# Deeper, Not Broader



## greenbaggins (Mar 14, 2009)

I made a comment in the excellent piece that Ben wrote on P0rn, and I would like to expand my comment a bit. What I said there was that Hollywood has lied completely about sex and relationships when it comes to the "greener grass" syndrome. This is the idea that after a while with one relationship, you get bored and therefore need to move on to something else. Quite apart from the unbiblical nature of this assertion, it is also flat out false. 

Everything about a _committed_ relationship is conducive to becoming a much better communicator, much better lover, much better spouse over time. For one thing, the knowledge that one gains about one's spouse becomes deeper over time. One must interject something at this point about sex, and that is that sex can never be divorced from the other aspects of the relationship. I know that is a truism. However, in this context, it has a profound effect on the "deeper versus broader" discussion. If sex cannot be separated from the other aspects of marriage (such as spiritual needs, emotional needs, intellectual needs), and if a person is a psychosomatic whole, then a committed marriage makes much more sense than a short-term no-commitment "relationship." Instead of being forced to go deeper in levels of communication, a "short-termer" will only have a small range of communicative tools at his disposal that he will use to get what he wants. The relationship will stay on the surface, since he will not need to develop the long-term habits necessary to keep a woman feeling spiritually, emotionally, and physically secure. Our culture is against this, however, since people are afraid of long-term relationships. The potential for getting hurt is much greater. That's the risk one takes, but the payoff is more than worth the risk. 

On the other side of the coin, those relationships based on this deeper level of communication will by definition have better sex as the result. Oftentimes men do not realize this, because they are often able to separate sex from other aspects of their lives. As far as I can tell, however, most women cannot. It is inherently selfish, then, for the man to be thinking about surface relationship and what he needs to do simply to get what he wants, rather than thinking about the longer term habits he needs to develop in order to keep a woman happy for years and years. 

These are two mutually contradictory mindsets. It is no accident, in my mind, that Hollywood has been the perpetuator and initiator of many millions of divorces, because people are swallowing the "broader" perspective rather than the "deeper" perspective.


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