What are the acceptable and sinless signs of affection in a relationship? ( Kisses, hugs, touch.....)

Dear young woman,

You are now asking: "What are the acceptable and sinless signs of affection in a relationship? ( Kisses, hugs, touch.....)"

It is less about the gestures and more about what is in the heart, what are the motivations, what is it that we are really desiring, seeking, wanting?

When a touch, a hug, a kiss comes toward you, is he coming to "take" something from you, or is he offering something to you? Also, what is it that you want and desire? Is it in accord with God's plan for our happiness? Is it in accord with what God wants for you, what God is calling you to do?

A man and a woman can stand face to face, holding hands. He moves his face a little closer, but respectfully waits. She moves her face a little closer, which he interprets as her willingness to do more; so, he kisses her gently. She receives the kiss also gently.

Then suddenly, to her surprise, he kisses or grabs her more passionately - the male hormones tends to put men into "overdrive" - in a kind of frenzy in which he is no longer in control of his actions and his whole body is driving him towards relief of the pressure he feels... which basically is relieved when his genitals expel the sperm and he then experiences a "rinsing out" of hormones and the pressure is relieved. When husband and wife are intimate, after the man has ejaculated, if he was previously tired, he will often fall asleep then.

A woman's problem and challenge is that what began so gently and respectfully has suddenly transformed into something far more passionate, perhaps even, from her point of view, a bit violent, or even very violent. Now she tries to push him away and says "No!" but he doesn't understand, or he thinks she is just playing with him, and so he continues. It becomes a big problem. The reason it becomes so confusing is that the two of them did not talk it out clearly beforehand. In every relationship, these things must be made very clear; otherwise, the risk remains for misunderstanding and misery.

You see, a woman's "weakness" or "vulnerability" is her desire to please. She is afraid to say "No!" to the man she desires when he wants "more" physical affection from her, because she is afraid he will be displeased and may even reject her and look for someone else who will more easily give him what he wants. Woman is afraid of being unloved, of being rejected, or remaining alone, abandoned. That is why it is so important for fathers to love their daughters well; so that they already know they are loved and lovable and don't need to find a boy to love them. What God says to all his daughters is this:

"Be not afraid. If when you say "No!" to the man you like and he then rejects you and goes away; rejoice, and be glad, for he was not worthy of you. If you had stayed with him, he would only have brought you heartache. Conserve your "treasures" carefully, my daughter, and keep them for the man I your God and Creator, your heavenly Father, have in mind for you, a man truly worthy of you, who will respect you and not try to take from you that which you will freely choose to give him on the day you commit your lives to one another for life, on your wedding day. Then, even after the wedding day, for the rest of your lives together, such a good man will never try to "take" anything from you. On the contrary, he will study you and learn what pleases you and make many efforts to give you tenderness and affection in ways that truly please you and cherish you as his beloved."

I wrote everything I wrote in the last email because the challenge never goes away that the woman and the man experience everything differently. That means you must always be "on alert" to be aware of your dignity, your goals, and your limits. You, each of you, need to explore these things, and to understand more completely what it is that you want in your life.

Do you want to know and to do the will of God? Do you want to love God and to embrace the plan He has for your life? What about your boyfriend? Does he want to know and to do the will of God? Do he want to love God and to embrace the plan He has for his life?

To answer your question in a different way, expressions of affection between boys and girls should never be different than what would be appropriate for brother and sister or for children with their parents and relatives. No one should engage in anything more "passionate" outside of marriage, because the way God our Creator designed woman and man, once the affectionate gestures cross over into passionate embrace, then hormones "take over" and "drive them towards union" and towards the "creation of new life", that is, the fertilization by the man of the woman's eggs. Before marriage, touching, hugging, and kissing must remain gentle, and "brief", so as to avoid stirring up the fires of passion. Once the fire is lit, it is almost impossible to stop.

Women must be very understanding and considerate of men, who are much more easily and much more quickly "aroused" and burst into raging fire. For their part, men must be very mature and disciplined, and learn how to master their own impulses and passions. Otherwise, they are unsafe for the women in their lives, and they will be incapable of being chaste, respectful of their wife, or faithful to her.

You see, we are all affected or "infected" by the thinking, the values, and the behaviour of the world, of the society, of the culture around us. We "swim" in it like fish in the water. We "take in" countless impressions, images, and emotions from this culture, and much of what we "take in" is in accord with pagan values or even total lack of values. One dominant "value" or "negative value" in our culture is "If it feels good, do it." But what often "feels good" to the man does not "feel good" to the woman, which is why there are so many sexual abuse and harassment cases in the courts.

If we really want to live life fully and to enjoy the abundance of life God wants to give us, we need to conduct ourselves according to God's standards, and not according to the world's standards.

On another of my Blogger pages, you will find several articles and links on a wide variety of topics around human sexuality, love, fertility, and happiness - Field Hospital for Meaning, Purpose, and Fulfillment in Human Intimacy and Sexuality. 

Does this begin to help to clarify this question for you?

If you email me, I will be very happy to respond to you, either of you, or better yet, both of you. You will find a button to easily email me if you go to my home page and scroll down a little or simply go here: EMAIL ME.

Peace to you and your families. God is with you; you can trust in Him. You can trust in Jesus, the Divine Mercy.

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My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2022 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2022 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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A young woman or young man asks: "How can we conduct ourselves in such a way as to have a chaste relationship before God?"

My very dear young woman, here are a few thoughts for you and your boyfriend. My very dear young man, here are a few thoughts for you and your girlfriend.

First of all, I wouldn't be surprised if it is you, the woman, who is asking me this question, and not the man. You are asking "how to conduct yourselves as girlfriend and boyfriend so that your relationship will be a chaste relationship." As you will see, the fact that you, the woman, who is asking this question, this is already an indication of the things I am about to share with you. If the young man is asking me this question; then, I will be very impressed with him, that he would have this capacity to care so much for the other as well as for himself. I will be very interested to continue this as a chat with both of you, you, young woman, and your boyfriend, by email, if this is something you would like to do. You can easily find on my home page, if you scroll down a little, a button for sending me an email. What follows is fairly lengthy, but then your question touches on very deep things.

When I was in high school, a boys only school on our side - the girls were with religious sisters on the other side - some of my classmates wanted to know, at 16 years old, "Brother, how far can we go?" He was asking the question in thinking about going out with his girlfriend.

Well, that is a normal question I think for a 16-year-old boy, and perhaps also the girl.

However, there is wisdom, I think, in the difference that God our Creator built into women and men. We are definitely made, designed, different, which means that we experience these things differently, and therefore, we react differently.

Generally speaking, in the vast domain of human relationships, it is quite true to say that human males, from puberty on, without even thinking about it, just by being male human beings, in approaching their relationships with girls as boys or with women as men, sexual intimacy tends to be quite prominent in their bodies, minds, imaginations, hearts, and perhaps even in their souls. This is primarily because their sexual sensitivity is "on the outside".

Human females, on the other hand, while they are also "fully equipped sexually", their sexual sensitivity is "on the inside". That is because God designed the human female to be the "host" of the "new life" that happens when the female's "eggs" begin to "ripen" and descent towards the place where they are likely to meet the spermatozoa contributed by the male. Our Creator designed our human sexuality entirely around this capacity we have to "create new life", which makes us "in God's image and likeness". Therefore, God made woman to be resilient, to "last" through almost any human difficulty or calamity. Think of your own mothers, grandmothers, and aunts. Just ask any woman who finds it hard to lose weight, and she will tell you that this is so. When there is a famine, men will die sooner than women, because God designed women to be able to nurse their babies as long as possible during calamities.

This means, then, that God our Creator designed women "to give life, to nurture life". For this and other reasons, in approaching their relationships with men, just as it is also true for girls with boys, the human female tends to have foremost in her body, mind, imagination, heart, and soul not sexual sensitivity, but rather the relationship itself, in other words, friendship, fraternity, and simple caring about the other.

This is why in the course of the "battles" between boys and girls, men and women, the males tend to be "pushed" by their internal pressures "towards sexual pleasure and gratification"; whereas the females tend to be "drawn" by their need and desire for relationship, for friendship, to simply know from others that they are "lovable" and "loved". No sexual activity is needed for her to be satisfied. All she needs is for him to look into her eyes, to walk with her, to hold her hand, and to chat with her and "talk about a million things".

This continues to be true all through life. In marriage, the woman is called the "bride" and the man is called the "bridegroom". The wisdom contained in these terms already contains the truth that, in God our Creator's design, He has made the female so "rich", so "full of life", so "attentive and giving" of herself, so generous in "all that she says and does for others", that she deserves to be appreciated, valued, defended, cherished, and cared for. Men can very easily be selfish... just look at the world around us and at all the conflicts worldwide and you will see how little men think of woman and children when they make war on one another. So, then, the man is called the "bridegroom" because God designed him to have all he needs in order to appreciate, value, defend, cherish, and care for the women in his life: beginning with his mother and grandmother, his aunts and cousins, his sisters, and all the other females that come into his life.

When a husband truly is and truly lives like a bridegroom and "grooms" his wife well, cares for her and cherishes her every single day of their lives; then, his wife notices this and values him in return. She knows she has a real treasure, and she attaches herself to him. When they spend much "couple time" together, chatting, sharing, listening, holding hands, looking into each others' eyes... then they experience a real "fullness of intimacy" in their way of living together and relating to one another, caring for one another, all day and all night, all week long, for their whole lives. Then, the actual sexual intimacy happens very naturally to them. As they pay attention to one another, they give "signals" to one another to "approach", to "come nearer", and if they truly CARE for the OTHER, they pay attention to these signals, and nothing happens that either doesn't want, and there only happens what they both want. This is the perfect "nest" in which new life can be conceived.

However, when men don't fully understand or were never initiated or mentored into their identity, place, and role "as a man" in this world; then there is a risk for men, as for boys, to "follow their instincts, their impulses" which, if left unmoderated, ungoverned, makes human males into "big penises on wheels". That is how it happens at parties and on college and university campuses, in workplaces, and anywhere in society that a man "thinks" the woman is "saying yes" when in fact she really wants to "say no". That is how date rape happens, and sexual harassment and violence. The simple fact that a man "finds her attractive" can give him the impression she is "saying yes", but in actual fact, if he bothered to read all the signs and to take the time to find out how she really feels, he would probably find out that at this time, and in this situation, she probably wants to "say no".

A woman's weakness is her desire to please, to give life, to nurture life, to "say yes to life".  That is primarily what makes women the "weaker sex"; it is not that she is weak, because as I wrote above, God our Creator designed woman to be resilient. A man's weakness is his inclination to think of himself first, and not to put the other first. When he does that, he can allow himself to be dominated by his "sexual drive" which propels him "towards the goal", which is not the relationship, not the good of the other, but his own satisfaction, to "relieve the sexual pressure" driving him onward.

That is why it is so important for parents, for mothers and fathers AS COUPLES to educate and form their children well, both boys and girls, to understand themselves, to understand the purpose of life, to learn how to put others first, to learn how to notice, understand, and "master" within themselves their human drives and inclinations, and also to understand how different these things are in boys and girls, in men and women, and how to take care not to take advantage of others.

I have read, for example, that some good fathers take great care to love their girls and to show each of them how beautiful and lovable their are. Some fathers give each of their daughters a beautiful ring on their 16th birthday to demonstrate to her how much he loves her as her father and to let her know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that she is not only lovable, but lovely, and loved. She no longer needs to try to find from boyfriends this knowledge, because her own father makes it very clear to her that she is "fully equipped" for life, that she holds in herself an infinitely precious treasure, and that she should take care not to "throw it away" to just anyone, but safeguard her riches carefully for the day when she meets a man truly a man and worthy of her, capable to caring for her as a husband should.

In his relationship with his boys, this good father demonstrates and shows them how to respect, love, and cherish the women in their lives, beginning with their own mother, grandmother, sisters, and aunts and cousins. He helps them understand how they must make efforts to "master" their own inclinations in order to "have the freedom" to apply all their resources to love well the women in their lives and truly care for them and cherish them. Only then will they themselves be truly happy.

In the intimacy between a husband and wife, which is the normal context within which sexual intimacy can take place without any dangers to either of them or to their couple relationship, the woman "takes longer" to "warm up" to the intimate encounter; whereas in a way the man is "always ready to go". This is primarily because the male "sexual equipment" is external and generally requires very little stimulation to "get going".

In the long-term relationship between a husband and wife, and between the wife and her husband, this often is where they can experience trouble. The wife simply needs - like the fiancee - to "be noticed, to be appreciated, to be looked into her eyes, to have her hand held, to walk together and chat together, and have the satisfaction of being in a relationship with a man who is truly her friend and shows his ability, willingness, and eagerness to put her good, her well being, her interests ahead of his own". Generally speaking she doesn't need sexual intimacy, and she won't "need it" until they are married and she is "ready to conceive life" and to nurture that life. For a fiancee and for a wife to be truly fulfilled in their relationship with their fiance, their husband, women need their man to demonstrate every day his ability, willingness, and eagerness to "master himself and all his impulses" and to "be there" for her.

We men do find our fulfillment and happiness in depth and in a lasting and fulfilling way only when we accept to take our responsibilities, to "master our impulses", to be "masters of our own house, that is, our own self", and when we learn and accept to put ourselves wholeheartedly at the service of those "we think we love, those we say we love, those we want to love". Any man not willing or interested to do that or dedicated to do that is not worthy of any woman, let alone the one he would life someday to marry. The man who cannot or will not master himself is like all the men worldwide throwing their societies into conflicts and wars, as if they not only don't care but don't even notice how they are plunging their own people, their women and children, into hardship. They see only the so-called values they want to push and are willing to declare war on anyone and everyone who stands in their way.

The man who is truly a man, on the other hand, is like Pope Francis, like a diplomat, like an ambassador, who entirely dedicates himself to the service of others, like Jesus himself, who came that we might have life and have it to the full. Read Jesus' words as recorded by the Apostle and Evangelist John in his Gospel, chapter 10, where he presents Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

So, my young friend, does this begin to answer your question?

If you email me, I will be very happy to respond to you, either of you, or better yet, both of you.

Peace to you and your families. God is with you; you can trust in Him. You can trust in Jesus, the Divine Mercy.

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My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2022 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2022 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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