Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Casual Sex Harms Bonding

Casual sex impairs the ability to establish a lasting emotional bond.  When natural human emotional responses are repeatedly denied, the person is hardened and the capacity to bond is weakened.  Dr. Donald Joy published groundbreaking research in the early 80s and has updated it periodically in the intervening years.  He chronicles the ways that intimacy produces bonding.  His research indicates that human beings respond to sexual intercourse by bonding, and they are driven to make that bond permanent and exclusive.

Dr. Joy reported on the work of a researcher at a hospital clinic in Detroit who worked with 1,000 couples for 10 years studying their marital problems and recording their sexual histories.  He concluded that sexual intercourse is constructive only within marriage.  His evidence is overwhelming that one or the other of the partners in casual sex (usually the girl or woman) experiences immediate emotional pain even in the absence of acknowledged injury.  The experience of casual sexual intimacy produces memories that can contaminate future relationships and create lingering problems later on, when the person eventually marries.  When the married couples in his research had problems, he said, "The pain in the marriages was rooted in their promiscuity."

Janice Shaw Crouse, “Straight Talk About Casual Sex”

No comments: