Dr Paul Allen

Dear Husband, You may think I am ill-suited to counsel a young man on how to be faithful to his wife, because, in almost fifty years with my wife, I have never felt enticed to be romantic or to have sex with another woman . However, it might be worth probing whether this (perhaps unusual) fact has causes which are transferrable to you. Let me clarify. It’s not as good as it sounds. My eyes are as magnetized toward excessive female skin as most men’s. I am not designed for beach evangelism. I find airports to be problematic enough. I have zero tolerance for nudity in films — or even suggestiveness (which rules out almost all of them). One reason (among many) is that any sexually charged image lodges itself in my mind, with regrettable effects. One more clarification: I have enjoyed a life of sexual intimacy with my wife, that is, I think, as intense as any can reasonably hope for. In other words, I don’t think my disinterest in sex with other women is owing to deficient ho

Christ Pantocrator study (Photo credit: DUCKMARX ) The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism—for that is what the words ‘one flesh’ would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact—just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument . The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined.  The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong abo

Premarital Sex in America by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker and was pleasantly surprised at some of the insights. While I have been writing, teaching, and speaking for years to both teens and adults on the issue of premarital sex, this book opened my eyes to some of the more important trends emerging today.  The empirical data suggests that these are not true most of the time. There are exceptions, of course. MYTH 1: Long-term relationships are a thing of the past Many emerging adults (ages 18-23) tend to hold two views in tension—that sexual experimentation is valuable and yet one should not cheat on a monogamous partner. Indeed, many consider it stupid and unhealthy not to be sexually active in various relational settings. And yet most desire a lasting exclusive relationship. According to the research of Regnerus and Uecker, at least 50 percent of marriages last a lifetime, despite what most emerging adults tend to think. MYTH 2: Sex is necessary to maintain a struggling relati

2010 research study published in the Journal of Family Psychology that found couples who delay sex until after marriage actually improve their marriages. The study surveyed 2,035 married couples and asked them about their initial sexual experience together (before or after the wedding). Of the 2,035 couples, only 336 couples reported waiting until they got married to have sex. The largest group of couples had sex within a few weeks of dating, and 126 couples had sex prior to dating. Examining the data, the three researchers concluded that waiting to have sex until after marriage actually improved the relationship — for both men and women — in four key areas: 1. Sexual quality 2. Relationship communication 3. Relationship satisfaction 4. Perceived relationship stability According to the study, people who waited until marriage rated sexual quality 15 percent higher than people who had premarital sex ; rated relationship stability 22 percent higher; and rated satisfaction with their

Researchers have concluded that for every hour of exposure to sexual content in movies , teens were more than five times more likely to lose their virginity within six years. "Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners , and are less likely to use condoms with casual sexual partners," said Dr. Ross O'Hara, who led the study, which focused on 1,228 children ages 12 to 14, with follow-ups conducted six years later. "This study, and its confluence with other work, strongly suggests that parents need to restrict their children from seeing sexual content in movies at young ages." O'Hara went on to report that while more than half of adolescents use movies and the media as their "greatest source of sexual information," many could not differentiate between what they saw on a screen and what they confronted in real life. Nearly 700 of the highest grossing movies released bet

Image by notashamed via Flickr From: Challies.com   Mark Driscoll will be all over the news in the new year. Not only is he set to be a participant at the controversial Elephant Room conference on January 25, but January 3 will also mark the release of his newest book—the one that is bound to become his most controversial yet:  Real Marriage : The Truth About Sex, Friendship & Life Together . Co-authored with his wife Grace, the book is being marketed as a down-to-earth and no-holds-barred look at marriage and sex. Especially sex. Though  Real Marriage  weighs in at over 200 pages and 11 chapters, there is one chapter that is going to generate the vast majority of the buzz. I plan to write a review of the whole book closer to the release date. For now, though, I want to reflect on that one chapter. Before I go any farther I need to warn you that the contents of this blog post and any that follow are going to deal with topics that are uncomfortable for many people (myself includ