Sexual intimacy and pornography

In my family relation’s class, we have wonderful opportunities to learn tools, principles, and skills that strengthen marriages and families. However, we also learn about detrimental, toxic, and worldly avenues that people use to escape some of the pain and stress that life can bring. This week, the topics that my professor, Brother Williams focused on were sex and pornography. Sex is sacred, special and one of the most beautiful things that our Heavenly Father has created for spouses to connect and create life. It does pain me to see how twisted the world has altered the meaning of sex, and I am sure that it makes Heavenly Father so sad to see this connection that is supposed to be sacred and meaningful, to be turned into something lustful and gratifying. Pornography, I believe, is one of the top causes that have turned people’s view on what our bodies and sex are meant for. Pornography portrays something that is not real, and it is a scientific fact that those people’s brains who are addicted to pornography, are altered by the arousal and addictive mechanisms that it causes.

Pornography is one of the most dangerous addictions, because it is easily assessable to anyone at any time. Someone who may have a drug addiction, work hard to hide the signs that come with being high and intoxicated. However, someone who is addicted to pornography, can easily fool other people because it is more of an internal struggle and addiction. Because I know someone very close to me who struggles with a pornography addiction, I know firsthand that it ruins marriages, families, and personal lives. I see the heartache that it can cause spouses and children when a love for an addiction triumphs over everything else. This is why prophets and apostles have warned and pleaded over and over again, to stay away from temptations and Satan’s trap that is so easy to fall in.

My mother has been an amazing example to me and my siblings in my life, because of the way she is open and honest with us about the dangers that pornography is. At the dinner table, questions about sex are often a topic of discussion, and create open conversation between my siblings and I. Because my mother is not afraid or awkward towards answering normal questions that children have about body parts and terms they have heard at school; my brothers, sister and I never felt like we had to go look up our question on the internet or ask a friend, which could have caused confusion and problems. There is a balance between teaching children that sex is sacred and teaching them that it is a normal topic that is okay to be curious about! I cannot stress enough at how grateful I am for my mother, and her desire to let us kids know that our home is a safe place to ask any question we want without feeling embarrassed or shameful.

Brother Williams offered interesting points and tips that parents can teach their kids. One point that was interesting to me, was how parents should not make children feel traumatized or ashamed that they saw something on TV that was sexual and inappropriate. For example, when a scene of a couple who is naked, kissing in bed, pops up onto the TV when the kids are in the room, it is not totally healthy to yell or react harshly, saying, “AGH CLOSE YOUR EYES, TURN IT OFF!!” This will scare children, and automatically make them feel bad for seeing this image, even though they had no control over seeing it! This fast response that the parent made, will burn a memory into the child’s brain. Instead, Brother Williams encouraged parents and us future parents to react in a calm but swift way of rushing over to the TV or remote, turning it off, and sitting the kids down to discuss what they just saw. By sitting the children down, they have the chance to ask their parent questions that they had, which would provide the parent an opportunity to let their kids ask their curious questions. The parents can also become serious with the children and explain to them why we turn off those negative images, and why those images we saw on the TV are not to be looked at and watched.

If we make children associate naked people and sex as being bad, then why would they want to come ask questions? By associating those things as negative, then when children become hormonal teens, they will associate it negatively instead of something beautiful, and they will most likely misuse sex. I am not saying that sex and naked people should necessarily be looked at in an extremely positive light, but it is the context that matters.

I believe that if we talk to children at an early age about sex, and how it is appropriately meant for a man and women who are married, then they will learn to look at it through God’s light, and not the worlds. I feel like Satan of course wants us to give into our own temptations of lust, but because sex creates life, of course he is going to create a negative view of it because the creation that comes from it adds to Heavenly Father's plan.

However, as brother Williams stresses, the specific context in the way that sex is used is what matters. It is meant to be protected, and intamate between a married man and women who love and respect each other.