf.



Is the above just one old duffer’s sour grapes theory of aging and sex-life? If women’s sexual enjoyment comes down to just a matter of hormones, then, one might wonder, why is it that the internet, the doctors on morning TV shows, marital-improvement books, women’s self-enhancement magazines in the checkout line at Wal-Mart, all talk and talk and talk about how women can continue to have a volcanic sex life forever and ever and ever? Why don’t they end the charade, and admit that after menopause women lose interest in sex? Kind of hard to figure.

As promised on the show on Sunday (sorry it took me so long), here is the column written by a British helicopter pilot regarding his change of sexuality. Very interesting reading.

My script is not allowing a usual click-through link so you will have to copy and paste for yourself. Sorry.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article6990013.ece

I found two comments particularly provocative.

First he says,

Some will dismiss it as heresy. I have long argued that homosexuality is natural but abnormal, to a torrent of hostility from gay friends who refuse to acknowledge that what you are and what stake you hold in society are not the same.

And then later
Loving your own sex occurs in nature, without artificial triggers. But it is still not average behaviour. Homosexuality is an aberration; a natural aberration. Gays are a minority and minorities, though sometimes vocal, do not hold sway.
But two decades of cavorting with my own sex has delivered little that is memorable, except one super-sized sexless friendship with the aforementioned ex-boyf, with whom I spent a decade of my life; numerous hours of internet dating; a dizzying number of casual couplings and a few trips to genitourinary medicine clinics.


This got me to thinking, given the recent study I saw that showed about 10% of gay men and 20% of lesbians say that they chose to be homosexual. This is an odd phenomenon that gets little discussion in the news today but is worth studying and noodling.

Every man (and many women) need a strategy for staring temptation in the eyes and not giving in.

Here are the top 10 ways to do just that. 10 ways to help yourself say, "I just cannot go there."

10) Know your identity. Who you are. When you are at your best. As a person of faith, it is helpful to remember, "I am baptized." I belong to God.

9) Enjoy a Healthy sex life with your spouse – not just often, but one that satisfies your deep desire

8) Wear your wedding band - it is a physical and visible reminder to yourself that you made a vow

7)Remember the old quote from Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. "Why would I eat chopped steak when I have filet mignon waiting at home."

6) Understand that marriage is a calling. God has called you to this relationship. It is not merely a contract you wrote. It is a covenant you entered.

5) Remember the goal - a lifetime of love. It is not about your happiness on any single day. It is about a life that you are building together.

4) Do not put yourself in those positions to be tempted - e.g., it may be that you consume no alcohol when you are travelling on the road, or you may have no computer in a private room of your houes. Avoid temptation in the first place; do not merely resist it.


3) Close your eyes and think of your children. Imagine the damage that your one act can and will do to their lives.

2)Know your enemy. He wants to make you live backwards. The backward of LIVE is EVIL. The threat is real. Only the foolish ignore the threat.

1) Know his goals. You will be tempted in your areas of weakness not your areas of strength. Know yourself and your own weak points. Then take steps to prevent temptation.

I receive lots of inquiries and emails from men about their secret and silent obsession with porn.

And I recently received an excellent little pamphlet from Mart de Haan about False Intimacy. It came an an insert with a prayer publication our family uses.

In glancing at it, I realized this thing has a lot of good wisdom for men. So I share freely what I received freely. Here are a few of his thoughts that I found helpful.

1) It is not just a men's issue.
Men are the primary users of porn but both men and women are hurt by it. Porn lessens our capacity to understand the real desire and need we all have to be respected and loved.

2) Porn consumes our capacity for intimacy
Seeing women as objects of self-centered pleasure dehumanizes them and blinds us to their personalities. Worse, it blurs the image of Go, which together we share. Men get preoccupied in a cycle of self-absorbed pleasure, regret, and shame.

3) Porn sets up a God-substitute in our hearts.
Men often succumb to the illusion that porn is the bread we need and want. Only to discover that it fails to satisfy the soul, and even destroys it.

4) Porn costs more than we think.
Self-centered pleasure lasts for a moment. Regrets can stalk us for a lifetime. Self-deception and misplaced affection damage the heart. They put distance between ourselves and others. They rob us of our conscience before God and our transparency with others.

5) The porn problem requires more than a casual response.
Those caught up in the grip of pornography cannot fix the problem simply by renewing their resolve. We need a sustained, thoughtful approach.

Mart suggests a resource for men you may find useful. It looks promising. Check it out for yourself here.

Great email regarding last night's discussion of sex in marriage and Relevant Church's 30 Day Sex Challenge in Tampa.

Last night I was listening to your show about the 30 day sex challenge for married couples. I could not find it on your website this morning and was hoping you could email the info.

My husband & I will be celebrating 30 years of marriage on Sept. 2 and I was going to give this to him as a gift.. Of course, he will probably have to be admitted to coronary care unit…..

You are so right about the church not addressing this issue. As Jesus followers and faithful church goers, I would also like to share this info with my Adult Fellowship Bible Class and with my pastor.

Since my Bible class as a group has been praying for our marriages, this might be a great idea for all of us to try….

Thanks again. I enjoy your show.
Kim

ANSWER:
Here is the web site with more info