Sexuality: a search for perspective; Marital and sexual health in a modern society

Now we lament that young people do not have the proper reverence or respect for their God given human sexuality. Why should that one should. Because we have taught them to respect their German because they have picked first and second German German first. We've taught them to respect calculus because they have to take math algebra geometry right on up the ladder when they get the calculus they respect it. So we learned on the job. Pick it up out of the newspaper. You didn't were the one who they think it's anything but simple. Why shouldn't they believe they can find out in the backseat of the car whether they're sexually made which is what we have led them to believe. And they won't have any respect or reverence for him go away I don't think and an area in which you know very profound where they come but I have we're not going to Michigan State University radio presents sexuality a search for perspective a series of recorded lectures from an

interdisciplinary colloquy on human sexuality held on the campus of Michigan State University. The purpose of this series is to provide a comprehensive discussion of human sexuality and its broadest possible perspective. And yet deal with this important and timely topic in an organized informed and rational manner. The lecturer today will be Dr. Clark events and director of the Behavioral Sciences Center in the bowman gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University. Dr. Vincent is also a professor of sociology at Wake Forest. He is the author of readings in marriage counseling and the unwed mother. His topic today will be marital and sexual health in modern society. Now Dr. Clarke even sent to the audience there are some of you. I wonder why everything there will be the other end of the continuum. There will be a lot of

things I may say. Only one. I want to try to present to you are to die. You have her or you know. I am trying to present a number of ideas a little bit different context and perhaps. And a little bit of a difference given my choice of weapon a shotgun and a rifle. Which is to say I am not honing in on a well-developed target. But scattering shot hither and yon hoping a few pellets will strike home find a resting place. Want to directly put it was struck first of all a little bit about sex education in the John Birch Society. Second later talk about the necessity of course about impressions as reality put these together and talk

about some of the prices we pay for being at this particular time of sexual stress. But it reflects. Many of the public education and what they the future. I think affects your struggling little communities to provide respectable accurate. Information for people.

Because of the hundreds of something to teach. But if you accept the premise that sex education is subversion as communistic is undermining the moral of our country is under Manning family life. So let's accept that premise for the moment and see what we should do. Joining us with the John Birch Society.

One of our first targets would be to declare a con on America because you have a girl winning a Miss Universe or Miss America contest with measurements of 40 40 40 or 20 20 20. It's very un-American in this sort of thing and put their stamp of success that we do on Miss America. For winger that is not attacking Madison Avenue sex in advertising. We use sex to sell everything from a tritone oil to kick up a local community chest and I don't think a girl in a bathing suit. I think that it would try to but they're there and if they're serious we buy their problems. Then let's raise the question because otherwise it's like one test for

sanity one Indian tribe the person suspected of being a little bit brought into a room. The water is flowing from its back up into a bucket. Person is given the cup until the bucket until it's empty. They turned off the spicket before they start bailing they considered saying it's not a bad test. The John Birch Society does not pass it. Because one of their defense was teachers and it's everybody's game and anything to pick on the school system everyone does that. But when it comes to picking on them the billion dollar industries that are pouring out sexual stimulation by which we. See and are they afraid of these. I think so. I think in our communities we simply have to take the offensive and point out. That there is the feeling that.

Perhaps we still have a choice and this is one of the involved that we still have a choice. Some communities build abating should we provide young people with sex education. We don't have a choice. We haven't had that choice for at least a decade. Our young people are inundated with sex education and information Balej if not our lives. If you've ever watched a television show you've ever gone to a drive in movie or any movie or perhaps look for a movie you could go to. They're inundated with it. We don't have a choice as to whether we will or won't provide young people with sex education. The only relevant debate is whether or not the society of adult particular. Is satisfied with the accuracy of the comprehensiveness the completely and the value context. Of the kind of information by which I argue with aren't they. If you are then there's no problem. I'm not satisfied either of the

first very simple level. I don't really believe that sex is that simple. I don't agree with Fleming or the fact tutor for my boy for example. I am blaming teachers through James Bond that you arch your eyebrows when they grow up and never found it that easy. I don't find it that easy when I'm errant. And takes planning it takes work. Now young people do not have the proper reverence or respect for their God given human sexuality. Why should think one should. Because we have taught them to respect their German because they are picked first and second German German first. We've taught them to respect calculus because they have to take math algebra geometry right on up the ladder when they get the calculus.

They respect that. You learned on the job because you didn't were the one who they think is anything but simple. Why shouldn't they believe they can find out in the back seat of the car whether they're sexually made it this is what we have led them to believe. And they won't come to have any oil or respect or reverence for until the adult in society begins to treat it as an area which is very profound highly complex. But if that were not doing what Again there is the curator kind of assumption that if you provide fix education you know people will go out and become very permissive permissive and promiscuous. It's an interesting assumption and consumer economics we do notice ill that they're going to spend their money less wisely. We require physical education and we don't assume that they're going to go out immediately abuse their body. We have driver education and we don't assume more accidents. Yet why in

this area do we suddenly reverse ourselves and say that if you give them sex education they are going to make less vicious use of their human sexuality that is more in the same you that we put billions of dollars of trust then in terms of trips in this space. The John Birch Society is right. Sex education corrupt undermines then we must have another question. Why is it. That the present time the rate of illegitimacy among 25 to 35 year old women are five times as high as they are among teenagers. Why is it that for the last 13 years since 1938 the increase in the illegitimacy rate has been about one hundred thirty percent among teenagers but over 600 percent increase

among the late twenties and the early 30s. Even women working and older have had over a 200 percent increase during that 30 year period. Of course you don't hear about this because we don't talk about that we talk about it. But certainly this is one area in which you should never say to young women grow up and act adult. Young people's record is far superior to that of older women and the older women didn't have sex education so I don't quite know what undermined them but there they are. Any final comment here is that your society refuses to withdraw and I don't think we will because again we're talking about the billion dollars that have to be stepped on. And I've yet to see one community that can withdraw the stimulus. And as

long as we refuse to withdraw the stimulus then I think we have a moral obligation to our young people to provide them with accurate. Information and that means whereby they can protect themselves when they respond with us DeMille we refuse to withdraw. Now let me talk about. And give you a two minute tour of history first. If you were back briefly to the time of one of the earlier as far back as John the Baptist but just to Jean-Jacques Rousseau we have a strange way of the scholars of the distance. Around the time of the French Revolution was a man with no uncertain terms.

If you were a member you would have social institutions. You had the family. You had the church you had the community you had the work. And in effect the individual had no identity apart from organizations. These organizations had a literal life and death control over the individual. There was a question about who am I what you knew. Grandfather was a father was a name was Smith. Interesting to trace many of our Anglo-Saxon family carp and so on down the list. The identity was that said these are the chains that bind the natural man is good let him free these or corrupt it does. Not spring the individual. So if you skip period it's true that

gradually individual has been sprung. Mainland China today the family does not have a life and death control over the individual it once had. But something else has happened. We have had the rise of the powerful and I'm using state in a very amorphous sense to mean the federal the state state the county and the family doesn't tell you when you go to war if you have to go to war but the state the family doesn't. You can get married but the state and who you're going to marry. And what you have to do before hand and you can go down a lot. Of areas in which formally one of these organizations had control over the individual. Which now the state have the state and even broader stands to mean mass media and the way in which we are dictated to whether it's in hair style or length of

skirt from the floor we protest but not too successfully. And six months from now. French designers come with the Kurds halfway between the NE and the angle down there. We are dictated to. Now this has created the problem that they have the problem of our time in large perspective and I'm glossing over a great deal here. Because this is much too large with which to identify. And we are two mo bile Bo Corazon and vertically or even vertically to get away from our family background. Sometimes Well it means increasingly we are thrown back on ourselves so that if you look at them. The poem the social philosopher writing the film lives.

For a long time now you have seen the central concern over this issue of identity. Now. We are very pettish about the concepts we use and we change them from time to time. You can look at this theme comes through his writing certainly you'll remember that the one story where a letter of the alphabet is used to identify the people of the part of this symbol symbolizing a lack of well by whatever order another time we were talking about lonely people in lonely crowd. At another time the term was more acceptable to talk about. Organization or men in gray flannel suit or conformity. Later it was a problem of alienation or the outsider English writer. But I'm submitting that. In a larger perspective. They're struggling basically with the same thing. How does this individual find an identity.

Now. I'm purposely stripping this to its simplest form because I think with our sophistication and many who have read Freud in the original and all of the psychology terminology somehow are yet to. Perceive the simplicity that I must love myself. Now in part this is because in parts of our Western religious heritage we have been taught that it is not right to love yourself to love yourself is to be selfish self-centered. Or to love other people. Eric from some 15 20 years ago was trying to popularize this notion that you must first sell before a lot of work was pointing out that the idea was at

least as of the New Testament commandment Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Now if I do not love myself deeply wisely intelligently and well. It's a lousy commandment. Because my neighbor is going to be a lot better off without my feeling toward him as I feel toward self. And it's pointed out the only way you can make any sense out of that commandment is to start with the premise that you first love sout deeply wisely and well then develop a neighbor as thyself. Because I'm sure each of you know a few people whom you hope never follow the commandment in terms of their degree of self degradation self disparagement self destruct. It would be a very lousy commandment for them. It's a little bit like saying that only to the degree that I love. You and

I love anyone else. Because if I don't love me that were difficult for me to believe that anyone else will love what I cannot accept. Why would it. And the threat that everyone else is going to reject what I can't accept creates too much anxiety and a lot of psychic preservation is a strong and viable physiological self-preservation and we come to our defense. We set up a defense. Around this what we're doing in effect is saying OK I know I don't love this and I know you won't but I won't let you see it I'll stop you here or here. And we all do this and all the way through this evening I'm talking about normal people. Like those of us here not like those who didn't come. Just our normal garden variety kinds of quirks and so on and so

on. But reasonably normal because I can take the same schema and build it on the erotic the psychotic pathological what I want to deal with the normal tonight. Consider the elementary school age. And Elementary School who is so identified here with poverty cannot accept the shame. He's afraid the other kids will reject him. What is his defense to stop them here. He tells them about how much money is dead. The 30 foot boat the trip we took to Europe. Brag brag brag crack crack crack. Now the very fact that he's bragging turns the other kids away. The defense will service them they want to kick the feet out from under. They don't realize he needs that or they don't see it as the bright flashing neon sign it is which says this little boy does not love self enough. To misinterpret. Perhaps the most universal form of defense is criticism in a way we each have barometers build and

there are days when you get up and everything goes like clockwork. You get the paper and on time you get a few compliments. You feel well physically your own self self image. Call it what you will is hot. If you observe yourself closely on those days as they are. You love the whole world. It's good to be alive it takes a great deal to make you angry because you love and are pleased with. Their other data. They stretch into weeks when you might better remain in bed. You're missed the deadline. People point out your mistake. That's the trajectory separate your image goes down down down down. If you observe yourself it's on those days when you are hyper critical of everyone. One. Again the universal defense it's a way of saying OK this is not much but you are worse. And I'll point it out to you one two three four and it's how we want it.

Now what I say is easy to say it is very difficult to practice because in practice it means something like this that I want to do. But my image has gone down down down stretches in the week. It's on those days when I come home that I will find six things have done that they ought not to have done. I think I maybe have lost control of the office but by cracky I get control here and I point out sort of mistake that on another day feeling better I would've overlooked. It's on those in the first half hour I will find six mistake or six things that my wife did that I think she ought not to have done or vice versa. In other words I'm saying OK I'm not much but you made this mistake and what did you do that and you shouldn't and so now maybe over my days the practice. While I'm berating belittling scolding her she was supposed to say.

Oh. This poor guy needs more love. I will give him more love while he is criticizing for that's the price. And that's where most of us fall down. Because a problem is that she's probably had her own day. And in part she's had her own day because the poor kid said they're unable or they've been homeless and she's already gotten. So my little dig gets just that and she's got one of her own and pretty soon most of our communication is here. Now what I'm saying is husband and wife or parent and child. Or professor and subdue or Dormy And normally. Should learn to recognize these for what they are. They're telling you loud and clear I love myself and I know that's why I'm being obstreperous boasting bragging critical.

Unfortunately we don't read it that way because they're being critical we want to criticize that and we're blocked up at this level. Now let me turn for a moment try to illustrate this. The sexual area I don't really know how much of this is physiological how much is cultural psychological or what. But except to broad generalizations. We love girls because they exist. We love boys for what they will become. This difference starts very early. If you watch five six seven year old girl come into the living room friends and relatives. If she has on a clean hair as she may do a little pirouettes. Oh it looks lovely. I don't use the do look lovely and attract attention but the boy almost mysteriously has already learned it is not enough for him to come and stand

here feeling awful you know pass back and run. Never see me jump. You like to watch me do something already. As we learn that he must offer evidence that he's worthwhile. I'm not sure how we end this but we do now. These two differential sources of help tend to go into opposite directions and all the way during childhood adolescence courtship. The girl is literally brainwashed. With the aid again of a multibillion dollar cosmetic and clothing industry. If she is worth her salt as a woman she can attract attention coming from women. But hopefully from him and the right. Now during courtship this difference works reasonably well because the guy is trying to prove something and she's trying to attract

Joe he can prove that he can get her in bed or he can prove that he can get her married or going to prove something you see. And so this is complimentary. But once he gets her marriage and he is married to her he's proven that thing forget about and he. And the rest of his life he was most of his productive hours his creative energy his best but continuing to prove himself in terms of more education occupationally financial aid in the neighborhood then a political party that will never and. I know never kill this bill that he was this way and she sits there and wonders what's wrong with me. What's wrong with me and what's happening to her self-image. Because she's been told that she's worth her salt she can attract this guy's attention and she can't even compete with a mid term.

And regardless of how much money he's making this year he's supposed to make more next year that he has to stay in place these days. And if he writes one book as opposed to right to because somebody else will. It's a competitive if you compare you get the award this year for the best backyard some character beats you out there because we've let ourselves be sucked into this competitive comparative model. Everytime the male wants to make a lot he has to prove it. First he has to provide the evidence of an erection. It's that they stick to the name and it's no wonder that the male in his 40s or 50s is crime attacked by the thought of impotency. It's not just the failure to get the erection but this is all together gestalt fashion with prove cruel. Out there.

I'm saying again I don't think we can change this but at least if young married couples realize this so they didn't personalize it because you see the gallows in a very vulnerable position here. If she could just come right out and say honey love me I need love but too vulnerable and women we're taught to be direct. So what did she do her self love is threatened and she puts this up to protect what she's afraid maybe he won't love her criticism. Why do you have to spend so much time doing this. Why don't we do this why don't you do that. Yeah anything's woman get off my back you know. All because she can't come right out and say I need more of him the kind of difference. When she said Do you love me honey. What would tell me I told you last week that no one ever told a male that this is a fool. We brought it up this way.

Lovely hair. Love that dress. Talk talk talk talk talk. Verbalize we did it we recorded it but after we're married once a month is enough but not. Basic difference. If we could take a husband and give him every psychological test known and we get three or four psychometry as they agree that's what he's like. We do the same with the wife. That's what she's like. These two people are not going to interact on that basis. First of all the husband is going to interact on the basis of the husband's impression of the host and the wife is going to interact on the basis of the wife's impression of the way. For example everybody in the neighborhood says this is your fault. But if she does not believe she's attractive. This is reality for her. She runs scared and make a difference what everybody else. If she thinks she is unattractive that's reality. Or here we've got the guy who thinks he's the best violinist in town

is judged to be attempt this. But his impression is reality and he's going to be miffed at the annual then the seating arrangement because he thinks he's a vet. Now this husband is not going interact with the wife's impression of herself nor with what she was major debate. He's going to interact with the husband's impression of the wife what he thinks she is like. And she is going to be interacting with the wife's impression of the husband. Again how many times have you met someone you didn't hear the name you weren't at all impressed. You got away as quickly as possible the next day you discover this was a very influential person. You think what did I what I do. They were the person they were all the time. We don't interact with people we interact with our impression. But that's reality right around reality. Now let's go back over here does this husband interact.

With the wife's impression of the way or with what the wife thinks of the husband. No this husband interacts with the husband's impression of the way the impression of a husband. And this wife interacts with the wife's impression of the husband's impression of the way I look at my life or at this level. Probably within the last day or two you have gone out openly warmly to someone because you think they think highly of you. And it's a good thing you don't know what they think. Or you stay away from someone because you think they think negatively of you and they don't at all. But reality for you is what you think they think up you know. This schema and consider the problem we have

when each one of these is real and each one of these is real but each of us were brought up in families where we heard mother and father arguing as to who is right and who is wrong and we have been indoctrinated for from twenty to forty years with the notion that in every argument one person is right and the other person is wrong. And so you argue it out. Now all of this denies the validity of something most of you have introductory psychology of selective perception thinking how selective we are when you put our total physiological mental emotional spiritual makeup together and our unique family social experiences so that it literally becomes almost impossible for two people to see hear or remember recall or even experience the thing in exactly the same way.

We can't do it and yet almost every marital argument is premised on the notion that you can start out by trying to recall what they discussed yesterday afternoon. You said this. I did not I said. And they can argue two o'clock in the morning who's right and who's wrong. I'm saying it's impossible. Because for each the impression is real not right or wrong. People come in and say we can't possibly make a go we're so different. The problem is not differences. The problem is the lack of the freedom to be different now. Right. One thing very large I am not saying that anything anybody does is all right. I am not saying there is no right and no wrong. I'm not talking about behavior. I am talking ONLY about impressions which are the

bases for communication. And people will learn to accept another person's impression as real not right or wrong. You don't agree with or disagree. It's real for them that's the only point. What is it then you begin to listen. And you begin to open up the communication lines. And it's no wonder that wives feel so threatened in their own self. So damage when the husband can shout louder and thinks he's more logical and finally she breaks down in tears and I know I'm right but I never will never should not be to argue who's right who's wrong. This is deeply instilled it goes all the way to divorce court. Because you have a plan even to defend that one's right or wrong or the right one. It's asinine but there it is. And as parents we say to the children rather than listening to their impressions which is not right or wrong it's real

for them. We don't have to agree with it but it's real for them what is it. And you'll be surprised how many couples after years of this notion what their spouse thinks really things. All they know is what they think their spouse thinks but they really don't know what it's about. They're strangers. Now let me try to put some of this together in the context of some of our sexual hang ups. I think when John Daniel was here he undoubtedly talked about this whole phenomenon. Labeling. It as one example the mother who was supervising the young 4 5 year old son bathing. She wants the job. Would you scrub your clean your neck. How much you need. That you want to make sure you wash around down there. Did you wash it. Well Little Johnny gets the idea you know this is education sex education.

The neck is an elbow to elbow knees a need but a penis is not a penis it's in it or it's a down there. Now Little Johnny isn't about to open up a dialogue when Mother won't call a spade a spade. You see he's already got the message. Discuss this with your friends. Pick up the gutter terms but this is sort of off limits with just down there. It's a sex education. Well let's take another kind of problem when the husband says to the wife Honey scratch my back. OK. She says he starts scratching and she says no not so hard over to the left under the shoulder blade. Slow down easier you know. You know. Over to the center there are now she can give her husband six eight 10 12 sets of instructions just above the guide

line because no one ever told him that expertise and back scratching has anything to do with masculinity. There is absolutely no threat. To give as many instructions she want. Now suppose this same wife. Is in bed. And she's trying to derive some sexual pleasure do you think she can give 12 instructions to her husband as to how to give her sexual pleasure. You know she's lucky if she gives him too. Because we have equated masculinity with knowing all about sex and we start this one early because in elementary school you can hear two or three boys talking about little Jimmy is a sissy. Jimmy doesn't know anything about sex. That makes him a sissy to be masculine know all about sex. Now this puts the adult American male in a horrible box because it means he can't learn. He goes to learn something about something you have to admit you don't know but for the male to admit there's

something about sex he doesn't know is to question his own masculinity. And he's not going to do this. He's going to resist the wife ignores the little magazine article opened up where he usually comes home you know he gets a point but damned if you'll read it while because his impression of his wife's impression of him is he thinks she thinks I'm a man. So about the second suggestion she has as to how he might help her have some pleasure. His self-love is threatened he gets defensive anywhere if you are just a normal woman you'd probably be here by now. She gets threatened. But forget about it it's not worth it. So they did. Now I'm saying tie these two schemas together. This is not the nails fault that he is so defensive. He was rude this way and he has to make it. Bring it up on the table. That unfortunately is blocked in by equating mastery with knowing all about sex and

accept this because new knowledge is coming out all the time and from what he has learned how complex how complicated this female is a Sunday school teacher her daddy telling some of the information available himself. Now let me give you another example of a complicating problem. This is marital shorthand and I will read you a conversation between a husband and wife as I tape recorded it. Why you never care for me. Husband I do too you don't appreciate it. Why you don't even know what I'm talking about. Husband I do too. What about last night. What if you don't even think I'm sick. Husband who got you to the doctor. White men have all the advantages. That's a conversation. Now. This has been what I thought they were communicating most husbands and wives and most dating couples think they're communicating because they've developed a shorthand that is so

short that you can't even get a hold of yourself. Now I asked this couple I played each thing back to them and said What do you mean I give you a translation which you said you never care for me. Here is her translation. She's talking to you when you're ill I'm with you 24 hours a day I look after you I nurse you I give you everything you want putting your meals in bed. When I'm you know you go to work it seems to me a little bit earlier you come home a little bit later and you always send my mother somebody else to look after me. When he said I do too you don't appreciate it. He translated. Honey I'm the bread winner I have to work I don't think you understand that. I can't afford to stay home with you all day when if by working I can afford to hire someone full time to stay with you if that's what you what is needed and also I have enough left over to pay the bills. I don't think you really appreciate my having someone to look after you is something that I'm doing all of that was what he meant but only you don't appreciate it.

Now when she said you don't even know what I'm talking about. When she turned slated this she came the closest to saying love the little me. But she didn't say it that way. First time she went around made a critical comment you don't want to talk about translation. I'm lonely when I say to her. I want you to comfort me I guess. Read to me now that celly. Tell me you love me I guess I want to feel somehow that I'm more important than the fact that you've got another business or commentary. That she could just have said but we don't short it. But I'll skip to her last comment which is many have all the advantages of translation here. When you're sick I'm your nurse. The company gives you sick leave in fact the company gives you sick leave with pay. I've never met a nurse when I'm sick. I've never had sick leave I've never had sick leave with pay and I have to keep running the house.

It's a very legitimate gripe but this never came out in the short so that not only are you struggling with impressions of impressions but you're struggling with short. Now going back to this for a moment I think you can see one of the things that happens between dating couples. The follow things the girl thing he should make an approach. Or he thinks the girl will think he's not masculine unless he makes an approach. The girl thinks he did things unless she responds with a pervert. And so pretty soon they're both doing something they don't want to want to but they each think the other one thinks they want to say because they simply never sit down and got it out. And listen to this. Let me give an example of this. There's no panacea but I think you develop little gimmicks techniques. I was up in Minnesota

about a year ago. They're very busy so I was staying with her and after dinner an evening I was very tired. Clark would you like to walk around the lake in a walk around the lake. But I wasn't really being honest I would try to be quote good. And I thought well you know what about you Marty. So I turned it right Mary Mary would you like I said look it's gone far enough. I said you know my wife and I have a little pin point scale. It goes something like this because I used to come home tired and I would think yeah I would take a little gal out to dinner like I'm home with the honey would you like to go out to dinner. She's dying to go out to dinner but she looks at me and I've obviously put on all the cute you know. Maybe depends how do you feel. Well finally decide to go. Where would you like to go. She's dying to go to a decent place. She looks at me. My

pocketbook. Wherever you'd like to go. Yeah but we end up the greatest boat. Now she's not very happy. And for my part I've gone above and beyond the call of duty I came home I was hoping to invite her out to dinner I took her where she went that wanted to go. She can't win because we were. So from one to 10. One means you wouldn't be caught dead doing you know 10 metre jumping up and down on top of the table and I said to Ruben on this scale where are you. He said well I'm about three. Yards. I said to Marion Marion where are you. Marion said Is there any place this way. And I said it best I was here and we had a sigh of relief and went to bed the next morning I found out that lake was four miles around.

Now this is the kind of thing we get involved in. Now I can come no Bunny said. Yes I'm at point. No time. To go out. Now I may be a point too. But the fact that I know she's at 9. I can go and enjoy her enjoyment. And this makes a big difference. Now again it's a gimmick but they say you have to come up with with gimmicks somewhere along the line. I've also over the years tried to pick up the way in which people initiate lovemaking in marriage in terms of the conversations. And here I'm simply trying to illustrate. How. Great is the variety of women's mood this particular couple he was very standard in his nonverbal approach he would come home she be in the kitchen and step up behind her put his arms around her breasts cup or Brett. If she was interested she'd

sort of lean back if she wasn't she'd turn around and give him a hand to hold or something like that. No words said. That was they got the message. The verbal response was very consistent It was a four letter question for word question honey. How about they both agree on the seven different responses she would make different nights one night. I'd love to another night but one or two more artful meaning you spoil it by asking just go ahead man. Another night I have a splitting headache another night. I obviously don't squat so this is either teasing playing or another night when it's only been two days. Another night when we go out for dinner. A bargain. Another night. I thought you'd never ask it's about time.

Same woman same man same question. Now consider the poor male in his occupational life. If he makes a sale with a client and this is the approach he sticks with that approach. That's the way to do it. If you know how to get something out of the Dean and this is the way to do it you stay with that it works. But here is the wife and what worked last night what worked and what worked last week won't work this way. She keeps changing. Now in courtship we've got the patients to sort of try this and try that but after we're married we can't think that's a crazy woman. Think in the variety of modes and I suspect one of the reasons we love our understanding we accept them we love them. They have this tremendous variation that we really don't understand both in the sexual area and all other areas. I want to do it real quick and just simply suggest the need for benchmarks and decision making. This constant question should engage in premarital sexual intercourse.

Is it right or wrong good or bad. And I've always said I refused to honor the question in that form and no adult should honor that or we wouldn't in any other. If someone had the surgery good or bad right or wrong. You want to know the conditions. Surgery for the Bible for what purpose where etc. etc. etc.. And yet here is one of the most complex areas complex relationships and we rush right in. No we have no right to make that decision for anyone else. It is a most difficult decision I think we can help with the decision making process. And not continue to oversimplify it by saying yes or no. It's not that simple. First of all knowledge is conditional. The wall is solid. Sure Paul. They try to walk through it it's pretty solid. Examine with a microscope it's not a. Better condition. Two plus two

for only so long as some joker doesn't add another condition like minus one. You know that. Now what are the conditions. Premarital sex. Is a whole set of conditions involving you. The other person. How well do we know ourselves that most of us think we know ourselves pretty well but I delight in the story that the anthropologist tell certain parts of continental Europe. If you are going to meeting with a hundred people in town or from United States you want to find out who they are. You simply ask the meter didas or pie for dessert. And he will serve of course the diners are here. He will serve the pie what we call the back side of the wedge toward the diner. The 10 Americans of course will turn this pie around and start eating here and there you have going to get a very quick. That's culture. If you think that's a little thing the next time you have you try eating it this way.

I have tried and I swear it does not taste as good. It tastes better. That's culture. These We don't know really what a lot of these things are in terms of attitudes and values and this again is why no one else has the right to make this decision for you but you and you alone have to try to ferret out what are what is your value system it's been late in the culture wise and so on. Well also one can reality test plan for the contingencies I usually don't try to say this until I'm ready to leave campus. I suggest to the girls that if they think they know enough about themselves as one set of conditions enough about the fellow enough about human sexuality that they really feel it's going to be a fulfilling good positive experience. Do one last thing plan for contingencies a reality test. Now they did this driver education you know you simulate an accident even though you could argue I'm not going to have one. You don't apply to one college apply to several just in case. So I say just in

case type an affidavit. John. Green slept with Susan why such a date and when you're already give it to him and ask him to sign the affidavit first. Well first the girls they showed the fellows the fellows get very angry. Because the girls par and they can use every argument on the fellows and fellows I've been using on them. They say to him Well look you've been telling me I will get pregnant nobody gets pregnant no problem. Now what you've been telling me it's normal it's natural you tell me everybody does it shouldn't feel any shame. You know I've had girls come back and say they've discontinued sleeping with dogs that they were sleeping with because they suddenly realized they didn't know these fellows as well as they thought they did. And also in part because the fellows did not know themselves as well as they thought they

did that they thought it was very normal etc. but they were quite willing to go down the line. And no panacea. I just say I think these are the directions in which we ought to try to provide help not a yes or no. What are the benchmark. How do you make these decisions. Now a reality testing area is carried out. Let me close and I'm going to close. With that with reference to sex and marriage. And here I am borrowing very much from. The prop but. When he talks about our need to do is the myrtle it does. Unfortunately in our society to prove. If we could do with the murder which gives of its fragrance not to be elected Best butcher of the year. But rather to give this to people. And if we could do more of what we do

out of fulfilment because this is joy. I think we would have a much better kind of orientation rather than getting trapped in trying to do in order to prove our worth. Or again we could learn more about the sensuousness that women I think hang on to that I think all of us have for example the child who watches the peel the slug of the child who wants to not only see and taste but the truth. Now children take a walk in the woods they don't care where they get to the other side you know wonder they're alive. Taste touch smell feel and women do that. But increasingly women who work professionally and certainly get bombarded with this day need to get the help through the woods to the other side that's what it's all about. And as soon as you get through this project you're lost to the upright and other project and you go go go to get that. Now when you see this is when the family steps out on

family vacation and beginning the morning father picks out a motel a city a hotel 300 500 miles down the road. And by God by 5:00 o'clock we better be that crazy way. But the crazy kids who still know how to live what they want to do. Go here on my own. Daddy let's go see this. Let's do this. Father Terry is here because he's not going to get there. Now the problem is he can't turn off the stimulator that. They spill over and that. And the gal who thought she was going to get two or three hours of lovemaking. Five minutes. Because he got big. And she ducked prepared for this. My final comment is what ever your sexual behavior and activity. I hope you remember to keep it in context. Heard of in the audience of America and here you know where you are in love row the back of her and wonder were having a lot of a to get America going

with no more Lol and yeah there it is. But at that point in time you will. So I think whatever right and the con and we've had it happen and someone figured that out. Thank you and I are running over. You have been listening to Dr Clark events and director of the Behavioral Sciences Center in the bowman gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University. Dr. Vincent spoke on marital and sexual health in modern society. This is Ben sexuality a search for perspective a series of recorded lectures from an interdisciplinary colloquy on human sexuality held on the campus of Michigan State University. Editor for the series is Steve Jensen. This

is a Michigan State University radio production. This is the national educational radio network.