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Sex Languages

4 days ago
2 min read

The passage below is excerpted from Sex With God: Meditations on the sacred nature of sex in a post-purity-culture world.

Sex Languages

Some years ago a book called The Five Love Languages swept the evangelical world. It outlined the different ways people feel most loved and how they offer love to others. Some people like to hear affirming words, others like gifts, still others prefer actions. (You get the idea.) People still refer to the book, and find it useful for helping navigate intimate relationships.

Just as there are preferred styles for feeling loved, we all have things which put us more in the mood, and things which turn us off. Some people are visual. Watching a beloved put on lipstick might be a major turn on for them. Others are more verbal, and find talking dirty intensely sexy. Some respond more to whispered words of love than to explicit descriptions. Still others might respond best to touch; soft and soothing, or more direct.

Pay attention the next few times you experience sexual response, and try to figure out what arouses you. Ask your beloved to do the same, and then come together to share what you’ve discovered. It could be that you love sexy descriptions of what they are about to do, but they like watching you take your clothes off.

Even if you discover that your turn-ons are their turn-offs, its important information, and offers you the opportunity to develop a sexual give and take to bring you both optimal satisfaction and minimal frustration. Each discovery builds intimacy.

We have a God who desires intimacy, and who created us to thrive on it. So pay attention to what makes you blossom, and then communicate it with your beloved.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself…. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

Kahlil Gibran

Suzanne DeWitt Hall (she/they) is the author of the Where True Love Is devotional series, the Living in Hope series of books supporting the loved ones of transgender people, The Language of Bodies (Woodhall Press, 2022), and the Rumplepimple adventures.