PSYC 309 Week 4 Perspectives on Sexuality Paper Example

Perspectives on Sexuality Paper: Five Essential Elements of Healthy Sexuality and How They Contribute to Wholeness

Abstract

This paper argues that healthy sexuality is best understood as an integrated part of the whole person rather than as a set of behaviors. Drawing on an integrated Christian approach and on psychological research, it identifies five essential elements: accepting oneself as an embodied person, relational intimacy, covenant faithfulness, integrity between values and behavior, and mutual respect. Each element is supported by research on topics including marital and sexual satisfaction, family communication, moral incongruence and cohabitation. Together, the elements contribute to wholeness by uniting body, mind, relationships and faith.

Introduction

Discussions of sexuality often begin with rules: what is permitted and what is forbidden. Rules matter, but they cannot by themselves describe what makes sexuality healthy. Balswick and Balswick (2008) present sexuality as rooted in the relational image of God, encompassing identity, longing for connection and intimacy as well as behavior. On that foundation, healthy sexuality is less a list of boundaries than a way of being whole. This paper outlines five elements of that wholeness.

Element One: Accepting Oneself as an Embodied Person

Healthy sexuality begins with accepting the body as part of God's good creation rather than as something shameful or merely instrumental. Balswick and Balswick (2008) emphasize that human beings are embodied souls, and that sexual development begins in childhood as people learn what their bodies mean. Families shape that learning powerfully. In a meta-analysis of 52 studies, Widman et al. (2016) found that adolescents who communicated with parents about sexuality reported safer behavior, which suggests that open, respectful conversation helps young people understand their bodies without fear or secrecy. The effect was modest, but it points to a practical truth: a child who can ask questions at home is less likely to learn about sexuality only from peers or media. Self-acceptance also includes accepting the limits and changes of the body across the lifespan, through illness, aging and disability, without concluding that one's worth as a sexual person has disappeared.

Element Two: Relational Intimacy

The second element is intimacy, the experience of knowing and being known. Sexuality is about connection, and its health depends on the health of the relationships in which it is expressed. McNulty et al. (2016) followed 207 newlywed couples for four to five years and found that marital and sexual satisfaction each predicted later improvement in the other. Physical intimacy and emotional intimacy are not separate compartments; they rise and fall together. A healthy sexuality, therefore, is cultivated through communication, attention and care in the whole relationship. This element also explains why intimacy matters for single people, whose need to be known is met through friendship, family and community rather than marriage.

Element Three: Covenant Faithfulness

Balswick and Balswick (2008) describe covenant as unconditional commitment, a promise that provides security in which intimacy can grow. Commitment frees partners from the fear that weakness or failure will end the relationship, which makes honest intimacy possible. Research on cohabitation offers an interesting perspective on commitment. Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019) analyzed national data on first marriages from 1970 to 2015 and found that couples who lived together before marriage had a lower dissolution rate in the first year of marriage but higher rates later, a pattern they summarized as short-term benefits and longer-term costs. The finding does not settle every question about commitment, but it suggests that the security of covenant is not easily replaced by trial arrangements.

Element Four: Integrity Between Values and Behavior

The fourth element is integrity, a match between what a person believes and how that person lives. Grubbs et al. (2019) proposed and tested a model in which much of the distress people report about their pornography use reflects moral incongruence, the experience of acting against one's own beliefs, rather than the frequency of use alone. Their review suggests that living divided against oneself is itself a source of suffering. For counselors, the model implies that helping a client move toward integrity, whether by changing behavior or by examining beliefs, may relieve distress more than focusing on behavior alone. Scripture's call to purity of heart (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Matthew 5:8) can be read in part as a call to this kind of wholeness, in which desire, belief and action are aligned.

Element Five: Mutual Respect

The final element is mutual respect, in which each person's dignity, freedom and well-being are honored. Balswick and Balswick (2008) describe empowerment as the use of influence to build up the other person rather than to control. Healthy sexuality excludes coercion and manipulation and includes attention to the other's needs, as Paul describes in his teaching on mutual giving within marriage (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Corinthians 7:3-4). Patterns in the wider culture make this element urgent. Ueda et al. (2020) found rising sexual inactivity among young American men between 2000 and 2018, a change whose causes are unclear but which raises questions about isolation and how young adults learn to relate.

How the Elements Contribute to Wholeness

These five elements work together. Self-acceptance allows a person to enter relationships without shame; intimacy and respect make those relationships life-giving; covenant provides security; and integrity keeps the person undivided. Together they contribute to well-being by uniting body, mind, relationships and faith, which is the wholeness the textbook describes as God's design.

Conclusion

Healthy sexuality is not achieved by rules alone. It is the fruit of a person who accepts being embodied, seeks genuine intimacy, keeps faithful commitments, lives with integrity and honors others. As a future counselor, I hope to help clients pursue that wholeness with both compassion and clarity.

References

Balswick, J. K., & Balswick, J. O. (2008). Authentic human sexuality: An integrated Christian approach (2nd ed.). IVP Academic.

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Grubbs, J. B., Perry, S. L., Wilt, J. A., & Reid, R. C. (2019). Pornography problems due to moral incongruence: An integrative model with a systematic review and meta-analysis. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 48(2), 397-415. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1248-x

McNulty, J. K., Wenner, C. A., & Fisher, T. D. (2016). Longitudinal associations among relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and frequency of sex in early marriage. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45(1), 85-97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-014-0444-6

Rosenfeld, M. J., & Roesler, K. (2019). Cohabitation experience and cohabitation's association with marital dissolution. Journal of Marriage and Family, 81(1), 42-58. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12530

Ueda, P., Mercer, C. H., Ghaznavi, C., & Herbenick, D. (2020). Trends in frequency of sexual activity and number of sexual partners among adults aged 18 to 44 years in the US, 2000-2018. JAMA Network Open, 3(6), Article e203833. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.3833

Widman, L., Choukas-Bradley, S., Noar, S. M., Nesi, J., & Garrett, K. (2016). Parent-adolescent sexual communication and adolescent safer sex behavior: A meta-analysis. JAMA Pediatrics, 170(1), 52-61. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.2731