Sex and Jogging are Not the Same Thing

When I was in Atlanta over the weekend I had a number of pretty bizarre conversations with various cousins and other relatives about sex, relationships and the Orthodox community. There were a lot of questions about delayed gratification and sexual compatibility that, while very amusing, have some pretty serious dilemmas at their base. On the one hand, I think that sexual compatibility is incredibly important, and not to be taken lightly. But as my great aunt pointed out (and yeah, it was very awkward to hear my great aunt talk about this) couples have been marrying without having sex first for centuries, and for the most part staying together. Doesn’t mean their sex lives have all been fantastic and exciting and fun, but clearly it’s possible to sustain a relationship even if a couple doesn’t share the exact same wants and needs in the bedroom. People work this shit out.

Then on Tuesday night I went to a girls night in chanukkah party, and again we spent most of the night talking about sex and relationships. I was the only single person there, and there was all kinds of talk about how important it is to limit intimacy to marriage, and how the people who are having meaningless sex are just denying their true emotions and so on. At one point someone else suggested that people who want to have meaningless sex should go for a run instead, because it’s the same feeling. I was like, “No. It’s. Not.” (The whole time I was like, I cannot wait to blog this shit). As I was thinking about all of this, it occurred to me that pretty much my biggest objection to the stock Orthodox approaches to relationships, sex and intimacy have to do with how immature and out of control it assumes people are. I can see how the rules might be really effective in keeping a sixteen year old from making mistakes, but at 23 I don’t need a halachic ruling to tell me not to sleep with some guy from the casual encounters section of craigslist. I don’t need some rabbi to tell me that it makes the most sense to wait to have sex until I’m in a serious relationship. And even more importantly, at 23, if I was to sleep with some random guy, or with someone I had just begun dating, I should be able to deal with it without losing a sense of self-worth. Certainly if I was 35 or 45 I would expect that if I made such a bad decision it wouldn’t have a devastating effect on my psyche. As we mature we’re able to accept our own mistakes and deal with them in a way that is a lot less traumatizing. The problem is, the rules were set up with very young couples in mind. Single post-graduates are not something that the Shulchan Aruch anticipated. And somehow, young married people are the only ones lecturing about intimacy and relationships in the observant community, so the whole outlook is incredibly skewed. I think halacha is important, but I don’t know what to do with a situation where my existence is so unprecedented that there aren’t really rules set up to adequately govern my life.