Real Marriage_ The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together - Mark Driscoll [100]
If masturbation begins to be the normative sex act in your relationship and replaces regular intercourse, then it is becoming the center of the sexual relationship and therefore a problem. And if we are habituating our bodies to be most satisfied through masturbation rather than intercourse, we are setting in motion a host of problems, such as a man who cannot climax with his wife but instead has to finish with his own hand, which is devastating for a wife and symptomatic of a sexual addiction to masturbation.
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Obviously this is an issue that will require a great deal of honest and gracious conversation between you and your spouse.
Oral Sex
Oral sex is using one’s mouth and tongue to pleasure a partner’s genitals. Culturally speaking, oral sex is increasingly more common and acceptable among both men and women in and outside marriage. Younger generations are increasingly likely not to consider it any more sexual than kissing, which is why it is imperative for parents not to simply teach their children to be abstinent, but also clearly define for them that oral sex is sex. No less than 61 percent of teenage girls have performed oral sex on a guy, and 62 percent of teenage girls have received oral sex from a guy.24
According to the most recent and comprehensive research, the following data provides an accurate summary of oral sex activity.25 At least half of all women, single and married, ages eighteen to thirty-nine, gave or received oral sex in the past ninety days.26 Women in dating or marital relationships were significantly more likely to report giving and receiving oral sex in the past ninety days.27 Among men of all ages, men in their late twenties and thirties were most likely (80.7 percent) to receive oral sex from a woman, particularly if they were not married or living with a girlfriend.28 The lowest rate of receiving oral sex in the past ninety days were men over age seventy who were not married but living with a partner (0.0 percent).29 And men who reported receiving oral sex from a woman were also more likely in every age group to have also performed oral sex on a woman.
Question 1: Is it lawful?
Oral sex is lawful both culturally and biblically. Despite being three thousand years old and written in a highly conservative Eastern religious culture, the biblical book Song of Songs speaks of oral sex in a positive and poetic fashion.
In Song of Songs 2:3, the wife seemingly speaks of the delight she has in tasting his sweetness in her mouth as she performs oral sex (fellatio) on her husband, saying, “Like an apple tree among the trees of the woods, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down in his shade with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” One Bible commentator said of this text, “‘Fruit’ is sometimes equated with the male genitals or with semen, so it is possible that here we have a faint and delicate reference to an oral genital caress.”30
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In Song of Songs 4:12–5:1 the husband likens his wife’s unclothed body to a garden filled with delightful scents and flavors, including her moist vagina likened to a fresh spring. The wife then invites him to perform oral sex (cunnilingus) on her, saying, “Awake, O north wind, and come, O south! Blow upon my garden, that its spices may flow out. Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its pleasant fruits.” After performing oral sex on his wife, the husband then says, “I have come to my garden, my sister, my spouse; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk.” Then, the only time in the entire book that God directly speaks, He celebrates the act, saying, “Eat, friends, and drink; drink your fill of love!” (5:1 NIV).
Various Bible commentators have seen the overt yet poetic meaning of these texts of Scripture. One scholar said that it is possible that “the ‘garden’ is a euphemism for the vulva.”31 Another said, “In the