The Forgotten Side of the Coin

Creatures that sexually reproduce are divinely fitted with in-built courtship behavior, the exact nature of which varies from species to species. In peafowl, for instance, the ritual commences with the peacock enticing the female by a visual display of his gorgeous tail feathers. Presumably, without that visual display no peahen would ever be in tears over an unwanted pregnancy. Although humans can override their natural tendencies, we, too, have inbuilt courtship patterns that lead to pregnancy. Essentially, it goes like this. The female, consciously or unconsciously, uses her physical appearance to sexually entice the male. The aroused male moves closer. Almost instinctively, his hands begin to wander over the female’s body. Skillfully, though almost unconsciously, he uses touch (kissing, stroking, and so on) to gently break down every trace of the female’s resistance to full intimacy.

Discussions of the morality of dating behavior rightly consider the male use of touch to entice, and yet many overlook the female contribution – her unique power to use her physical appearance to set the temperature of a date. So let’s lift the lid on this significant, forgotten factor.

If Muslim societies pressure women to hide their sexuality, decadent western societies pressure women to flaunt their sexuality. The pressure is so immense that the average woman is made to feel ashamed to be seen in public unless she tarts herself up more than even prostitutes do in most other societies. The very suggestion that we might do this offends us, and yet that is how observers from other cultures often view us. Are they wrong, or are we too close to see clearly? Should we stop to wonder why it is that even in church services in the west, women typically expose more flesh than their male counterparts? Is it because, unlike men, women are cruelly pressured by the world to feel great shame and embarrassment if they do not display and visually enhance their bodies to look like sex objects? Godly women seem forced to end up with some sort of uneasy compromise between flaunting their bodies and full modesty. If you are a woman, your response to this pressure is a personal matter, although, of course, your decision will affect everyone who sees you, particularly a close male friend.

Please remember that throughout this series of webpage I’m not interested in pushing my view, but only in jolting you into prayerfully re-examining issues, rather than mindlessly following the mob. I’m no expert; God is. Simply ask him if there is a grain of truth in any of the mad things I say, and whether, in his eyes, you are already perfectly on course. Where your prayerful exploration takes you is between you and your Lord.

In fact, would you mind if we prayed right now?

Father, You tell us:

Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. (2) Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

From the moment of my birth right through to this present moment, everything I have ever seen or heard has either been the world, or been influenced by the world, or, even if it is entirely from you, has possibly been distorted by me interpreting it from a mindset that has been affected by the world. Like everyone else, I have been unavoidably brainwashed by the world to the point where I cannot possibly trust my judgment on anything. As you say:

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

1 Corinthians 4:4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.

Luke 16:15 . . . What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.

I don’t even know what things about the world I must avoid conforming to. Surely there must be things about the world – such as most of technology – that are morally neutral. And yet there could just as easily be things that I – and most other Christians – unthinkingly accept that are ungodly or unwise. Even Satan himself, the ultimate in evil, is the Deceiver who masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

This is an impossible mess that throws me entirely upon your mercy to open my eyes. It seems inevitable that I would be biased against learning the truth about worldliness because there must be much about the world that to me feels cozy, and much about going against the world that would make me feel embarrassed and a freak. No wonder you preface the Scripture about not conforming to the world by telling me to make myself a living sacrifice. This is going to be hard. I shrink from pain. I therefore plead with you to force my eyes open to what things of the world I must no longer conform to. I ask you to break worldly brainwashing that I’ve been subjected to since birth. And yet you ask me to no longer be conformed and to renew my own mind. Clearly, there must be much that you expect me to do to participate in this vital process.

Grantley, the author of this webpage, could be just as influenced by the world or by a religious spirit as me. You alone have the purity and objectivity and intellectual power to discern. So I look to you to open my eyes as I read this webpage.

When an average Christian woman in western society tells herself she just wants to look nice, she seldom realizes that she is actually making herself as sexually irresistible as she dare –just how much she dares, of course, depends on her. How conscious are we that by following normal western dress standards, women end up wearing clothes that are ingeniously designed to sexually tantalize a man? For instance, what in the west is typically feminine clothing is cleverly designed to make it unpredictable just how much more will be exposed when a woman bends or sits or the wind blows. Men don’t know what flash of flesh they will miss if they take their eyes of her for a moment. It is almost as if a woman is giving a continual, partial striptease, stirring within a man a yearning to remove her clothes. If a worldly woman has no intention of actually letting anyone remove her clothing, it adds an exhilarating feeling of power to the buzz she gets out of thinking herself sexually alluring. Worldly women who hypocritically think themselves more moral than nudists because they ‘leave something to the imagination,’ typically dress so as to provoke men into letting their imagination run wild. Sometimes their goal is merely to prove themselves to other women, but regardless of motivation, they try their hardest to deceive everyone into imagining that they look sexier naked than they really are. Do they, for instance, wear stockings to hide how sexy their legs really look, or to hide blemishes or draw attention to their legs? Are high heels chosen for comfort or to make the ankles look slimmer and hence the legs look sexier than they really are? (In fact, some think that by changing the posture and walk, high heels make the entire body more sensuous.)

If a worldly woman thinks herself attractive, even when she covers up, it is usually to incite lust. If she wears slacks when she dresses up, it is usually so that she can show off her buttocks. If she wears a sweater with a high neckline, her choice is usually tight enough to emphasize her breasts. And innocent girls mindlessly follow.

Although I am vehemently opposed to nudity outside marriage, nudists have a strong case in arguing that (especially after a few minutes) full nudity is less sexually tantalizing than the way western women typically present themselves. If those who keep their clothes on were truly moral, their goal in dressing would be to give the impression that their naked body has less to offer than it really does. How many western women dress like that?

When sexually aroused women make love, their lips usually redden and become more prominent, their cheeks become flushed, and the pupils of the eyes enlarge. These act as sexual signals that drive a man making love to become still more passionate. It is no coincidence that modern facial makeup mimics sexual arousal.

Let’s have some fun as we explore this subject. Don’t take me too seriously; just keep your ear tuned to the Lord in case something initiates a thought that the Lord wants you to pursue. When a woman dresses modestly, a date is not so dangerously hot. If she covered her hair, and wore no makeup or perfume, the temperature would lower still further. If she didn’t have a bath for a week and looked like an apprentice grease monkey about to do an oil change on her tenth car for the day, the temperature would go down even more. If she wore a baggy gorilla suit and mask, and a few slightly smelly fish strung around her neck, the temperature would be so low that the fish would freshen up. Even a nun would be proud of the man’s self-control.

By now you know I’m a fruitloop, but I have this theory – and I’m sticking to it – that few women who have rolled in fresh manure on the way to a date have ever come home pregnant. Am I right, or am I right?

Seriously, if just a dab of doggie poo behind the ear could keep a man in check, then, as ridiculous as it sounds, could something as minor as a dab of makeup in many cases have been a key factor in precipitating a chain of events that has ended in lifelong regret? It all has to start somewhere. If there is any truth in this, it in no way lowers male guilt. I’m just wondering whether there are factors that most of us have underestimated.

Women try their hardest to appeal to men by their clothing, hairdos, makeup and perfume, and then seem to forget that it actually works. The visual side of sex is often as significant to men as foreplay is to women. So let me speak directly to women for a moment. When you try to make yourself look nice you are probably very conscious that the result is far from being the sexiest sight on the planet, and even far from the sexiest you could make yourself look. This, understandably, is likely to lull you into thinking that prettying yourself up has only a minor effect in stirring within your male friend a craving to do morally unacceptable things to you, or at least drive him to commence a chain of events that could get dangerously out of hand. What makes your physical appearance critical, however, is that your male friend knows that other women who drape and paint their bodies to tease him sexually would most likely resist his attempts to caress them. If he thinks he has a better chance of acceptance from you than from strangers, then the way you present yourself will influence his behavior more than how alluring other women make themselves.

There is a significant sidelight to this that I – by education a student of human behavior – find fascinating. When women think they look attractive, they are usually more sexually responsive. Or, looked at another way, the more women feel they have succeeded in making themselves look nice, the more vulnerable to temptation they are. So, surprisingly, the more a woman enhances her looks, the harder it is not only for her date, but also for herself, to exercise self-control.

I’ll try an analogy that might seal for you the significance of what a woman does without even touching a man. If a person were desperately trying to diet, it would be cruel to waft delicious food under his nose. The more tasty the food looks and smells, the more pressure his self-control is under. If it is merely a picture in a cookbook or seen through the window of a stranger’s house, the extent to which food is made to look mouth-watering will affect him, but if he can’t get his hands on the food, he won’t end up eating it. It is how tempting the food looks that is right under his nose that is most likely to break down his self-imposed restrictions. If delicious food were put through a blender to look like baby food, and somehow the food had no aroma, it would still be just as tasty, but you would have a better chance of not letting yourself down by overindulging.

If I were dating a woman, the more I felt drawn to her, the more I’d prefer to make my life less torturous by restricting most of our contact to phone, and when I’m with her I’d prefer her to look as unattractive as possible. Maybe she could wear a scarf and thick rimmed glasses, no make up and something like a shapeless trench coat covering jeans and high-necked top. ‘In your dreams!’ every woman screams. Oh, well, at least with dreams like that I won’t wake up with a smoldering pillowslip. If cupid were really working overtime, my long-suffering, soon-to-give-up-in-disgust friend could add to her arsenal of cupid repellents by smearing herself with foul smelling gel such as those rather old-fashioned preparations intended to relieve muscle aches or for nasal decongestion. I know what you think about me, but I assure you I’m so sane that the psychiatric nurse says I’ll soon be able to have visitors.

Oh, dear! This was going to be such a serious webpage. Now look what’s happened! Hopefully rather than dismissing my ridiculous examples, they have rammed home to you how critical a woman’s grooming really is. And a man’s appearance isn’t totally irrelevant either. In fact, it could play a bigger role than many of us realize. (With any luck, someone might mistakenly think that’s why I look like something the last high tide washed up.)

What a woman does with her face has so subtle an effect compared to what she does with her breasts that men can be excused for thinking it irrelevant. One of the greatest dangers of grooming, however, is precisely that it seems insignificant. It seduces without setting off alarm bells. A weakling who slips under a tripwire can do more damage than a fearsome brute that triggers the intruder alarm. Such seemingly inconsequential things as how kissable the lips are made to look, how flawless the complexion, how big the eyes, how alluring the hair, and how inviting the perfume, can contribute to how out of control things end up. Surprisingly, it can be just as significant as how short the dress and how plunging the neckline. As you know, there is more to determining whether a woman looks attractive than her hemline and cleavage.

Obviously, each couple must come to their own decision before God as to what extremes they will go in order to calm things down. Understandably, single women want to look their prettiest when they are with their special man, and yet if they must pretty themselves it would be better for them to do it for complete strangers and to be their plainest for those they feel most passionate about. If this sounds strange, it not as weird as the fact that soon after marriage women typically slip into putting more effort into their appearance when they are with strangers than when alone with the one person on the planet whose passion they have a legitimate right to stir up. The serious problem with lowering sexual tension by toning down one’s appearance is that it is most embarrassing for women to be seen in public looking less seductive than they are capable of (and some men want to boost their own ego by being seen with a sexy woman). Ironically, if I could persuade a woman to look more like I’d prefer her to look before marriage, probably one of the places where I would most want to avoid seeing her is in church because that is a place where women are likely to feel pressured to dress up and wear makeup. A further complicating factor is that many women are genuinely scared that God won’t give them a husband unless they lower themselves to using their bodies as bait. Do women who have used their looks to catch a man ever wonder how come they have landed husbands who can’t keep their eyes off other sexy sights, or who prefer women as young as they were (or tried to look) when they first attracted their men? If they can’t trust God in the selection of a husband, they can’t blame him for the result.

Boundaries?

It’s not for me to lay down rules, Of necessity, however, every couple needs to establish their own rules. Limits must be soberly and prayerfully determined and set in concrete ahead of time. To leave it to spur-of-the-moment feelings to influence where we draw the line is too foolish to contemplate.

The tragedy is that we only have to let ourselves down once and it is like breaking down a safety barrier than can never be repaired. It is forever harder not to again go careering over the edge at the same point. We can only erect another barrier still further from the edge but it will always be weaker than the original safety barrier. That entire area is less safe than before. What we could previously get away with will now be too dangerous.

It’s a fact of life that we each set boundaries. Especially in the early stages of a relationship, however, we are nervous about spelling them out to our friend. We hope he/she is a mind reader or miraculously happens to think exactly like us. That’s about as unlikely as it is that we both had identical dreams last night. We are all built differently. Honorable men who wouldn’t dare touch their girlfriend’s breasts might be alarmed to learn that certain women are even more aroused by having their earlobes kissed. And there are women who would be shocked to learn that touching some men’s nipples is as sexually dangerous as could ever be the case with a woman’s nipples. Human variability is so pronounced that no matter how many partners our friend has had, there are probably some aspects of our sexuality that our friend has never before encountered. This makes it so dangerous to clam up about our personal vulnerabilities, vainly hoping that our friend understands our uniqueness or stumbles upon the discovery before too much damage is done.

If we don’t tell our friend ahead of time exactly where we draw the line, we lose the advantage of having our friend’s support in maintaining those standards. Keeping secret the precise location of your carefully erected safety rails means your friend is never sure whether you are transgressing your personal standards. This renders us less motivated not to let ourselves down in the heat of the moment. Another concern is that unless it is openly discussed, your friend might mistakenly assume that you feel coldly toward him/her, when it is simply where you would draw the line with any person, no matter how deep your feelings.

We need to get it not only into our heads, but deep into our hearts, that the standards one sets reflect one’s morality, not one’s weakness, nor one’s passion or commitment to the relationship. If your friend surrenders to your seductive wiles by lowering his/her standards, it proves not what a good lover you are, but how low you have stooped. No matter how minor the infringement, by trespassing his/her boundaries, you have not only abused the person you claim to respect, you have seared that person’s conscience. Spiritually, the sin of seduction is even worse than forced sex because seduction makes its victim a willing partner in sin. ‘But what we did wasn’t sin!’ you protest. Scripture is clear that if a person yields to what he/she regards as sin, then in God’s eyes it is sin. If you think something is wrong and do it, how can you be innocent in the eyes of the One who sees your heart? (This principle is expounded in Romans 14 and Corinthians 8). For your friend to lower his/her standards for your sake is proof not of your friend’s love, but only of his/her weak self-control and of your ability to act like the devil. There are no winners when that happens.

We know we should talk these things over but it is so hard when we are tentatively getting to know someone. The ability to discuss embarrassing matters is a vital key to a good marriage and to great sex within that marriage. Right now is the perfect time to develop communication skills that will enrich you for the rest of your life. It’s scary, but the benefits are immense.

A perfect way to broach this awkward subject is to share this entire webpage with your friend. Doing so doesn’t necessarily mean you are getting serious about each other. It’s helpful and enlightening to learn how different Christians feel about these matters, and it assists us in developing our own standards. There is no need for any other motives. Maybe you could read the webpages out loud to your friend, with a pause between paragraphs to allow the opportunity for discussion. This would be particularly helpful if your friend is not a great reader.

The Nitty-Gritty

I’m about to give some statements you might like to ponder. You are unique and can have a personal relationship with God, so I’m unconcerned about whether you accept, reject or modify these statements. They are not necessarily even the standards I would apply to myself. They are simply your opportunity to begin exploring your heart, your friend’s heart and God’s heart. My longing is only that you use these statements as a launching pad for prayer and for discussion with your friend until you can say, “‘It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us’ ( Acts 15:28) that my friend and I should act this way.

Discuss with your friend your reaction to each of the following. To what extent do the statements need modification to express exactly how you feel before God that you should act?

While we remain unmarried:

We should commit ourselves to doing nothing we wouldn’t do in front of our parents or our pastor.

The man should not see uncovered nor touch (even over clothing) any part of his girlfriend that would be covered if a woman were wearing a very modest bikini. Nor should he touch her upper thighs.

The man should not touch the bare skin of any part of his girlfriend’s body that would be covered by a one piece bathing costume, nor the thighs or armpits.

The man should not touch bare skin between the chin and knees nor the inner part of the arm above the elbow.

The woman should not wear tight clothes, dress in any way that emphasizes her breasts, shows cleavage, or shows off her behind.

When we are together, the woman will try to conceal/tone down her beauty. Discuss ways of doing this. We will endeavor never to be completely alone together. (Phone calls might be a great way to have long, intimate chats. Some libraries, restaurants, parks, public events, and so on, allow privacy of conversation without being entirely concealed. Other possibilities include being in a room alone with an open door through which someone might enter at any time, or being in a car alone on your way to a destination at which you will be missed if you were delayed.)

Points for discussion:

Talk over with each other your feelings about tongue kissing (French kissing) before marriage.

Over the time you have been close friends, what fluctuations have you noticed in your private and shared prayer lives?

Helpful Suggestions

To one or both of you, some rules you set may seem very strict or unworkable. You might therefore prefer to leave them open for re-consideration after a trial period or perhaps each month. Since something might suddenly prove unexpectedly arousing, you should agree that either of you can instantly raise standards higher, but agree never to lower standards in the heat of the moment. If anything ever required a cool head and a prayerful heart, it is in establishing or modifying your personal set of guidelines and boundaries.

If you have a fear of intimacy that could possibly hinder you in marriage, don’t hide behind these standards. You need to discuss possible difficulties openly if the relationship is looking as if it might lead to marriage.

Never resort to emotional blackmail such as:

‘If you loved me you would lower your standards.’

‘I’ll be forced to leave you if you don’t lower your standards.’

‘I can’t sleep because I so desperately need you to lower your standards.’

‘So and so does it.’

In relation to this last complaint, remember that, given the number of Christians who sin and do their utmost to keep their shame secret, arguments about what other unmarried couples seem to get away with, hold little weight. Christians who freely confess their pre-conversion sins typically go deathly quiet about their post-conversion falls. And no one knows what their liberties are doing to their thought life and to God’s breaking heart. You might also be blessed with a higher libido than them.

It feels like an act of cruelty to know that one’s loved one in craving physical contact and not give it. A problem, however, is that although your friend genuinely believes that just one, relatively safe thing will satisfy him/her, that satisfaction will be short lived and then your friend will crave something a little further down the slippery slide.

Bringing it Together

We have been seeking to determine not what is sin, but how far from the edge a couple must stop to be free from the danger of falling into sin. Because we each have unique pasts, unique bodies, and differing libidos, the point at which we must draw the line will vary from person to person. This means that for most couples, one person could safely go further than the other. This difference can be frustrating, but the person who could safely go further must strongly support his/her friend’s boundaries, even though it seems unduly restrictive.

This could demand a massive rethink. You have rightly committed yourself to avoiding intercourse before marriage, but for your friend’s sake you might have to avoid very much more than that. If you are unwilling to make this sacrifice for your friend’s sake, then you are unworthy of your friend.

Not to be sold. © Copyright 1997, Grantley Morris. May be freely copied in whole or in part provided: it is not altered; this entire paragraph is included; readers are not charged; if used in a webpage, the new page is significantly different to this one. Many more compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings available free online at www.net-burst.com  Freely you have received, freely give.
For use outside these limits, consult the author.