This is http://www.essayz.com/a9805191.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %FEAR SEXUALITY IGNORANCE PREJUDICE ADDICTION SIN+980519 %EVIL REJECTION EXCLUSIVITY DISEASE AIDS RISK FAIL+980519 %FALSE INSTINCT DISHONESTY ABUSE LOSS CONTROL LACK+980519 %FRIENDSHIP ROMANCE ALONE ISOLATION DISCIPLINE NO 980519 There are many reasons for fearing sexual involvements: 1. Ignorance, misinformation and prejudices are often maintained by people who fear sexual involvements--- and who figure that the fear which ignorance, misinformation and prejudices breed will inhibit only dangerous sexual involvements, and not inhibit healthy sexual involvements. 2. Sexual involvements entail the risks of loss of prudent control, precaution, and care. 3. Sexual involvements entail the risks of abuse by addictive people who do not show their false, deceptive and/or abusive natures --- until they have others in positions of vulnerability --- and they as addicts can take control. 4. It is often difficult to draw clear boundaries between close friendships and sexual involvements --- and such ambiguities may engender fear, anxiety and caution. 5. People are more judgmental and prone to condemn sexual mistakes --- than other kinds of mistakes. 6. People are more prone to engage in compulsive exclusivity in relationships where sexuality plays an obvious role ---than in relationships where sexuality is obviously not a factor. 7. Excommunication and formal alienation are often prescribed by self-righteous people who maintain high levels of ignorance, prejudice and confusion --- regarding healthy sexual relationships. 8. Human feelings about sexual relationships run high and confuse clear thinking about what is essential to the maintenance AND enjoyment of healthy sexual relationships, personal integrity AND communal integrity. 9. Many human diseases (both physiological and non- physiological) are intimately associated with and/or transmitted within the context of unwise and/or imprudent sexual relationships. 10. Human sexual relationships are not well understood, predicted or controlled through procedures which are usually described using words such as: scientific, objective, quantitative, analytic, manipulative, coercive, violent, self-righteous, arrogant, pretentious, disciplined. 11. Fears of human sexuality have often inhibited open and honest personal discussions of the wide variety of human sexual experiences --- by the different kinds of people, in diverse contexts within which various human sexual desires, hopes, motivations and aspirations are expressed. 12. Neither controllers nor hedonists learn very quickly from the mistakes which they make in regards to human sexual relationships. 13. People dishonestly treat human sexual relationships as entailing technical problems to be solved --- rather than as relational dilemmas involving numerous conflicts among interwoven ideals, values and principles; conflicts which which need to be resolved through open and honest dialogue, and balanced setting of priorities. 14. Self-righteous people try to use blame, shame and guilt as tools with which to manipulate sexual non- conformists --- because self-righteous people regard sexual relationships as technical problems to be solved. 15. The focus is more often upon INDIVIDUALS who have been trapped in dysfunctional sexual RELATIONSHIPS --- rather than upon the RELATIONSHIPS within which people have become trapped --- and why those RELATIONSHIPS are dysfunctional and dis-eased. 16. People often regard security as the absence of vulnerability --- even though true security is enjoyed only in the presence of regular sharing of free gifts of the freedom to be safely vulnerable in open and honest intimacy --- intimacy which often carries overtones of sexual possibilities, opportunities, dangers and risks. If we approach our sexual relationships in the absence of acknowledgements of the above reasons for fearing sexual involvements --- we are likely to blindly encounter again and again those experiences which point to the above reasons for fearing sexual involvements. Such blind stumbling will not lead to joyful and healthy sexual relationships. We will do better by seeking to create and maintain communal contexts within which people will be free, and feel free, to describe openly and honestly their sexual experiences --- in the light of the above reasons for fearing sexual involvements. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================