Measuring How Well You Understand the Essentials for a Complete Sex Experience

How well do you understand the essentials for a complete sex experience? As vanilla is most enjoyable when it is part of a greater total product, such as a cake, so sex is most satisfying as part of a much larger whole. Our knowledge at this point is far from complete, but there are some statements which we can make with confidence. Among the more important facts are:

• Sex is most satisfying as part of a total personal relationship. Some authorities believe that prostitution, where the personal relationship is almost absent, is hardly more than a form of masturbation. Testimony from the prostitutes themselves indicates a lack of personal satisfaction in their relationships. Sex is most satisfying when it is the expression of a genuine affection.

• Sex is most satisfying when the relationship is stable and secure. Those who have counseled with people who have tried to get their satisfactions from the temporary affair know how bitter can be the experience when the relationship breaks up, and how great can be the fear while it is continuing. The danger of the "week-end trip" and the vacation episode is that they arouse hungers which they cannot satisfy. The relationship is haunted by the fear that it will be broken off just when you have come to feel the need for it most. Depending upon illicit relationships for satisfaction is like drinking sea water to satisfy your thirst. The thirst is understandable and proper. The solution makes matters worse instead of better. Going "the limit" biologically is most satisfying only when you can also "go the limit" psychologically. This last can usually happen only within the security of permanent marriage.

• Sex requires children for its richest fulfillment. Nature's concern in sex is not fun for the individual but offspring for the race. Unrestricted child-bearing obviously has no place in an age of medical knowledge. But psychiatrists testify that child-bearing is essential for the fullest sexual satisfaction, particularly for women. This conclusion has considerable evidence from other sources to support it.

Before you marry, then, you should review what you know about sex, and check it against such knowledge as is available. To do so may require a considerable amount of reading and study. More important than knowledge however, are attitudes. You both should know what to expect of each other. Frank discussion will help some, but the best basis of information is past practices and conduct. Whether misconduct means a temporary lapse from standards really held, or the absence of standards, will be difficult to determine. But it is this point which should decide whether it is safe to marry someone whose past conduct has not always been desirable. The greatest security for any marriage is to be found in the character and integrity of the people who comprise it.