Walking into the aerobics’ room, I watched as Rebekah threw her gym bag against the wall. Getting closer, I could see her eyes brimmed with tears.

“What’s wrong?” I asked before setting down the risers for my step.

“My boyfriend wants me to say it’s OK for him to have sex with other women. Because I don’t want it every night, he thinks we can remedy the problem if he has multiple partners.”

“That’s kind of weird. What are you going to do?

A New Normal

Rebekah informed me that this expectation (polyamory) was becoming the norm among young adults. However, despite being 23-years-old, she wasn’t buying it.

My mind raced. What about trust? STD’s? The lack of respect for their relationship? And, what about Rebekah’s heart? Finding intimacy was difficult enough. What kind of damage was this new cultural norm doing?

Research into current sexual mores is alarming. Most young adults express the desire for lifelong partners. Yet, for most of them, finding intimacy that lasts isn’t happening. Mark Regnerus’s insightful and statistic-laden book: Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy explains why. And, many college professors validated his findings.

• A graduate school professor recommended Regenerus’s book to me while lamenting how “hooking up” prevented students from finding intimacy. Her personal experience as a young woman was similar to mine. Buying into cultural lies that there’s nothing wrong with having sex for physical pleasure alone, we both tried to separate our minds/emotions from the physical. In the process, we ruined our own self-respect while doubting our worthiness of a more meaningful relationship.
• Other professors from a variety of colleges, secular and Christian, expressed concern for the way rampant meaningless “hook ups” build barriers to the kind of intimacy that creates good marriages and strong families.

Easy Access

In his book, Regnerus noted:

Cheap sex is both an objective fact and a social fact, characterized by personal ease of sexual access and social perceptions of the same. Sex is cheap if women expect little in return for it and if men do not have to supply much time, attention, resources, recognition, or fidelity in order to experience it. . . . The key lies in the ease of access. Cheap sex charges little and costs little (p. 28-29).

For decades our culture has been indoctrinating young people into the idea that physical relationships simply satisfy a bodily urge. Emotional involvement isn’t necessary.

Yet, televsion shows like “The Bachelor” attest to the high-emotional factors involved in the pain of rejection. At the same time, the show’s popularity demonstrates the deep desire of both men and women for finding intimacy with one person–an intimacy that leads to marriage. The hypocrisy of the show’s fantasy dates include the potential for physical relationships with three different partners within a very short period of time. In those episodes trust is often broken. Sex becomes a commodity, kind of like trying on a shirt before buying it. However, that form of  salacious “entertainment” is nothing new.

Cheap Role Models

In the 1990s, young children watched as national news reported President Clinton’s sexual escapades in the White House. Wearing a sheepish grin, we watched as he claimed that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” Yet we knew he lied. So did the U.S. House of Representatives, which impeached him in 1998. Due to news media’s over-reporting, people of all ages couldn’t miss the details of Monicagate, Lewinskygate, and Zippergate.

Although married for many years, the United States President made light of his liaison. So did his wife. Hillary, expressing very little dismay at the time. Rather both of them broke the trust of the American people by setting a horrible and lasting example. Especially the President, when it came to oral sex.

Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Jean J. Twenge, PhD explains how now:

many kids say that oral sex is common by eighth or ninth grade. In a mid-2000s NBC special, 13-to-17-year olds agreed that oral sex was “casual” and “not a big deal–it’s not sex.”

When Katie Couric asked the girls “what’s in it for you?,” several claimed to receive “self esteem” because it “helped them become popular and feel good about themselves.”  Twenge questions that ideology, however. “It’s tough to see how something so one-sided could truly make you feel better about yourself (p. 212).”

Relationships, like the one proposed by Rebekah’s boyfriend, are equally one-sided. He wants multiple partners. To concede takes a toll on most women. While a girl might convince herself otherwise, she’s required to give up her dreams of finding intimacy with a trustworthy, faithful partner. One determined not to cause her pain. I know firsthand because I had to make a similar decision as a young adult. The best course of action hurt like hell. Yet, I’ve never doubted that the alternative would have been even more devastating. (That’s the story of The Windblown Girl.)

Self-Sabotage

Much of the research I read concluded that girls, who buy into such lies, don’t realize they’re destroying the chances for the kind of relationships they long for. Some no longer even think about long-term relationships. Culture pounds home the message that individuals can swing from one partner to another without ramifications. However, in a culture where sex is cheap, boys no longer bother to impress a girl by dressing nice, opening car doors, taking her for a lovely dinner, and/or buying her flowers. Why spend money on a date that’s unnecessary. The girls who “hook up” feed that perspective by being available to provide a smorgasboard of whatever a man wants regardless of the long-term costs to themselves.

Still some girls and guys, too, recognize the problems and want to change things, but don’t know how. On Facebook, one young friend yearned for a real date where she could put on a dress and go somewhere nice with someone special. A couple of guys I’ve encountered also want to date but aren’t even sure how to start.

Discovering A Soul-Satisfying Experience

Cheap sex was not the way God designed men and women from the beginning. In her book, Redeeming the Feminine Soul: God’s Surprising Vision for Womanhood, Julie Roys recounts how in premarital counseling, she and her fiance read a book that mentioned Ephesians 5:31-32:

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

Roys said those verses hinted at sex’s “deeper dimension” by indicating that “the one-flesh union of a husband and wife reveals a ‘great mystery’ concerning Christ and the church (p. 37).” Hwever, it took years before she understood more about the concept of “one flesh.” While reading John Paul’s Theology of the Body , he answered her questions on gender and sexuality in ways no one else had. In her book, Roys explained how:

our bodies (specifically our sexuality) reveal the mystery of God’s Trinitarian love. Clearly the male body is not made to exist in solitude but to be united with the female body, which complements it. Likewise the female body is made to be united to the male body, which complements it. When we read in Genesis 2:24 that Adam and Eve–the twin bearers of God’s image–became ‘one flesh,’ God is giving us a beautiful symbol of Himself. He is demonstrating how distinct persons can become one. In doing so, He’s revealing the profound mystery of Trinitarian life and love (p. 39-40).

Replacing cultural lies with that biblical concept elevates sex to the place where it belongs, the deep intimacy of marriage. God designed that covenental union to last. Such oneness is a profound mystery built on a foundation of trust. Within that context of a long-term commitment, each puts the other’s needs ahead of his or her own. Finding intimacy depends on the ultimate relationship. Because it brings about a “wholeness” unlike any other experience, that relationship is well-worth waiting for. And, being out of step with mainstream culture.