50 Shades of Grey

This past weekend was Valentine’s Day where couples across the globe celebrated their love for one another by spending special times together, and showering each other with gifts, cards, flowers, and love.

This past weekend also marked the much anticipated release of a movie based on the E.L. James bestseller, 50 Shades of Grey. 50 Shades of Grey is a erotic romance novel where a business exec who is into BDSM develops a relationship with a college student. The novel tells the story of their sexual romance in explicit detail showing the arousal achieved by pain, bondage, and other S&M practices.

This novel and movie portray intimacy and love mixed with untraditional practices that connect love with pain, control, power and submission.

Bestselling author and international speaker on relationships, Gary Thomas, sheds some light on the portrayal of love and intimacy in heterosexual relationships as depicted in 50 Shades of Grey. Here are some of the problems (paraphrased)  he sees with “Grey”.  Whether you’ve seen the movie or read the book, you can reflect on these comments to confirm your own ideas on love and sex and what you think is healthy and fulfilling in relationships.

1. The way our brains operate, if you need pain to get sexually excited, that level of pain becomes normative and routine, so you have to increase the level of pain to get the same excitement. In a long-term, lifelong sexual relationship, that’s a problem.
2. When sex recreates past abuse instead of providing a healing alternative, it cements the soul in dysfunction rather than releasing the soul into healthy intimacy.
3. If a couple ignores the spiritual side of sex, their satisfaction in the bedroom is living on borrowed time.
4. It’s simply foolish to feel intimidated by or envious of the sexual relationship of a couple that requires a billionaire’s income and schedule to sexually excite each other.
5. Daily kindness will get a woman in the mood far more certainly than sanitized metal.
6. Soul-satisfying sex without commitment is as real as chocolate cake without calories.
7. An abused man who expresses his hurt with violent sexual acts against a woman is “healed” by his sexual partner being willing and submissive? The last time that happened in real life was never.
8. Love isn’t expressed by accepting intentional pain; it’s built by giving and receiving unselfish pleasure.
9. While an occasional blindfold might be enticing, far more satisfying is to see the look in another’s eyes when they desires and adores you.
10. Healthy men and women want to be desired for who they are, not for the toys they can afford.
11. The best mark of fulfilling sex isn’t a bruise or a scratch—it’s that special glance between each other two hours later.
12. It takes far more bravery to commit yourself to one partner for life than it does to commit yourself to a new sexual encounter.
13. What’s nobler? A married couple thinking up new ways to give pleasure or a dating couple thinking up new ways to give pain?
14. A strong man isn’t looking for a young woman to dominate; he’s looking for a woman who inspires him, a partner to share life with, and a fellow parent with whom he can build a family.
15. If a guy is “fifty shades of [messed] up,” he’ll bring you far more misery than pleasure as soon as you step out of the bedroom.
16. A guy who has to control you in the bedroom won’t stop trying to control you in the living room… Or the kitchen, or the car, or anywhere else, for that matter.
17. The best sex doesn’t require one person “training” another; it requires sharing and learning and growing together.

Read the Story in Full: 50 Problems with Grey

Love and intimacy are two things to be shared between people who cherish the connection they both have and want to nurture that relationship and grow it deeper. Introducing a action that may have adverse short and/or long term affects on the relationship should be thoroughly discussed and thought about prior to implementing it into the relationship.