Once during a preaching I heard that Christianity is a religion of humility and not ‘foolishness’. This picturesque opposition was so much stuck in my mind that it has been accompanying me for a long time. During preachment I often heard about self-sacrifice with such an emphasis that there can not be true love without any self-sacrifice. I want to tell you about the incident that may give a reason to consider over how the self-sacrifice can be apprehended especially by the Christian woman.
A 33-yearly-old woman applied to me who was graceful, delicate and too refined. She made a good impression on me because she had the features of self-certainty, humbleness, consciousness of self-dignity which I appreciate highly. She had been married for seven years and had children who were five and three. Her husband was a Christian as well, which was the basic reason of marrying to him. The main complaint was that the stress in their interpersonal relations could lead to the end of their marriage. Now about some details about their sexual life: She mentioned that she had some difficulties with arousal. To my question whether she had ever felt orgasm, she was sincerely interested in what the female orgasm really represented itself. The initiative of sexual intercourses always came from her husband. She had never refused him even if she wasn’t inclined that instant. And in reply to the question why she didn’t refuse that relation when she didn’t need it, she said that if it were her wish, there would never be any sexual intimacy at all, whereas the Holy Writ says, “Don’t live apart for a long time.” So the woman makes a decision to sacrifice her own wishes (it is to be apart from the sexual life) in order to ‘satisfy his needs’. She only satisfied her husband and behaved herself like a “real Christian”. Every time by sacrificing herself in such a way, the woman reached the state that the sexual intercourse became intolerable for her as a result of which were the difficulty of arousal and the disappearance of sexual desire. I think you’ll agree that such type of sacrifice can’t be observed as a manifestation of love, when in reality the woman felt trouble from the sexual life, but for her husband’s sake she pretended that she took pleasure in it. It turns out that she deceives not only herself but also her husband (sometimes all this happens in an unconscious sphere). She doesn’t dare to express her negative emotions. First of all she must confess that she has been lying for these years, then she is afraid of confessing her non-completeness because she thinks that only she is guilty of that situation. The woman tried to find the ways of getting out of that situation by herself, but every time she failed and fell into depression. The drama of the woman’s sexual life is similarly repeated in the other spheres of her marital life. Every time sacrificing herself she tried to satisfy her husband, to take care of homely financial problems, to look after the children, to prepare meals, to provide the cleanness of the house. And she does everything without complaining. I was just surprised from where her vital energy and such a titanic patience came. But one day, as they say, the cup of patience is filled. Her husband’s complaints about that she didn’t manage to provide the cleanness of the house (because she had to work in order to take care of some financial problems) made her sober down. She felt that she was unable to carry that ‘weight’ on her shoulders any more which she had undertaken at her own free will. Nervous clinical manifestations appear which are nervous symptoms in a professional language. A state which is impossible to treat without any medical interference. After a few meetings she very quickly restored her psychic balance, the firmness of her nerves, she stopped being sorry for her husband and caressing him like a baby. Now she isn’t sacrificed during the sexual intercourse, on the contrary, as she said, “I complete my inner ‘incompleteness’ through the male half by becoming complete and full.” There are a lot of sexual problems in the Christian’s life, and they are basically connected with their false imaginations, wrong interpretation of the scripture. Not only my personal but also my colleagues’ experience witnesses it. Unwillingly I again remember the thought ‘nailed’ in my mind, “Christianity is a religion of humility and not ‘foolishness’ ….” This is based upon a true event, some details are changed.
