{"id":38715,"date":"2019-02-25T22:10:20","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T03:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=38715"},"modified":"2019-02-26T01:14:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T06:14:26","slug":"why-i-wrote-a-sex-manual-for-mormons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2019\/02\/why-i-wrote-a-sex-manual-for-mormons\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Wrote a Sex Manual for Mormons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Earthly Parents is the pen name of the author of <\/em>And It Was Very Good: A Latter-day Saint\u2019s Guide to Lovemaking. He agreed to share some of the book’s background here<\/em>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

On the top of my parent\u2019s bookshelf, far above the white-spined World Book Encyclopedias<\/em> I read as a child, sat a thick, black book. That book wasn\u2019t the World Book Encyclopedia<\/em>. That book was called Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask.<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember how old I was, but certainly before puberty, I put down the World Book WXYZ<\/em> and climbed to the top of the bookshelf. What I read in that other book was a new subject for me. It was a weird subject. The book was interesting, informative, and sometimes confusing. Why did they keep misspelling \u201corganism\u201d as \u201corgasm\u201d? That book and others I read at the public library served me well. When puberty came, it was no surprise. When I married my first and only girlfriend, I had done my homework. Literally. Without going into intimate details, I was ready to ace the test.<\/p>\n

Along the way, when I was at BYU, I ran into classmates who had obvious gaps in their sex education. These Deseret Towers members of the \u201cvirgin lips club\u201d also had what I thought were pretty odd ideas about what was OK sexually in marriage\u2014things that I understood from reading would practically guarantee their wives would never orgasm. That did not seem right to me.<\/p>\n

My wife and I now have seven children. For several years, I looked on behalf of my children for a book to read as they approached marriage that would teach them about sex technique. The \u201cbirds and the bees\u201d wasn\u2019t enough. I wanted them to have the same advantages that I had been given inadvertently by my own parents. I wanted my children to have the best information from the best books. I thought they would benefit from more than the basics. There are some things we only get from having someone teach us. It\u2019s not hard-wired into people to know that intercourse rarely leads to female orgasm, as an example. Heck, some married adults (I\u2019ve met some) believe female orgasm to be a myth. Ignorance can lead to heartache. Spencer W. Kimball has been quoted as saying the most common reason for temple divorce was sexual issues. I wanted my children to have sex really laid out for them. I wanted them to have the best possible chance at a happy sex life in their own marriages. To my mind, the best chance was a detailed, factual sex instruction manual. True, there is a lot more information around these days (hello Wikipedia), but misinformation is everywhere, too. Also, nearly all sex manuals I found in print or online included photos or illustrations indistinguishable from porn. Most manuals had sections on threesomes or homosexuality that I found incompatible with church teachings. There are Christian sex manuals out there, but I found them to be namby-pamby with some nonsense thrown in. No thanks. Nothing was right.<\/p>\n

So I decided I would bite the bullet and write a short sex instruction pamphlet for my kids. It would be embarrassing for them and for me, but I\u2019d rather face embarrassment than leave them to ignorance. I took a deep breath, sat down at my laptop, and wrote the first sentence.<\/p>\n

And then I put it away for seven years.<\/p>\n

Last summer, I watched the Mr. Rogers movie And Won\u2019t You Be My Neighbor<\/em>. In the opening of the movie, Fred Rogers is shown in a home movie sitting at his piano. He talks about how it\u2019s easy to move from some keys like the key of C major to other keys like F major. Some transitions are easy. Other transitions are hard. Moving from C major to F# major, he said, takes a lot of tricky steps. It\u2019s a hard transition. Fred Rogers then said he felt it was his calling to help children through difficult transitions.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how many people watched the Mr. Rogers movie and thought \u201cI should really write that sex manual.\u201d I did.<\/p>\n

I have never published a book. I have a ton of science articles under my belt, though, and I know how to research a subject and write it up. I dug in. I found my old sex manuals were, in fact, often wrong. Sex science had come a long way. I read a raft of modern, evidence-based sex manuals, looked up scientific papers when I needed to fill a knowledge gap, and listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts. These podcasts included those from Natasha Helfer Parker (\u201cthe Mormon Therapist\u201d) and Jennifer Finlayson-Fife (\u201cthe Mormon Sex Therapist\u201d). What I heard and then read about the Latter-day Saint experience in the bedroom was shocking to me. I put out a survey on the Eternal Marriage Ben Facebook page and heard more of what had horrified me.<\/p>\n

Latter-day Saints were having a terrible time in the bedroom\u2014at least some of them were. This was especially true on the wedding night and the early years of marriage. I don\u2019t think I can give you the weight of the pain without a FEW of the many examples from the survey:<\/p>\n

I knew almost nothing about foreplay. I wish I knew more about sex so it could have been something fun, happy and amazing instead.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint wife, married at 23<\/em><\/p>\n

I knew penetration may be difficult, but I didn’t understand how difficult, nor was I prepared to see blood. I didn’t realize how much lube would have helped.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint husband, married at 23<\/em><\/p>\n

We had no lubricant and literally couldn\u2019t penetrate because of it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint wife, married at 18<\/em><\/p>\n

The wedding night was scary and painful because I didn\u2019t know how great it could be.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint wife, married at 22<\/em><\/p>\n

I thought something was wrong with me.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint husband, married at 21<\/em><\/p>\n

I wish I had known manual stimulation was important for women to enjoy sex…critical for a woman to orgasm. It took more than a year.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint husband, married at 22<\/em><\/p>\n

I wish I knew more about my clitoris and its role in sex. I had Sex ed growing up (don’t remember having the talk with my parents), and I didn’t know about my clitoris or even where it was before getting married. All I ever heard of was the \u201cG spot.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint wife, married at 24<\/em><\/p>\n

We could have avoided so many issues.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint husband, married at 22<\/em><\/p>\n

I wish I had known it could be enjoyable for women and that I could orgasm. I always heard women in the church complain about having sex with their husbands and saying it only feels good for the guy. I grew up only hearing negative things about sex, and I was absolutely terrified of it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint wife, married at 22<\/em><\/p>\n

I wish I would have known about lube and foreplay. I wish I would have known about orgasms, and I wish I would have known my own anatomy better.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint wife, married at 22<\/em><\/p>\n

I had no idea females were capable of having pleasure. I had no idea that it was OK. I just knew how babies were made.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint wife, married at 20<\/em><\/p>\n

I mean, any sex education would have been helpful. Specifically, I wish we had both known more about the process of having penetrative sex for the first time. I tried to be gentle and slow, and I only went as far and as fast as she told me to go, but it was still bloody and painful for her, and I felt like a monster. Even just knowing about how to use lube would have been helpful. Also, I wish we both had known more about female orgasm, foreplay, and how to please each other separately\u2014that sex isn’t just penis-in-vagina.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint husband, married at 23<\/em><\/p>\n

I wish I had known pretty much everything since neither of us knew anything.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Latter-day Saint husband, married at 21<\/em><\/p>\n

From this and from listening to sex counselors who treat Latter-day Saints, I have come to the realization that we run the following risks in our culture from what we do or do not teach our children about sex:<\/p>\n