As I head to England in three days (squeeeeee!), it's only right that my first guest blogger of this new adventure is my English friend, the fabulous Rebecca Clemenz. Enjoy!
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Imagine the scene. A young woman in her twenties walks into
a doctor’s office and says: “I want to be able to eat as much chocolate as I
choose without gaining any weight. Please do the operation that makes that
possible.” What do you think the doctor would say? What would you say? Maybe,
“Yes! Great idea!” or perhaps “No way! You are too young to make that
decision!” Actually, I would hope for a third answer along the lines of “I
think you need to reexamine your relationship with food.”
Let’s look into that one.
Why do we eat? The primary reason if of course to provide
our bodies with nutrition so they can grow and remain healthy. Eating is also
of course pleasurable, an activity we can do with friends, a social event and
can even be associated with religious or other ceremonies or festivals. All
these things are secondary though. And indeed if we ONLY ate for pleasure, with
no regard to the nutritional value of what we were eating we would have a
problem. Likewise when we do not eat with the primary goal of good nutrition in
mind, in the case of say anorexia, we have a problem. It is therefore safe to say
that there are good habits associated with eating, and bad ones that we seek to
correct.
What does this have to do with anything?
Recently the BBC ran a series of articles under the general
heading 100 Women. One of the articles carried the title “Desperate not to have
children”. The main focus of the article was a young lady called Holly who
never wants to have children and expresses her frustration at not being able to
have a sterilisation procedure performed by the NHS, the article also states
that she is unhappy with other methods of contraception because of their
negative side effects.
Imagine the scene. A young woman in her twenties walks into
a doctor’s office and says: “I want to be able to have as much sex as I choose
without getting pregnant. Please do the operation that makes that possible.”
What do you think the doctor would say? What would you say?
I am sure that many of us out there have made “I will
never/always…” statements in our twenties that have become “Well, actually…”
maxims in our mid-thirties. But even if that were not the case, and a person
was absolutely certain, is not the third answer still the most applicable, “I
think you need to reexamine the way you see sex”
Why do we have sex? The secondary reasons roll off the
tongue with ease, it is nice, it is fun, it is pleasurable, it’s what Friday
nights at the pub are for! Yet at the same time we know deep down, that those
are not the real reasons we have sex. So what are the primary reasons? They are
procreation and unification. That is to make babies, and to bond with the
person you are having sex with. There are troves of studies that you can find
everywhere from the BMJ to Marie Claire highlighting that oxytocin released
during sexual intercourse creates a deep bond with your sexual partner. For
women especially, this bond is very strong and can make the break-up of a
relationship with a sexual partner very painful indeed. But what about the
babies?! How many times have we heard that “in this day and age there is no
reason to get pregnant if you don’t want to!” And yet we all know, and even
Holly acknowledges, that no method of birth control is 100% and there is even a
pregnancy rate associated with surgical sterilisation. So where do we go from
here? I would suggest that somewhat like with eating, if we are ONLY having sex
for the secondary reasons, for pleasure and fun, then our relationship with sex
has a problem. If you are quite certain that you NEVER want to have sex for
it’s primary purposes then maybe, just maybe, you should take a break from
having sex while you reexamine your reasons for this.
And for anyone interested in a method of family planning
that is effective and has no side effects, check out modern scientific method
of Natural Family Planning such as the Creighton Model.
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Rebecca Clemenz, lives in Switzerland with her husband and four children.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!
