What Is a Sexually Healthy Person?

Published June 6, 1983. It should come as no great surprise that some married couples, perhaps many, experience sexual problems or difficulties at one time or another in their marriage. It is also obvious to many of us involved in marriage education and counseling that some of these problems evolve from the philosophical perceptions that the married partners individually and jointly have about the sexual aspect of their marital relationship.

Dr. Val MacMurray recently gave an interesting profile of what he believed to be a sexually well person. Dr. MacMurray is an administrator for the Social Services of the LDS Church in Salt Lake City. His thoughts were recently published in the Journal of The Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists. I thought you might be interested in some of the things he had to say.

Dr. MacMurray used the feminine pronouns “her” and “she” but noted the concepts apply equally to men as well as women. He stated:

I think to the extent that the sexually well person accepts and appreciates her sexuality, it would become a force that made her relationship with herself, with her spouse, and with her God better, stronger, and more binding. In other words, sexuality would not be an unacknowledged element in a person’s life, something she tried to ignore about herself, something that was present but not talked about in the marriage relationship, or a part of one’s life from which God was excluded. It would be prayed over and for. In fact, I am convinced that the dominant attitude of the sexually well person toward her sexuality would be gratitude.

The sexually well person would feel gratitude towards her own body for its ability to respond to pleasure.

Someone who is grateful for her body will respect and appreciate it. She does not deny it, or ignore it. On the contrary, she pays proper attention to it, and welcomes appropriate opportunities to understand its possibilities and potentialities.

The sexually well person would feel gratitude to her husband. The possibility of loving a well-beloved other should be a tremendous source of happiness, especially since it is mingled with the realization that our own fulfillment has been made possible by that same spouse’s desire to give pleasure as well as receive it.

Related to this, and I think it is fairly obvious, there is a sense of unique bonding created by the sexual union. We break bread with many people. We even share our hopes and fears with many people. Though certainly not to equal degrees.

Though the idea is losing popularity in the culture and society around us, one of the characteristics of a healthy marriage is its sexual fidelity -  the luxuriant certainty that only the two of you know and understand that part of the relationship, that only the two of you share that activity that pleasure, that learning and loving.

If our chief attitudes towards our sexuality were respect, appreciation and gratitude instead of fear, guilt, or perhaps anger, what would we teach ourselves, and our children? How would we re-teach concepts that may have been badly learned in the first place? And how would we go about healing some of the wounds left by damaging experiences that people have had up to this point?

I suspect that we would want to emphasize the holiness of sexuality and eliminate some of the mysteriousness which makes it frightening and tempting. It would not be something that separates us from God, but something that links us to him.