Fantasy vs. Reality in Intimacy

 

        Why are Rom Coms so fun to watch?  Why are fantasy novels so exciting? Why are picture filters so loved by teenage girls?  Because they allow us to disappear into a reality that seems much better than our own for a time.  We can live in an ideal world, where everything works out perfectly.  When we can escape the imperfections of reality, it feels nice…at first.  Until we come back to the real world. This week my eyes have been opened to the seemingly perfect, but misconstrued, perspectives of love and intimacy that infect our society.  The media creates a false reality of sex and love, which tampers with people’s beliefs about one of the most beautiful parts of human life.  Too often, sex is being treated as a casual experiment, rather than a God-given tool for strengthening marriage relationships and building intimacy between husbands and wives who truly love one another. The negative effects of these warped views are infinite.  It would be impossible to measure the negative impact this has on our society.

What is wrong with the current culture around sex? The only way I can describe the culture of sex in today’s society is with the parable of casting pearls before swine.  Sex is a precious, sacred event to be employed between a husband and wife, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.  But too often, it is treated as something much less sacred than a pearl.  The media portrays sex as something you do with anyone and everyone as a means to satisfy lustful desires.  The media portrays sex simply as physical pleasure, when in reality, it is much deeper than that.  Sex has an emotional, and even a spiritual dimension.  When people watch a T.V. show with an intimate scene, or when people view pornography, they see the excitement of sex, without experiencing the negative consequences that are attached to that sort of recreational sex.  But in reality, you pick up both ends of the stick.  In reality, a person might experience the initial excitement of sex, but they will also suffer from emotional and spiritual damage that comes from having it at the wrong time and with the wrong person.

Another deceiving aspect of media that distorts the sacred nature of sex, is poisonous pornography.  Often times, all that is shown are idealized humans.  The creators of this material purposely frame people to look perfect. They don’t, however, expose the significant time spent editing the images, or the technology, and money put into sculpting the idealized images.  Unfortunately, this causes people to compare their own imperfect reality to a fake, idealized fantasy.  This week my professor said that “we have so much access to fake stuff, that the real stuff doesn’t matter anymore.  It’s hard for reality to compare to the fake.”  This creates a major problem for people who have viewed pornography, because then when they experience sex, they have unrealistic expectations and are left unsatisfied.   

There are SO many different aspects of the media’s portrayal of sexual intimacy that negatively influence our society.  Children and teenagers are bombarded with falsehoods and half-baked truths about sexual intimacy.  Rather than being informed by trustworthy, loving parents who care about them, they are first informed by power seeking, money thirsting, influencers on social media and television.  Parents should strive to be the primary source of information about intimacy for their children.  I think a lot of parents underestimate the influence that they can have.  Parents can have a tremendous effect on their children’s beliefs, and decisions about sex.  As a parent, you could help your child turn to you (the one who deeply loves them), rather than turning to the media for information about such an important part of their life.  You could be the source of saving them from broken hearts, broken spirits, and broken relationships.  In such an influential world, you could be the one to save their love life.  That love life extends long beyond them.  It reaches through to their children, their children’s children, and on for eternity.  As Albert Einstein says: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that can be counted counts.”