Chapter One
A Rose Every FridayOur society is filled with people for whom the sexual
relationship is one where body meets body but where
person fails to meet person The result is that [relationships]
lead not to fulfillment but to a half-conscious
sense of incompleteness, of inner loneliness, which is
so much the sickness of our time.
Frederick Buechner
Carol gathers her clothes off the floor, tiptoeing silently
around the bedroom in the early dawn, hoping not to wake this
man. Snoring in quiet, even rhythm, it will be hours before he
gets up. When he can, he likes to sleep until noon, and she has
a ton of stuff to do today. Besides, it's easier to slip back into
her place before her roommates awaken-fewer raised eyebrows
and sly smiles to contend with that way.
Driving back to her apartment, Carol muses over how their
relationship began. Who ever would have thought that cochairing
a political committee would lead to this? They began as
good friends, challenging each other's opinions with an occasional
lighthearted jab. But one thing led to another, and after
a few months, she began to stay over at his place. It made for
less hassle. How or when or where the relationship turned sexual,
she isn't sure. She just knows that she is starting to have
feelings for this guy, and that this could be a problem.
There are no guarantees in relationships now. How many
times have her friends drilled that into her? "You just have to go
with the flow" is the mantra she hears. "Don't say much; don't
ask for anything. Just play it cool and see where the relationship
goes."
The problem is that Carol has already done this twice
before.
* * *
Something cataclysmic is happening in the sexual lives of
women today. A breathtaking amount of change in the way men
and women relate to each other has taken place in one short
generation. The great mating dance that was repeated for centuries
has been shortened dramatically. A man and a woman fall
into bed now with no promises made and no expectations to
which they can hold each other. Love and romance take a backseat
to the more immediate pleasures of sex, which, in its many
forms, can be experienced with no immediately apparent effect
on the invisible world of
soul and spirit. I doubt that
even Aldous Huxley would
recognize the brave new
sexual world we inhabit.
As a counselor invited
into the inner sanctum of
one woman's life after another, I have the privilege of entering
women's lives and hearing their stories. It is a unique perch
from which to observe the monumental changes taking place.
Women from every background-in college and in emerging
careers-talk about the challenges they face in a world where
the vintage road maps between men and women seem as
though they were drawn in fading ink.
In many ways, of course, regardless of age or background,
we all are telling the same story-of losses that are difficult to
absorb, fears that keep us awake at night, and dreams that have
been incubating in us since we were quite small. But a new common
denominator exists now-in the lives of younger women
especially-a different narrative thread repeated in endless variation.
Women's lives are being shaped by a culture with a sexuality
gone mad. Women are paying a tremendous price for the
loosening of sexual boundaries-in broken hearts, in lost time,
in confused sense of self. Perhaps these voices are recognizable:
Shannon is desperate for something that will curb the
panic attacks that descend on her unannounced. Her job
as a news reporter is being threatened by these sweaty
emotional monsters. Shannon has just broken up with a
man named Ben-a great guy she met last year in college
and followed to the city, where they both landed
their first jobs. She feels bad about beginning to sleep
with Ben a few years ago. It violated her convictions as a
Christian, but she developed her own way of justifying
their sexual relationship. At least it was better than so
many women around her. This was no one-night fling-she
and Ben were planning a future together.
Two things caught Shannon by surprise. She hadn't
anticipated that her growing attachment to Ben would
be met with a reaction of his own-she was slowly caricatured
as this woman "with too much of a hold on him."
The more attached she became, the more detached he
got-until she finally wanted out altogether. And Shannon
had no idea that leaving Ben after this investment
of herself would feel like a miniature divorce.
Donna says she has always been sexually curious. Movies
she saw in middle school, stories of her older siblings'
late-night capers, and easy access to soft porn left her
primed for her own sexual adventures. When a boy
showed interest in her, it was she who upped the ante, moving things to the next level of sexual intimacy. By the
time she left high school, she had been with a good number
of guys.
Now, in her second year of college, Donna finally has
begun to wonder where her sexual activity is headed.What is the point? she asks. Why does she feel numb
inside-as though her body is disconnected from the
rest of her? Donna watches other couples and wonders
if she will ever know what it feels like to have a man love
her-just for her. A vague sense of regret and loss she
cannot name follows her around. She longs to retrace her
steps and find the innocence of soul she once knew.
Emily's introduction to her own sexuality came from the
most injurious of all possible routes. Her favorite brother
used to slip into her room at night, just as she was turning
twelve, where he held her in his arms and fondled
her changing body. The bittersweet experience of hating
yourself while you enjoyed intimacy never meant to be
was profoundly ingrained in Emily's psyche. Being date-raped
in high school just seemed like one more act in a
bad play. With the sexual walls in her life broken down, Emily accepted the terms of the inevitable: a relationship
with a man comes with a sexual price tag. Sex is part
of the dues you pay to keep the relationship-and she
has had quite a few of those. The fog and pain after each
breakup leads to one poor choice in men after another.
Emily feels as though she steps in and out of two lives.
On Sunday mornings she plays the flute in a worship
ensemble. She sincerely wants to follow God, but her sexual
life feels out of her control. She can't reconcile her
lifestyle with her beliefs about God.
In any direction you turn now, women feel not just the
opportunity, but the pressure, to be sexual. I am sure the checkout
lane in your grocery store looks just like mine. On any given
day, I can reach for at least two magazines that will give me the
latest tip on how to "do" a man-as though sex is assumed
between two mature adults, as though it is a woman's job to provide
the best experience possible, as though a woman should
be able to shield her heart while she bares her body on cue.
Although in the Christian community we subscribe to a different
vision, we find ourselves swimming in the same cultural
soup. We cannot help but be affected.
I hear similar stories in
any part of the country.
When I give a seminar to
college women or single
women in the marketplace
almost anywhere, they say
the same things. "I was swept into major sexual experiences early
on, before I even knew what was happening." Women often feel
like they've sexually traded little bits of their soul they can't get
back. "I was so afraid I'd lose this guy that I felt like I had to have
sex with him." It's hard to hold a line when a woman feels like a
guy can get what he wants from three other women if she refuses.
Not every trend concerning women's sexuality has been negative,
however. Some changes deserve a round of applause-the
validation of a woman's experience of sexual pleasure, the
insistence that a woman's life is her own, given to her by God,
and not defined solely by her attachment to a man. These truths
are timeless. But the sexual revolution that my generation ushered
through the door has taken us way beyond both-and far
down a costly path.
"Revolutions" are supposed to usher in a braver, better
world. Why, then, are women not happier than they seem to be?
This strange lack of happiness is being articulated now by
a small cache of young female writers-savvy, intelligent, brutally
honest women who wonder out loud why their peers, liberated
from all the constraints of previous generations, do not
seem to be prospering as expected. One particularly fresh voice
with a daring message belongs to Wendy Shalit, an orthodox
Jewish writer, who openly began to challenge the ease with
which men and women get intimate. While a student at
Williams College, she exposed the absurdity of men and women
trying to share the same bathroom facilities, as though their
physical differences could be neutralized. Soon after graduation
she wrote the best-selling book A Return to Modesty,
essentially pleading with other women to consider the physical
and emotional cost of the loss of romance and courtship. She
calls what is happening among younger women today "an invisible
American tragedy." Her words are not too strong.
While there is indeed much promise in this generation of
women, there is also an incredible amount of pain, especially
pain that is rooted in mistaken sexual choices. The carnage of
the sexual revolution blows into counseling offices like mine
with great regularity-women who have so much going for
them but who have sustained blows like one-night stands, abortions,
and deep bonds with men they must find a way to dig out
of the soil of their hearts.
Over and over I am struck with a desire to gather these
women and bring them home with me. I want to pour them a
cup of tea and invite them to talk. As a woman born in another
era (when bell bottoms were popular the first time) and having
slept with one and the same man for thirty years, I think this is
a hard time to be female. It is true that nearly every conceivable
door of opportunity is open to women now, but there is scarcely
anyone standing in front of some of these doors and saying the
obvious: This path does not lead to a life you want.
A Longing for Romance
In survey after survey, women insist that, while they value
having more options in how they relate to men, they miss the
sense of romance, of being pursued by a man. There seems to
be a growing awareness that something beautiful between men
and women is being trampled in the rush to the sexual. Some
call it "lost civility." The notion that a woman is a prize in her
own right, worth crossing the dance floor of life to get to know
deeply, is no longer assumed. Indeed, the "death of romance"
we are experiencing now has become a universal moan among
women.
In researching this book,
I also interviewed women
from earlier eras-ones who
danced the night away to the
music of a twenty-piece band
or who kept love going in
wartime through letters to a soldier half a world away. Their stories
are almost lost to us now. Theirs was not an easy time, either,
for they faced pressures of a different sort. Their options in life
were notoriously limited. Becoming a wife and a mother was
invariably the next step in a scripted life that presented far fewer
choices.
Yet there was a beauty and an elegance to their relationships
with men that one too rarely sees these days. Fraternities
from the state university, for example, held their annual spring
galas at the beach. Men in tuxedos and women in beautiful ball
gowns really did dance the night away in a ballroom overlooking
the sea-because both parties knew they would retire to
separate quarters before the morning dawned. So much more
was required of a man. He actually expected to have to court a
woman's affection-sometimes riding the train for the day to
see her for a few hours, expecting nothing more sexual than a
kiss. When a man took a woman out, her care and her good
time were his responsibility.
Perhaps the most engaging story that came my way, though,
sheds some light on the respect and gentleness men and
women tended to offer each other even if they never married.
Charlotte, a lovely, silver-haired woman in her seventies, told
me how she fell in love with a man she met on a slow boat to
Europe while she was in college. They had hours to talk, watching
the way the stars shine when there is only sky and sea. Frank
continued to write after she returned home; he even came to
see her once or twice. But she knew, as she had always known,
that she would marry Joe, a man in her hometown whom she
had dated for a couple of years. When Charlotte married a year
later, out of kindness she sent Frank an invitation to the wedding.
He replied with a gift-a leather-bound, early edition of
John Milton's classic, his calling card tellingly stuck between the
pages of Paradise Lost.
We can't turn back the clock, and our current problems
would not evaporate even if we could. There are flies in the
ointment of love in every day and time. The chastity of women
in days gone by was rarely a reflection of real virtue or the
thoughtful consideration of sexual ethics. Good girls didn't have
sex-it was about that simple. The fear of pregnancy kept many
women chaste. Thus, they did not have to do the hard work that
women do now of wrestling with the spiritual and emotional
implications of joining one's body to another.
I share their stories as a way of gauging how far we have
come in a relatively short span of time. "You've come a long way,
baby" was the slogan that made Virginia Slims cigarettes
famous. Indeed, we have come a long way. The question we
must ask ourselves is, when it comes to relating to men, is this
where we want to be?
In every generation, we must reach for truth that is timeless-that
goes back further than any of us can remember. The
only way to construct a life we can live inside is to build on
something more solid than ourselves.
Opening Pandora's Box
The dance between men and women was carefully scripted
until the late 1960s, when my generation discovered sex-as
though it were some recent invention. I have friends who passed
through college before sexual restraints broke loose, and their
stories sound almost quaint by comparison. They speak of fraternity
parties where men were required to appear in ties and
dress shirts, weekday curfews of 10:00 p.m., and housemothers
who ensured that no man ever saw more than the foyer of
female living quarters.
Continues.
